Apolleon the Traveler is the ancient Lasombra and founder of the Cult of Shalim.
Biography[]
| “ | Do you dream? Do you dare to dream? In this place, our dreams may take form, but the ravages of time and endless march of reality render them to nothing. I can show you a way to end the suffering of hope. The pain of dreams. | ” |
| — Apolleon the Traveler | ||
Apolleon travels the world in the form of a great black mass, sliding along the floor of the seabed, constantly communing with what he believes is his sire, the voice in the dark. This semi-torpid state guides him around the Earth as he reaches out into the minds of Kindred of his bloodline he feels nearby, seeking those with the predisposition he needs: those who have suffered great loss and who are asking the existential questions of what it all means. Nothing is the answer he provides; there is no meaning save that which you assign to the act itself. He comforts them with the knowledge that all Lasombra have, deep inside themselves: that they are part of a great destiny, and that destiny lies in Oblivion. Not only will they end their own suffering, but that of the entire world. This lofty goal can only be achieved through Shalim, of course. Apolleon preaches that Shalim is the first Kindred and the master of the emptiness that existed before the universe itself existed. He speaks of primordial deities, such as Erebus, from ancient cultures, and links them back to Shalim, their “true” identity. Shalim is the Kindred from whom the first Lasombra arose, the progenitor of all bloodlines and guardian of the purest of those, who retain his link to the primordial dark. Once Shalim wakes and hears the calling of his children, he will destroy the cancer perverting his perfect blackness and return the world to the state of nothingness. In a stroke, war, suffering, disease, unhappiness of all kinds will be expunged and all consciousness will become one with Shalim, all will return to God, all will be God.
Several Lasombra have now knelt before him in one of his guises, pledging the remainder of their time in existence to ensuring its eradication, promising to be the scalpel that will cut reality away and reveal the peace of emptiness to a grateful world.
Priests of Shalim are always Lasombra who have been touched by Apolleon. His predations vary from subject to subject: some kneel having only heard the word and accepted it, such as Rabbi Basaras; others must be more directly “convinced,” such as Gamal Hajjar of Cairo whose every happy memory was annihilated by the methuselah over a period of several months. Each one of them is only released by Apolleon when he considers their faith in the coming end to be incorruptible.
Trivia[]
Apollyon (Απολλυων) is the Greek name for Abaddon, the spiritual being (or place) named as the destroyer (or place of destruction), the exterminator, in Christian apocalyptic theology.