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Maralel, the First Castoff is the oldest of the Changing God's discarded bodies and a major character in Torment: Tides of Numenera.
Background[ | ]
The oldest of the Changing God's castoffs, the First met her sire centuries ago, after a brutal encounter with the Sorrow, which literally burned her skin away. Unable to regenerate her flesh like Castoffs normally can, she took to wearing a mask and concealing her body. Her goal was to find the Changing God and either heal her flesh or gain a new body for herself. She succeeded in her task, and the pair traveled across the Ninth World for years, seeking truths and secrets. However, aid was not coming and when the First's body began to rot away, she confronted the Changing God and asked for him to transfer her consciousness.
Instead, he gave her embalming fluid and told her to make do with what she had. The confrontation and the resulting fight made her realized that the God hid much greater truths from her, and when she demanded he share the knowledge, he simply turned his back. The personal conflict escalated fast, steadily growing into a skirmish, then a battle, and eventually a violent war across the Ninth World, as both the Changing God and the First Castoff pulled their friends allies into the conflagration. The castoff community split, some siding with the Changing God and trusting in him to have a plan to stop the Sorrow or simply being loyal to their sire. Others fought for the First, believing that she stood for castoff interests against a man who proved consistently to be only loyal to himself.
The First was second only to the Sorrow in the danger she posed to the Changing God. Much to his horror, when he marshaled his entire forces to destroy her and her faction, he discovered that she possessed a Reconciler of the Truth, a reality splitter that allowed her to split reality and recombine it at will. Whenever he launched a successful, overwhelming attack, she simply replaced reality with one where it didn't occur or failed, and then collapsed the two together into a single state. She used it twice per day, steadily gaining ground in the war and pushing towards the Changing God's headquarters.
Unable to counter her, the Changing God sought a response - and eventually found it. The Heaven's Rejoinder was an ancient device the God repaired to full functionality, unleashing its power against the First, creating the Endless Battle. The two devices tear reality apart, rolling and twining around each other, merging, then splitting again, creating a chaotic, multi-layered war fought across endless realities both overtly and covertly. About a century before the The Last Castoff emerged, the Changing God managed to gain the upper hand by a mere accident: The First was battling the Sand Knights, while her lieutenant, Paj Rakken, attacked one of their key fortresses. He overcame its defenses at the same moment the First was torn apart by a lucky energy strike; Rekken was not aware of that and quickly snapped the realities together to cement his victory, apparently sealing the First's fate.
The Changing God assumed victory and retired to his biological moon above the battle, which safely stored his consciousness for much of the conflict. Despite the God and the First disappearing, the Battle continued on, driven by the ideologies of the participants: Transparency, equality, and the common good on the First’s side, and for duty, devotion, honor, and the hope of winning the Changing God’s trust on the other. It became a giant crucible of heroes and veterans, where centuries of wealth and investments pay endless dividends, for warriors, mercenaries, and the supply trains that form in any conflict, supplying weapons, food, flesh, and other materiel. None are interested in seeing the war end and so the geographically small area where the war is fought remains a horrifically scarred stretch of the Night World, where all methods of waging war mix.
But what happened to the First?
Interactions[ | ]
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This character is involved in quests. |
Quests involved[ | ]
- Into the Depths: As expected from a game predicated on secrets, machinations, plots, and backstabbing, the First Castoff actually survived her death in the Endless Battle and assumed the mantle of the Memovira of Bloom. The giant entity is well aware of her true identity and reveals it to the Last Castoff, which sets in motion the events of the endgame.
- The Right To Exist: The First is a pivotal part of the story of the endgame and is confronted by the Resonance Chamber. She can be permitted to use it, which means you'll confront her at full power, or fought. Eventually, you'll decide her fate and those of the Castoffs at The Resonance, which includes potentially drawing all the Castoffs into herself - and then setting her to fix the world she broke.
Other interactions[ | ]
- The Frictionless Merecaster reveals that Maralel deliberately let the Sorrow into Miel Avest to foil the Changing God's plans.
Gallery[ | ]
Statuette of the First Castoff
First Castoff Concept Art, by David Pursley, from the Endless Battle update
Mural by Jonathan Gwyn
