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History[]
First Life[]
| “ | You know you're smarter than gamers who beat you regularly. You lose games you should win, not deliberately, but stubbornly. You're playing the game at a different level. Not trying to win, trying to win with kindness. Altruism. | „ |
| ~ Lackofa, explaining his decision to sponsor Toomin |
Unknown to all but one of his allies, the godlike being known as the Ellimist began life as an unassuming member of an obscure species known as the Ketrans. Like others of his kind, he grew up providing lift for one of the many crystals that floated above the volcanic surface of the planet Ket; it was in these floating geodes that the Ketrans lived and worked, and it was one of the newer landmasses known as the Equatorial High Crystal in which the future Ellimist was born. Officially titled Azure Level, Seven Spar, Extension Two, Down-Messenger, Forty-one (his address at the Crystal), he chose Toomin as his personal name - and as with other Ketrans, he did so simply because he liked the sound of the word.
As a young adult "juvie," Toomin was intelligent but lazy: instead of pursuing a specialty, he opted to generalize in the sciences; instead of openly seeking out career advancement, he was content simply provide lift to the Crystal like others of his kind, his free time being spent playing games with his friends (most prominently Aguella, who he'd been secretly carrying a torch for). As a result, he began to stagnate even as his neighbor Lackofa successfully achieved the rank of Third Biologist aboard the Mapping Crystal Quadrant Three, an experimental spacecraft built for pioneering expeditions into zero space.
Out of all the games he enjoyed with his fellow Ketrans, Alien Civilizations was his favorite: a sophisticated Uninet simulator, the aim of the game was to further the development of a sentient species through subtle alterations to their environments, though more radical players insisted on finding a way to directly involve themselves in the simulated cultures. In was in this game that Toomin first took on the name Elimist as a gamer's handle, once again simply because it sounded good to him, totally unaware of how famous his alias would eventually become. However, Toomin was not a successful gamer: out of nine hundred and nine registered players, he was ranked 194 by the end of his time on the Crystal, and lost so consistently that it became a running gag among his friends. Ultimately, his failures were not due to any failure to grasp the game's mechanics, but his refusal to discard his idealism: he insisted on inspiring the simulated races to innovate as a culture and seek peace, a habit that frequently got him beaten by more underhanded challengers.
It was just as Toomin was beginning to take his life a bit more seriously that he found himself unexpectedly selected as a non-essential crewman aboard the MCQ3. His sponsor was none other than Lackofa; as the sarcastic Ketran later revealed, he'd chosen his neighbor not merely because of his intelligence, but because of his stubborn devotion to altruism and his refusal to back down. He even claimed that Toomin filled the one vacancy on the crew roster, for among an entire shipful of brilliant scientists, engineers and pilots, the one they didn't have was a brilliant loser.
More ominously, though, it was soon revealed that the goal of the MCQ3 was not exploration, but a mission for peace: a race called the Capasins had destroyed some of their deep-space probes, and was believed to regard the Ketrans as a threat. As such, the ship's mission was to meet with the Capasins and find a way of ensuring peace between the two races. At the time, it was believed that this mysterious race knew nothing of Ket's location, so while he waited for the mission to begin, Toomin busied himself with training and preparations under the supervision of Fifth Technician Jicklet.
Then one day, a Capasin ship arrived on Ket and attacked the Equatorial High Crystal, destroying it entirely and killing almost the entire population. The only survivors were those who were close enough to the MCQ3 to escape in time, including Toomin, Aguella, Jicklet, Lackofa. However, the Capasins continued their assault on the MCQ3, forcing Toomin to take drastic action: snapping a six-foot length of crystal from the side of his own ship, he charged the oncoming enemy ship head-on, driving the improvised spear through the canopy, impaling the Capasin pilot through the head and killing him instantly. Through this desperate move, Toomin not only saved the lives of the crew, but was also able to secure the Capasin ship as a secondary vessel - called "The Crate" due to it being extremely confining by Ketran standards.
Through use of this ship, Toomin and Lackofa soon discovered that the Capasins had already destroyed twelve other crystals across Ket, resulting in the deaths of millions of innocent Ketrans. Thanks to the Crate, they were able to save Polar High Orbit Crystal before it too was destroyed, Toomin using his newly-acquired weapons to disable and destroy the enemy ship. This ruthless act was to win him both admiration and notoriety among the surviving Ketrans, most of whom adhered to a pacifistic code of conduct, and eventually won him a place of prominence in the emergency conference that followed. Here, Toomin quickly took charge of the situation, using his knowledge of gaming to puzzle out a psychological profile of their attackers, his advice being accepted by the group's lone Wise One despite his impetuousness.
Eventually, thanks to the testimonial of a Polar Ketran known as Menno, the motives behind the attack were finally revealed: Ketrans on the Polar Crystal had been bouncing signals through Zero-Space in an attempt to create a galactic communications network, and in order to test the capacity of the system, they'd gone so far as to broadcast games of Alien Civilizations. However, the Capasins had intercepted these transmissions: not understanding that the events of the games were purely simulated, they'd come to believe that the Ketrans were responsible for the genocide of countless species, and set out to exterminate what they believed was a race of murderers. Worse still, the Capasins were in no mood to even listen to the Ketran protests, much less negotiate with them. As such, the attack continued soon after, destroying the Polar Crystal and ending the last of the unique environments that had given shelter to the Ketrans.
Outnumbered by Ketran ships, Toomin ordered a full retreat in the interests of preserving what little remained of his people. Now loaded with refugees, the MCQ3 and the Crate fled the planet, managing to escape into Z-Space before the Capasins could follow. However, there were only 73 Ketrans left aboard the two ships, a population that might not be enough to rebuild the species even with the aid of genetic engineering. Nonetheless, they continued onwards, hoping that they might one day find a world on which the Ketran people could begin again...
Second Life[]
| “ | I'm a loser. They called me a brilliant loser, all winners, all winners but me: loser. But only a loser can sing the azures. Only a loser truly sees. | „ |
| ~ Toomin, singing while beating Father in a musical game |
63 years later, Toomin and the Ketrans were no closer to their goal.
By this time, the ragtag refugee ships had developed into a small but effective fleet complete with a small squadron of fighters; the MCQ3 had been modified into an armed colony ship named the Searcher, while the Crate was replaced by a landing craft known as the Explorer. The group's lone Wise One died barely thirteen years into their voyage, leaving Toomin the de facto commander of the expedition; in the years since then, his friends Lackofa and Jicklet also rose to prominence as Toomin's chief scientist and head technician, whilst Menno had become his second-in-command. Aguella and Toomin were also a couple by this time, though they chose not to have children until such time as their race had located and settled a new homeworld.
Unfortunately, by their 63rd year searching for a new world, unrest had begun to emerge within the ranks: Ketrans were specifically adapted for low-gravity worlds with dense atmospheres, and not many worlds fit the exacting specifications needed for Ketrans to thrive; none of them provided them with Crystals on which to dock. After six decades of consecutive failures, the Ketrans have begun to despair of ever finding a home again, and with the unofficial ban on siring offspring, the population was beginning to doubt their future. Some of the more radical members of the populace suggested finding a habitable planet without Crystals and simply genetically engineering their children for the new environment, but the traditionalists rejected this idea out of hand. Worse still, Menno became a rival for Toomin's control of the fleet, apparently intending to seize control of the Searcher and try to retake Ket with it. For the time being, Menno's rebellious tendencies were tolerated because of his skills as a second-in-command, but he and the captain would never trust each other.
It is at this point that the apparently unshakable routine of Toomin's life was once again interrupted when, while on a routine scan for habitable worlds, the Searcher detected something under the waters of an ocean world in the local star system. Believing that it might have been crystalline in nature, Toomin left Menno in charge of the Searcher (under the strict supervision of his third officer) and took Aguella, Lackofa and Jicklet to investigate the planet in the Explorer.
However, no sooner had they arrived, an unknown life-form attacked the Explorer and dragged them under the water. Knowing that he lacked the popular support to lead in Toomin's stead, Menno mounted a rescue mission to the planet surface, only for the mysterious attacker to swamp the Searcher with a vast tidal wave, forcing their ship underwater as well. As a result, the crews of booth ships were killed, leaving an unconscious Toomin as the last surviving Ketran in the universe; when he awoke, he found himself plugged into a vast neural network spanning the entire planet, floating in and out of illusory scenarios, condemned to remain a perpetual guest of the monster who attacked him.
Known only as Father, this monstrous being's physical body consisted solely of hideous tentacles spread out across the watery surface of the planet; Toomin and his fellow Ketrans were enmeshed in this neural web of tentacles, each one keeping the dead from decomposing and ensuring that Toomin remained alive, fed, and unaging. Of all the life-forms on the entire planet, this parasitic sponge was the only sentient being to be found, all others being dead or merely animals. Over the eons, Father had lured thousands of other explorers to their death, incorporating their corpses into its body and assimilating their knowledge. Now, having finally managed to capture live prey, Father wanted entertainment: having learned of Toomin's previous hobby as a gamer from the minds of the dead Ketrans, he called him by his game name and issued him a challenge.
For the next few decades, Toomin played along with Father's desires: having absorbed the minds of countless millions from across the galaxy, the monster was possessed of an impossibly vast library of games, from tests of reflexes to complicated contests of logic. Over the course of their time together, he challenged Toomin to all of them, using his connection to the Ketran's brain to create highly-realistic arenas in which they could duel, and usually taking the form of a fellow Ketran or one of Toomin's long-dead comrades for the duration of the exercise. Thanks to his assimilated knowledge, Father won every single game.
On numerous occasions, Toomin refused to participate, hoping that he would be unplugged from the tentacles and allowed to die. Instead, Father simply plucked him out of the illusions and forced him to look at the bodies of his loved ones floating in the water beside him. In exchange for his obedience, Toomin was allowed to live in a world of his fantasies, in which he was at home on the High Equatorial Crystal in a version of history where the Ketran genocide had never taken place: here, he enjoyed innocent games with Inidar and Wormer, watched Jicklet's rise to success, started a family with Aguella, grew old and happy, and spent his twilight years merrily reminiscing with Lackofa. However, the illusion couldn't satisfy: though incredibly detailed, the characters in these fantasies were nothing more than memories taken from the minds of the dead and made to act a certain way. They couldn't truly pass for living beings, nor could they assuage Toomin's loneliness; even his simulated children tended to vanish when he wasn't paying attention. In the end, he always returned to the games, if only because there was nothing else to do.
Eventually, Father challenged Toomin to a new game - this one a contest of music in an alien nightclub. Though Toomin lost several times, he gradually learned how to play the musical instrument he was given, and eventually improvise songs of his own using his own loneliness and sorrow as inspiration. Lacking creativity of his own, Father could only repeat songs he'd stolen from the minds of the dead, and found himself losing for the first time in decades. Shocked and angry, Father kicked Toomin out of the illusion for several years, then eventually challenged him to a different game; using the same trick as before, Toomin learned the rules and beat his opponent on the fifth try, winning every single match after that. Growing in confidence, he also beat Father at the next game he proposed - on the first try.
After being kicked out of the illusion while Father struggled to figure out what to do next, Toomin realized that he could use the neural net to access the memories of the dead in much the same way as Father - and even download them into his own mind. Assimilating hundreds of thousands of minds, he gradually ate away at Father's being until he had absorbed over half of his captor's brain. Then, once he was sure that they were on an equal footing, he challenged Father to one final game: Toomin won, assimilating every mind left in captivity and leaving Father's own primitive natural brain for last.
Third Life[]
| “ | I had been a wastrel Ketran gamer. I had been a survivor of mass destruction. I had been a Z-spaceship captain. I had been a helpless captive, forced to be a new type of gamer. I had evolved into something the galaxy had never seen before, a melding of many technologies, the minds of many civilizations, all flowing in and through a matrix of music. And now that strange resume seemed to match perfectly with a job that needed doing. I would be a peacemaker. And more: I would foster the growth and advancement of species. I would teach them the ways of peace. The massacre of my own people by the Capasins would not be repeated on any other world. Not so long as l was present! | „ |
| ~ Toomin, claiming the mantle of the Ellimist for the first time |
Now free, Toomin unplugged himself from the dying neural net and swam away, and though he was almost overwhelmed by the excess of memories now contained in his mind, he was able to take to the air. By this time, he was the only advanced life remaining on the planet: with Father dead, his previous victims were nothing more than decaying corpses, leaving the planet deserted except for wild animals. With only the countless multitude in his brain for company, Toomin scoured the silent world, eventually discovering the remains of the Searcher and the Explorer on a remote island, along with countless other ships captured by Father over the millennia. Realizing that he would need a proper receptacle for the minds in his possession, he set to work on a ship of his own, cannibalizing the downed ships for parts and using the collected knowledge he'd absorbed to guide him.
The construction took over thirty years to complete, but eventually, Toomin was able to build a technological marvel of a starship that could at once contain the minds he'd assimilated and support his now-ancient body. Incorporating himself into the internal mechanisms of the ship, he allowed it to become his new body, abandoning his need for food, water and even air: he had become a living ship - immortal, unceasing, and powerful beyond the range of most sentient beings. After a century of captivity spent alone on Father's world, he lit his engines and ascended to space. As a final dedication to all who had been lured into Father's clutches, Toomin used his body's new weapons to incinerate the planet in a Viking Funeral.
With this done with, he was free to go wherever he pleased and do whatever he wished. However, though his new body granted him a power that was virtually unmatched in the galaxy at this time, Toomin had no idea what he could do with it. With the Ketrans all extinct except for him, he had nowhere to go and no species that would accept him; even Menno's old goal of retaking Ket would have been pointless, and would have only brought him more pain in the long run. For a while, he amused himself by creating realistic simulations of people, hoping they would be enough to keep him company in his lonely journey across deep space, but it was futile - akin to talking to himself.
After many years spent wandering aimlessly across space, he unexpectedly arrived in a star system at war: two civilizations, the Inner World and Jall, were currently locked in devastating interplanetary conflict. After narrowly avoiding stray weapons fire from the two capital ships bombarding one another, Toomin decided to intervene: erecting a force field between the ships, he was able to put an end to the fighting, and though the Inners attempted to open fire on him, his new weapons were able to easily disable their engines and leave hem floating helplessly in space. For the first time in centuries, he introduced himself to fellow sentient beings, and though he was unable to broker a peace between the two races, he was able to prevent any further deaths for the time being. Recognizing that the close proximity to one another was the cause of the enmity between the Inners and the Jallians, he towed several asteroids into orbit between the two planets and broke them down into smaller, deadlier projectiles, creating an impassable minefield that would destroy any ship trying to pass through it. With the two sides now unable to wage war, he departed - now realizing that he had a purpose in life.
From then on, he traveled the galaxy in search of civilizations in need of help: societal strife, plague, famine, war - he would ensure that all threats to sentient races would be neutralized, using the power of his starship body to solve each problem in the least-intrusive ways possible. He was determined to guarantee that the massacre of the Ketrans could never happen again, and acted to ensure that freedom, knowledge and peace remained constants throughout the galaxy. Realizing that he was now playing Alien Civilizations in a very real playing field, he began to introduce himself with his old gamer title, "Ellimist." In turn, as his reputation grew, the cultures he encountered began to depict him as a benevolent spirit, until they simply called him the Ellimist.
Unfortunately, his success did not last forever. A thousand years after his crusade began, the Ellimist returned to the site of his first victory over the Inner World and Jall, and realized that he had made a terrible mistake: though no ships could make it through the asteroid field, it hadn't taken the Inners long to realize that they didn't need to attack their enemies directly, and so they had bombarded Jall with nuclear weapons from afar; though not all of the devices made it through the asteroids, enough cleared the debris field to hit their targets. As a result, the entire Jallian species was wiped out, the surface of their dead world remaining heavily irradiated over a millennia after their deaths. With no enemy to draw their aggression, the Inners descended into civil war and eventually barbarism; by the time the Ellimist had arrived, the species had technologically regressed to pre-spaceflight levels.
Just as he began to realize the depth of his failure, the Ellimist was suddenly confronted by a new arrival in space: a starship the size of a planet, it was populated by thousands of created lifeforms, all stemming from one monstrous being at the heart of the craft. Like him, this entity was a living being enmeshed in the mechanisms of his living ship, and just like him, he was a gamer. For the first time in over a thousand years, the Ellimist had finally met his equal - a techno-organic monster calling himself Crayak.
The being revealed that most of the Ellimist's exploits across the galaxy had been successful - thus inspiring Crayak to sabotage them. In one case, he'd created a parasitic plant that destroyed crops, causing a devastating famine that consumed one of the species that the Ellimist had saved, reducing them to cannibalism and eventually rendering them extinct. Here, Crayak revealed his purpose in life: whereas the Ellimist worked to save lives and keep the peace, he would work to ensure the cleansing of life for his own amusement; thus, he promised that over the course of their game together, he would erase all sentient life in the galaxy, and then he would kill the Ellimist.
Crayak's Game[]
| “ | I had gone there making sanctimonious noises about learning, never really expecting to learn anything new. And yet from these primitive, precivilized creatures l had learned how to defeat, or at least resist, Crayak. More children, some live. For every race Crayak exterminated, I would plant two new ones. | „ |
| ~ The Ellimist, reflecting on Tree's lesson |
The Ellimist soon found himself confronted by the first of his new opponent's challenges. Before him were three inhabited planets: one was home to the Capasins, one to a race of peaceful farmers called the Laga, and one to a race of technically-advanced eugenicists known as the Folk. Three asteroids had been prepared and sent on a collision course with each planet, the impact due to occur within five minutes; the Ellimist would only be able to save one of them. However, one of the asteroids had been planted with a high-yield explosive and would be vaporized before it reached its target. Thus, the Ellimist's role in the game was to save one of the planets and guess which of them had already been spared extinction. If he guessed incorrectly, he would waste his shot and condemn two planets to death.
Believing that Crayak expected him to save the Laga and abandon the Capasins due to his bias as a Ketran, the Ellimist did the opposite, destroying the Capasin-bound asteroid in the hope that the Laga would be safe. Instead, Crayak revealed that the Capasins had been the safe target all along. Though he raced to intercept the two remaining asteroid before they hit their targets, the Ellimist couldn't save the Laga, who were immediately rendered extinct by planetary collision. The Folk received only a glancing blow and thus survived, though millions of them were killed in the impact; their planet's orbit had been destabilized, however, dooming them to a fatal collision with the local sun. The Ellimist was offered a simple choice: save the last off the Folk or follow Crayak and save billions more. In the end, the Ellimist was forced to fall behind.
The game continued for millennia, with Crayak systematically purging the galaxy of life in sadistic tests of the Ellimist's will and the Ellimist struggling to keep up with him: once again unwilling to accept his opponent's shortcuts, the old gamer was reduced to saving what few survivors he could, unable to find a solution for the quandaries he'd been confronted with. Planets were destroyed, star systems went dead, and entire species were eliminated or left on the brink of extinction, all for the sake of Crayak's sick games.
In the end, the Ellimist couldn't cope with another losing contest, and fled the playing field in search of some strategy that might allow him to defeat his hated enemy. In turn, this eventually became a search for some sentient life that hadn't been annihilated by Crayak, and from there, a desperate attempt to assuage his own loneliness: after thousands of years spent as a mechanical demigod, the Ellimist wanted an organic body of his own, and with it, the chance to live among the people of the galaxy again. Eventually, he found a little-known planet with a sentient-but-primitive populace, took a few samples of genetic material from the residents, and built a secondary body for himself. With the technologies at his disposal, being in two places at once was a trivial challenge, and though he could not fit all his collected intelligence into its organic brain, he gave it just enough to replicate his personality. Soon after the Ellimist had begun to inhabit this additional home for his consciousness, he sent it down to the planet's surface to walk among the natives - who he called "Andalites."
Initially met with hostility and distrust, he soon became accepted into a local tribe by slaying a predator endangering them. With that out of the way, the Ellimist could simply go about his life as if he were any other sentient being; he refused to technologically uplift the Andalite people or share any of his technology with them, instead preferring to live among a race that had not been tampered with or influenced in any way. Nor did he attempt to set himself up a god or even a leader of the tribe; though his defeat of the monster had won him acceptance and even admiration, he did not pursue it any further, opting merely to busy himself with domestic chores. Occasionally, he would return to his ship and download his memories to his original mind, allowing his true self to experience the simple joys of friendship and peace once more.
The Ellimist eventually married a local woman named Tree and started a family with her, but their first child - Star - died in infancy of a disease that might have been curable if only the Ellimist had chosen to bring technology to the Andalites. For a time, he mourned the loss of his daughter, marveling at the simple fact that the loss of someone he'd barely known could have brought his more pain than the death of his entire race. Soon, though, Tree suggested they have another child. Incredulous, the Ellimist demanded to know what would be the point in trying to start a family when the children could so easily killed, if not by disease, then by famine or predators; Tree replied simply: "More children, some live."
Of the five children born to the Ellimist and Tree, two survived: a son, Flower, and a daughter, Grass. By the time Tree finally died of old age, Flower had become the head of the tribe, and Grass was happily married. From them, a new generation of Andalites would be born. As he buried his wife, the Ellimist decided to leave the planet at long last, and reunited with his starship body. And when he returned to his work among the stars, he did so with Tree's lesson taken very firmly to heart: for every species Crayak destroyed, the Ellimist would plant two more.
Renewed by his time in he wilderness, he began subtly terraforming planets across the galaxy, slowly making them more favorable to emerging forms of sentient life. This time, he did not reveal himself unless absolutely necessary, unobtrusively guiding the progression of his favored species through only the subtlest techniques. Because the species were usually primitive and because the Ellimist had not gifted them with any advanced technology, Crayak couldn't find them so easily, ensuring that the civilizations created through these techniques had a headstart in their efforts to advance beyond their homeworlds.
He also created a species of his own in order to act in his stead: known as the Pemalites, they were engineered to be supremely intelligent, yet entirely nonviolent, outfitted with the greatest technology the Ellimist could build for them, yet possessed of an almost canine amicability. These gentle beings were taught to keep their existence hidden for as long as possible, then scattered across the galaxy in ships of their own with the simple mission of spreading life: carrying samples of flora and fauna with them wherever they went, they cultivated new growth on even the most barren planets. Unable to catch up or track them down, Crayak soon found himself outmatched.
Eventually, the Ellimist applied Tree's lesson to his own body, growing into an entire fleet of living ships controlled by his mind. His essence was no longer limited to a single body, but instead spread out across three dozen highly-advanced starships.
Transcendence[]
| “ | I lived, and that was all I knew. I was alive without form, alive without synapses to fire, without food to devour, without limbs to control. I saw without eyes and tasted without tongue and moved with no wings or pods or engines to move me. This I knew. | „ |
| ~ Ellimist, still reeling from his transformation into an incorporeal being |
Ten thousand years after he had fled from Crayak's game, the Ellimist met his opponent once again. By this time, genocidal puppeteer had grown infuriated by the idealist's triumphs, and even more so when he'd discovered that they couldn't be so easily eradicated as his earlier successes; so he set a trap for him. However, he had seriously underestimated his foe this time: his attack would have destroyed the target entirely had he still been in a single body, but as a fleet, the Ellimist simply shrugged it off. Furthermore, in his egotism, Crayak had refused to upgrade his ship or his weapons since they'd last met; this time, the two were on an equal footing, and when Crayak realized he might actually lose the battle, he fled into z-space.
The Ellimist gave chase, bombarding Crayak's fleeing starship body with all the weapons at his disposal even as the target returned fire; eventually, Crayak managed to adapt, forcing the Ellimist to flee until he could do the same and turn the tables on his pursuer. By this time, they were no longer playing: the Ellimist wanted revenge for all the lives his foe had taken, and Crayak wanted to survive at any cost. In the struggle to annihilate one another, the two enemies drained stars of their power, flung asteroids at each other, and warped the boundaries of space itself. In the crossfire, planets were stripped of life, star systems exploded, and billions of innocent beings were obliterated as the two battled it out across the galaxy.
Eventually, Crayak set a trap: when the Ellimist next emerged from z-space, he found himself i the mouth of a Black Hole. Unable to stop in time, the frontmost half of his now-vast fleet was destroyed immediately, taking his original body with it; though he managed to save part of the fleet by directing them not to leave z-space, Crayak simply hunted down and eliminated the remaining ships one by one.
On that day, the Ellimist was destroyed. However, against all expectations, he lived on: due to a combination of z-space, the intricate web of connections forged between the fleet, and the incredible technologies that he had built his ships with, and sheer miraculous good luck, the Ellimist had transcended physical existence entirely and become a entity dwelling beyond the boundaries of space and time. Reality was his to manipulate as he wished, and by reading the interwoven strands of possibility, he could even predict the future. For all intents and purposes, the Ketran gamer had become a god.
For all his newfound power, though, the Ellimist knew that if Crayak were ever to learn of his survival and apotheosis, he would never rest until he had found a way of following in his footsteps. The odds of a successful transition from techno-organic spaceship to space-time deity were billions to one, but he had learned not to underestimate his opponent. So, as he gradually learned how to control his powers, the Ellimist remained hidden in deep space, waiting for the right moment to intervene. It took some time for him to get to grips with total immortality, and by then, millions of years had passed and his hated enemy was once again doing his level best to destroy the life that had been sown across the galaxy. Eventually, Crayak arrived in the Sol System perhaps some 65 million years before the events of the series, and attempted to destroy Earth. Seeing what could eventually emerge from this primeval world, the Ellimist used his power over space and time to render Crayak's bombardment harmless. Bewildered, Crayak retreated to consider the problem.
Some time later, Crayak was able to attain godhood as well, just as the Ellimist had expected. However, this left the two of them at an impasse: with their new powers, they couldn't be killed or even harmed, and though Crayak could easily destroy the Ellimist's creations, the ensuing fight between the two of them could only cause more collateral damage - except instead of only destroying planets and stars, the power behind this fight could destroy the entire universe along with the two of them. The Ellimist suggested that the two of them could simply observe the evolution of various species over time, but Crayak refused to remain a passive observer.
So, the Ellimist proposed a game: the two would pit their wits against one another over, each one attempting to further their own goals without directly interfering in galactic affairs. Crayak would use the violent races of the galaxy as his pawns, using them to spread death and destruction to weaker species until they, too, would be conquered and destroyed by stronger competitors - until at last, only one sentient race remained in the galaxy: his worshipers. Eventually, he hoped to dictate the laws of nature itself, a power beyond even his current abilities, and use it to destroy the being who had banished him from his galaxy. In turn, the Ellimist's role in the game would be to stop Crayak, undermining the spread of violent empires, propagating life and guaranteeing the slow, steady movement towards peace - once again, though only the subtlest and most unobtrusive methods. It would take millions of years for their goals to come to fruition, but there would eventually be a winner.
The Final Game[]
| “ | "Oh, I see it now, I see it now. Subtle as always, Ellimist. Your meddling came before, didn't it? How could we not have seen it? Elfangor's brother? His time-shifted son? This anomalous girl here? And the son of Visser One's host body? A group of six supposedly random humans that contains those four! You stacked the deck!" "Did I? That would have been very clever of me."'' |
„ |
| ~ The Drode and the Ellimist in Megamorphs IV: Back To Before |
The next moves of the game are known only in piecemeal, but it can be assumed that the Ellimist and Crayak spent the next several million years in a constant pattern of attacking and countering. As per the rules of their game, they acted only through proxies and never directly interfered if they could help it, using their powers only in the least-noticeable form.
In one move, Crayak realized the genius involved in the creation of the Pemalites and set out to create his own species of pawns to act in his stead. Known as Howlers, these monstrous beings did not comprehend that they killed, regarding the world through a lens of childlike playfulness. With them on his side, Crayak was able to wipe out countless races, and even destroy the Pemalites themselves. However, either by the Ellimist's secret intervention or simply by accident, a ship was able to escape to prehistoric Earth with a handful of survivors and the Chee - the highly-advanced androids used as friends and playmates by the Pemalites. Though the surviving Pemalites could preserve themselves or their species before they finally died, the Chee were able to incorporate their essence into dogs, allowing their exuberance to live on through man's best friend. In turn, the Chee survived on Earth in hiding - allowing them to eventually play their part in another of the Ellimist's gambits.
At some point, either the Ellimist or Crayak built a time machine and soon decided that it was simply too powerful to be used by either side. This device, known as the Time Matrix, was eventually hidden on Earth, under a pyramid. Once again, this was to play another, greater role in the next moves of the game. In turn, both the Ellimist and the Time Matrix became legendary in Andalite culture thanks to momentary appearances throughout history, and the gamer gained a reputation as an untrustworthy trickster-god for his refusal to act directly - though many of the legends mistakenly reported that the Ellimist was a race rather than a single being.
By the 1960s, Crayak was looking for another race of pawns to manipulate, and eventually found them in the form of the Yeerks. A species of parasitic slug, they could inhabit the brains of sentient beings, using stolen bodies to augment their strength; lacking senses in their true form and deprived of decent bodies on their home world, the temptation of finding new vessels at the cost of innocent lives proved too much for them. So when a representative of the now-highly-advanced Andalites chose to technologically uplift the Yeerks, they soon turned hostile and stole several ships, eventually turning them into a marauding fleet through which they could acquire new bodies to infest. Eventually, the primitive parasites became the Yeerk Empire, thus earning Crayak's subtle patronage - though none of the Yeerks ever became aware of it. In turn, the Ellimist chose to support the Andalites. However, he did not opt to put his trust solely in his old favorites, instead once again putting multiple safeguards in place.
In the 1980s, the Time Matrix was unexpectedly uncovered on Earth by a group of Skriit-Na raiders and transported into space, along with two human captives - Loren and Chapman. Eventually, the Time Matrix ended up on the Taxxon Homeworld, currently under Yeerk occupation, where a small Andalite task force including Aristh Elfangor Sirinial-Shamtul was sent to recover it. This soon became part of a galaxy-spanning adventure, during which the Yeerks became aware of humanity's potential as host bodies, the Yeerk officer known as Esplin 9466 acquired the body of War-Prince Alloran as his own, the Time Matrix was used to alter history, and eventually, Loren and Elfangor fell in love. Retiring to Earth with the Time Matrix, Elfangor hid it under a forest somewhere in North America; then, he used Andalite morphing technology to create a suitable human form and deliberately trapped himself in it. Now fully human for all intents and purposes, he married Loren and made a comfortable life for himself as a programmer alongside the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. However, his happiness abruptly ended when the Ellimist arrived on the scene.
The use of the Time Matrix had badly mangled events out of alignment: Elfangor should be in space fighting the Yeerks, becoming a hero to his people and his brother, not living on Earth as a Nothlit. So, the Ellimist informed him that without his help, the Andalites would fall to the Yeerks and humanity would follow soon after. Though reluctant to abandon his life on Earth, Elfangor allowed the Ellimist to undo the changes he'd made to history: Elfangor found himself an Andalite once again, piloting a starship into battle; Loren was married to a different man on Earth and no longer remembered him. However, the Ellimist preserved one element of the old timeline: the son Loren was pregnant with.
Eventually, the battle between the Andalites and the Yeerks came to a head above Earth in the 1990s. By now, the Yeerks had already infiltrated the planet under the leadership of Edriss 526, and were already conducting a subtle infestation of the populace; however, it was also defended by a substantial Yeerk fleet, including the Blade Ship of Esplin 9466, now known as Visser Three. As such, the Andalite dome ship Galaxy Tree was shot down, leaving its dome to crash into the Pacific Ocean, where it remained for many weeks with the lone survivor of the battle, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill - Elfangor's younger brother.
Alone and badly-wounded, Elfangor returned to Earth in the hope of unearthing the Time Matrix, only to find that the forest where he'd hidden it had been bulldozed and replaced with a derelict construction site. However, it was here that the Ellimist's manipulations paid off: a group of young teenagers happened to be walking through the site, and saw Elfangor's ship crash-land there; in desperation, Elfangor offered the five of them Andalite morphing technology, hoping that the power to morph would allow them the edge to resist the Yeerk invasion. Though he was tracked down by Visser Three and executed soon after, the resistance movement he'd fostered lived on as the Animorphs.
The Animorphs were secretly almost entirely of the Ellimist's devising: he'd secretly stacked the deck in humanity's favor so that, by chance, the best-motivated and best-equipped individuals possible were gathered together as a team: Jake Berenson, brother to a rising star in Visser Three's employ; Cassie, a secret temporal anomaly; Marco, son of the woman that Edriss 526 had claimed as a host; even Tobias, Elfangor's human son. Eventually, they were able to recruit Aximili (AKA Ax), Elfangor's brother, continuing the trend. However, there was one individual among the Animorphs that the Ellimist hadn't intended on: Rachel, Jake's cousin, was not meant to be at the construction site when Elfangor arrived. In fact, it was for this very reason that Rachel was to become a wild card both Crayak and the Ellimist as time went on...
Events Of The Series[]
| “ | Once I put you and your friends in a position to give your own former species a chance. I looked deep into the future, and found a way to help you - without using my power directly. And now, you are in a position to help the Hork-Bajir. Do they not deserve the same chance as humans? | „ |
| ~ The Ellimist to Tobias, Book #13: The Change |
The Ellimist makes his first appearance in book #7, The Stranger. Having infiltrated the hidden Yeerk Pool for a second time in cockroach morphs, five of the six Animorphs end up being slurped up by a hungry Taxxon and cannot morph back without revealing their true identities to the Controllers. However, just as they are about to be eaten, time stops and they find themselves unwillingly demorphing; also, Tobias is suddenly present and human - despite being a Nothlit trapped in the form of a Red-Tailed Hawk.
It is at this juncture that the Ellimist introduces himself, allowing Ax to provide most of the explanations. Currently pretending to be one of a species of similarly-empowered tricksters forbidden from interfering directly, he claims that the Yeerks will be victorious in their conquest of Earth, and that the only way for the human race to live on in freedom is to become a part of his sanctuary - an offworld zoo where the Animorphs and a few other human beings can live on in peace. If they refuse this bargain, the Ellimist will have no choice but to return time to normal and allow the Taxxon to eat them. However, while the group struggles to make up their minds, Jake and Rachel notice a dropshaft; as such, when they decline the offer, they have an escape route leading them out of the Yeerk Pool once they have cut their way through the Taxxon's stomach.
Soon after, the Ellimist contacts the Animorphs again with a second chance to accept his offer; this time, in order to demonstrate what will become of them if they choose to continue fighting, he sends them into the future to a time when the Yeerks dominate Earth. The planet is a desolate, polluted wasteland littered with the ruins of familiar buildings; the population is composed entirely of Controllers, the human race having been successfully enslaved long ago, and the EGS Tower has been converted into a Kandrona generator for the Yeerk pools below. They are soon confronted by Visser Three (now promoted to Visser One), accompanied by a now-adult Rachel; the two of them reveal that in this future, the Animorphs have all been infested by the Visser's lieutenant - except for Tobias, who was killed, cooked and eaten with BBQ sauce. The standoff between them ends with the Animorphs being transported back to the present, where they are asked if they will accept the Ellimist's bargain.
However, when they opt to take him up on the offer, nothing happens. At last, Rachel realizes that the Ellimist is actually on their side despite his non-interference policy, and has been secretly guiding them towards clues that might help them - first by giving them a good look at the dropshaft, then by allowing them to witness the fate of the EGS Tower. Through this, they are able to track down the main Kandrona generator back in the present and destroy it, dealing a major blow to the Yeerk invasion of Earth.
The Ellimist's next appearance takes place in book #13, The Change. Here, the Ellimist uses his powers to free two Hork-Bajir troops from captivity and lead them into the wilderness, where - by a stroke of luck too immense to be probable - they happen to meet Tobias. Noticing the Controllers following them, he realizes that he's dealing with the first two free Hork-Bajir ever encountered, and leads them to safety. With the aid of the other Animorphs, the married couple - Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak - are eventually given shelter in a cave while the team tries to find a more permanent home for them. However, Tobias soon begins inexplicably intuiting information about a valley hidden deep in the forest, far too remote for the Yeerks to find... and eventually, the Ellimist reveals his role in the plot to Tobias.
In the confrontation that follows, Tobias agrees to help lead Jara and Ket to freedom, but at a price. As a reward for being used so brazenly, he wants to be returned to human form, but he only gets as far as grumpily informing the Ellimist "you know what I want." Cheekily informing him that even Tobias doesn't know what he wants, the Ellimist promptly vanishes.
Later, after finding himself knocked out of the air and doomed to be eaten by a raccoon, Tobias is unexpectedly given his reward ahead of schedule. But instead of being made human again, his ability to morph is restored, allowing him to acquire the raccoon's DNA and escape. Later, once the pursuing Yeerks have been led to believe that Jara and Ket are dead and the two Hork-Bajir are safe at their new home in the valley, the Ellimist gives Tobias the second half of his reward: sending him back in time to a period when he was still human, he allows Tobias to acquire his own DNA, thus allowing him to become human. If he wishes, he can remain a human for more than two hours and remain a human forever, or he can carry on being a hawk with the power to morph. Tobias agrees that the Ellimist has fulfilled his end of the bargain, but cannot say if he is happy or not.
Though he makes a cameo appearance in The Andalite Chronicles, the Ellimist's next chronological appearance does not take place until #26, The Attack. Here, he unexpectedly interrupts a live-action performance of The Lion King in order to inform them of a role they must play in his latest gambit. Jake had accidentally become aware of Crayak after his infestation by a Yeerk in book #6, in which the Temrash 114's death throes allowed him to briefly see beyond space and time and see the monstrous being in person. Now, the Ellimist's opponent and the Animorphs are drawn into their first battle to decide the fate of a species known as the Iskoort: the Ellimist's six champions (along with their close ally, Erek the Chee) will be pitted against seven of Crayak's Howlers. Though reluctant to play along with another one of the enigmatic being's games, the Animorphs give their consent - and are immediately teleported across the galaxy to the Iskoort homeworld.
The clash between the two teams is immediately skewed in Crayak's favor, for the Howlers have been designed as almost-unstoppable killers, and the Animorphs barely manage to escape the first battle alive - even when only pitted against a single Howler. For good measure, Erek the Chee is programmed for nonviolence, so despite his immense strength, he can only shield the Animorphs without actually attacking the Howlers. Further attacks force the team into a grueling retreat across the Iskoort city, and the team soon begins to question why the Ellimist would bother saving a species that does so little to help them.
Eventually, it becomes clear that the Iskoort are closely related to the Yeerks - but where the latter maintain a parasitic lifestyle of stealing non-consenting bodies, the former have engineered bodies of their own and deliberately made themselves biologically dependent on them, exchanging parasitism for symbiosis. By saving the Iskoort, the Ellimist is playing a much longer game: though their homeworld lies beyond the reach of the current war between the Andalites and the Empire, he hopes that one day in the far future, Yeerks will encounter the Iskoort and realize that conquest is not the only way of achieving their goals.
Eventually, Jake is able to acquire Howler DNA and use the new morph to sabotage the Howlers' hive mind: with the aid of Erek and Iskoort memory transfer technology, he is able to upload a copy of his memories into the nearest Howler, ensuring that the information spreads along their collective intelligence. Once touched by this knowledge, the Howlers realize that their genocide of other races was not a game and cannot continue fighting. Though Crayak does his best to eliminate the infected Howlers before the memories can spread to the rest of the species, one tiny snippet of info escaped his gasp - namely that of love. Not only have the Iskoort been preserved, but Crayak's shock troops are now completely useless to him. Amused, the Ellimist returns the Animorphs to Earth once more.
The Endgame[]
| “ | "Ellimist, is there anything better in our real time line? Will it happen any better, there? Will it, at least, ever end?" The Ellimist looked at me. Just at me. Sadly, I thought. Pitying. |
„ |
| ~ Cassie to The Ellimist, Megamorphs IV: Back To Before |
The Ellimist makes only a few sparse appearance in the next books: in Megamorphs #3: Elfangor's Secret, he does not appear in person, instead agreeing to a bargain with Crayak in which they will allow the Animorphs to undo the damage done to the timeline by Visser Four's use of the Time Matrix. Even with Crayak demanding that one of the Animorphs become a sacrifice, the team is able to undo this by using the Time Matrix to make it so that the Visser's host body is never born, ensuring that the events of the book never happen.
Similarly, when Crayak and the Drode take advantage of Jake's breakdown to change the past in Megamorphs #4, the Ellimist doesn't appear until the very end: here, despite the best efforts of the Drode to rewrite history and prevent the Animorphs from meeting Elfangor, Cassie's status as a temporal anomaly allows the group to gradually slip back into their roles and begin fighting the invasion - albeit with a much higher death toll. Enraged that the Ellimist was able to stack the deck so spectacularly, he is forced to restore the timeline to normal.
For the rest of the series, the Ellimist remains hidden, even as Marco rescues his mother from Visser One, Ax grapples with his loyalty to his people, Rachel resists temptation by Crayak, Tobias suffers frequent torture, Jake creates a small army of auxiliary Animorphs, and Cassie lets the morphing cube fall into the hand of Jake's Controller brother, Tom. Eventually, the secret war is revealed to the public, and the Yeerks soon resort to open conquest - driving Jake to collaborate with Tom in order to perform a desperate last stand against the Yeerk Pool Ship. However, with Tom currently armed with the Blade ship and the power to morph, the rogue Controller is a threat that cannot be allowed to remain alive; so, Jake is forced to smuggle Rachel onto the Blade Ship in flea morph in order to eliminate his brother once he inevitably betrays them. This final act Rachel performs flawlessly, transforming into a Grizzly Bear and crushing the controller's snake morph in her jaws. Then, cornered by Tom's lieutenants and with her friends looking on via the viewscreen, she demorphs and allows the surrounding controllers to kill her.
In her final moments, however, the Ellimist appears before Rachel to comfort her. As documented in both The Ellimist Chronicles and #54: The Beginning, Rachel asks to know if all the horror of the war was worth the end result; when the Ellimist admits he cannot answer, she demands to know who he really is and why he plays such games with them. So, the Ellimist honors her final wish and confesses everything about himself to the dying Animorph, revealing that the all-powerful puppetmaster was once just a child with adult responsibilities thrust upon him - just like the Animorphs. Realizing that the rules forbid him from saving her, Rachel asks one final question: if she mattered at all. Acknowledging that she had never been one of his chosen champions, the Ellimist assures her that she was brave and good all along, and her life truly made a difference. Content with this knowledge, Rachel dies.
With the Yeerks forced into a truce with Andalites and humanity, the Ellimist has been able to score a decisive victory against Crayak. Given that the series ended soon after, it's known what the two of them did next, though it can be presumed that the Ellimist was able to continue the game with a significant advantage - perhaps enough to eventually defeat Crayak once and for all.