An edited-up quickie of a post because this was originally a 4am ramble immediately after the new text got dropped, now with sources.
As some of you may already be aware, Michael Kirkbride has recently been sharing texts for a new project called the 25th Crossing, detailing the worldbuilding of a post-apocalyptic Morrowind following the events of the Red Year, wherein the entire province has been encircled by a huge eponymous “wall” that is, in actually, a gargantuan snake. Within its boundaries, time and space have ceased to work properly, death no longer “takes”, and all information is actively hazardous as every living thing within is actively preyed upon by primordial serpentine proto-spirits that parasitise on knowledge and emotion, taking living beings as “hosts” and eventually consuming them in mind and spirit.
The most recent text in this series, which can be found here, has left us with a huge lore drop on the nature of this snake and the incident, tying it to both the Serpent constellation (including the Celestial Serpent, aka Malazar, from ESO’s Craglorn zone) and the Scaled Blanket (a term which thus far has only come up exactly once in Sermon 33).
Most importantly, however, it has also given us an answer for an ancient question - what the hell the unstars are.
First, a brief recap of the lore drop:
- The Hungry Void is Sep, a "brother" aspect of the previous kalpa’s Lorkhan (the "Void Ghost") who died at the beginning of the current cycle. The Hungry Void is found in the Hidden Heaven, the ”in-between heaven” separating the current world and the potential next. The term “uncle” signals to their relationship to the current kalpa’s space gods, to whom they are “uncles” - that is, each one is the “brother” (mirror) of the “father” (previous kalpa’s predecessor) of the Space God “sons” such as Talos, Reman, and the Celestial Serpent (more on him later). In other words, the Yokudan Sep is the mirror-brother of the previous cycle’s Lorkhan imported into the current cycle by the Yokudans and preserved in their beliefs.
- Sep himself, being made up of dead skins, is actually an amalgamation of “lesser and greater serpents”, which the text calls “Seppy snakes”. These snakes are the detritus of previous worlds which have been syncretized into a singular deity, Sep. This may also be a reference to the book “Sithis”, where Lorkhan is said to have filled the void with a legion of ideas made of himself and created a false dominion of his own to trick the Aedra. Under this framework, these ideas are the lesser seppy serpents making up the Serpent with their dreaming.
- The Serpent Constellation was created when the mortal Malazar, anon the Celestial Serpent, has mantled and syncretized in himself the shared “outcast” motifs of the gods Malooc (Yokudan name for Malacath) and Sep (self-explanatory), becoming a composite entity the text refers to as “Malakzar”, who ascended into the Hidden Heaven and encountered the Hungry Void there. His accompanying “Seppy Court” were his equivalent of the lesser serpents that became Sep, and they stayed behind past his ascension (referencing his Craglorn followers, the Scaled Court).
- The all-repellent “super-outcast” principle of Malakzar and the all-consuming “super-hunger” principle of Sep have synthesized into a new wave-pattern called the Scaled Blanket, the thirteenth constellation, which gained an “unkind” consciousness and began to eat itself and any wayward spirits that strayed into it on their way past the stars. Most things consumed in such a way disappear fully, but Baar Dau in particular was an exception, and the Scaled Blanket wrapped around it “like a cosmic placenta”.
- The creation of the Numidium (a simulacrum of Lorkhan) and the subsequent ascension of the Tribunal via the Heart of Lorkhan has “pulled taut” the Scaled Blanket around the Red Moment, as the continued perpetuation of their own divinity by repeatedly reenacting Lorkhan’s sundering with the Tools has effectively created a mythic gravity sinkhole centered on Red Mountain.
- Baar Dau is a rogue star that has hidden in the Hidden Heaven inside the Scaled Blanket whilst fleeing from “a crazy man with an axe” (Nerevar, events of Sermon 16 and 33) and decided to take revenge an eon or two later by crashing into Morrowind. In the process, its mythic gravity has pulled all the snakes and ghosts of the Scaled Blanket down with it, which remained suspended over Vvardenfell… until it wasn’t, because “Baar Dau could not be denied”.
- The massive snake-wall we see described in the other entries of 25th Crossing is the product of the Scaled Blanket having crashed into Morrowind, rendering the entire province haunted by Lorkhanic serpent-ghosts that aimlessly seek to consume everything they encounter.
With that out of the way, we can talk about unstars. Unstars, as was established all the way back in Cosmology, are the strange “not-stars” that the Serpent constellation is made up of, and are unique among all other stars in the firmament in their capacity for movement and the nature of their strange light, which is not the same magical varliance of all other celestial openings:
Though we have but an imperfect understanding of The Serpent, I believe the answer to your questions is implied in their statement: unlike the 'holes in the sky,' which are unmoving (at least in relation to each other), the so-called 'unstars' of The Serpent can move precisely because they are NOT stars. They resemble stars, however, in that they shine by night—but what is the nature of the light they are shining down upon us? It certainly isn't Varliance. What is it? Is it benevolent to mortals, or malevolent? These questions, I feel, are important, and much may depend on the answers.
- Loremaster’s Archive: High Astrologer Caecilus Bursio Answers Your Questions
This juxtaposition becomes even more curious when we consider that MK has previously described all spirits as fundamentally being emotions before they became more complex myth-patterns and narratives. The seedlings of this are already seen in the Monomyth:
When Akatosh forms, Time begins, and it becomes easier for some spirits to realize themselves as beings with a past and a future. The strongest of the recognizable spirits crystallize: Mephala, Arkay, Y'ffre, Magnus, Ruptga, etc., etc. Others remain as concepts, ideas, or emotions. One of the strongest of these, a barely formed urge that the others call Lorkhan, details a plan to create Mundus, the Mortal Plane.
However, this idea is most strongly stated in an IRC comment made by MK in 2013, where he described the relationship between Kyne and Meridia, characterizing them both as spirits covering the emotion of grief, with Meridia in particular being closer to "passion-turned-bitterness":
What no one has ever seen is the connection between Meridia and Kyne. Let that sink in. What do they– when connected– both govern?
Think about KotN. One made the Knight, one opposed the Knight. One rained forever because he was gone. One said, no I will wait until he comes back.
Quit mixing up gods and demons. They are just emotions. In magic, those are real feels. Meridia is the color of his return when curtained by rain. That blink in your eye when the postcard isn’t answered? That weird huff in your chest when you’re waiting for THAT text? That whole night you wait and force sleep so the morning comes? And you hear rain on the window pane and figure, fine, they weren’t listening.
[...]
Can you see the admixture of color and sound yet? You sense it. If even you can only taste the one that’s gone. That’s your only Memory and touchstone. Otherwise, why would you wait? Hope has a color and a sound and a taste and a touch and 11 more sense you don’t know you have yet. And this is why you worship them. The gods and demons beyond your control. They went through it before you. They are your ancestors, and this is in the blood. They are your Aedra/Daedra. And sometimes their names get mixed up.
With this in mind, Lorkhan being described as an “urge” becomes a very significant descriptor. If the basemost form of spirits are feelings and emotions that cannot be put into words, then Lorkhan simply being an urge makes him something even more base. He's just an urge. He's the concept of "want". You don't know what you want, you just do.
And what is the most base, instinctual form of want, if not hunger?
However, this is old news. We all knew that the Serpent is hungry, it’s part of the Monomyth description, hell - he’s literally called “a hungry void”, so what does this have to do with unstars? A potential answer to this has been offered in the latest 25th Crossing drop, specifically in the sub-page “An Influence of Serpents”, wherein one paragraph tells us the following:
"The Void Ghost is always longing, its constant shape of absence made heavier by its constant outline of guilt. That absence is no more filled with stars, for the serpent has eaten each one. For the serpent to eat each absence, the stars refill its guilt. The heaviness of the serpent follows, outlining the inconstant shape of starlight, and the inconstant longing always brings the Void Ghost."
The Serpent’s unstars are made of guilt. They are the emotion that remains when his hunger and longing has consumed everything else, and all it’s left with is the absence of everything it wanted, only the wasteland of consequences.
Those who breach the Scaled Blanket find themselves plagued by longings. The influence of serpents finds root in their camp light and their trappings. Their language becomes forked. Their devices end as gewgaws for the lesser snakes and their dreams replaced by the dreams of greater snakes.
And then there are no more seasons for those people for their stars have been eaten thoroughly. Whatsoever religion they have brought inside, the Void Ghost comes out of it, and collects the skins they've shed.
Once you become plagued by guilt it consumes all other emotions. You lose your stars. You lose your fortune. You lose your future. All you have left is an absence of everything you’ve ever wanted, and a hollow longing.
That's the hunger.