Editing Eden (section)

==History==
===Background===
The [[Entity|Entities]] first arose on a grey, silty world, which they destroyed and rode the explosion out to new worlds.<ref>In the beginning, a species chokes their gray planet. Here and there, landmasses appear, created by inhabitants to trap or uncover the scarce food that exists, but the landscape is largely liquid, water thick with silt and other particles. The creatures worm in and around one another, and the planet has as much space taken up by the creatures as there is space left for other things. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref> The early ancestor of The Warrior first landed on a world with caustic acid rain, filled with plant life, as did another Entity.<ref>But others made contact with other worlds.<br><br>A world with life rooted in landmasses, weathering brutal storms of caustic acid. The one who arrives on that world struggles to find a means of survival.<br><br>It finds refuge in one of the dying plant structures, provides ambient heat to nourish it, so that the openings might close up and the shelter be made more secure. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref> The two parasitized the plant life to survive and reproduce, and experimented, using their abilities to nourish and protect the plants and seeing which ones survived.<ref>It encounters another. A later arrival to the same planet, a member of its own species, another that is multiplying and consuming and growing. This new arrival chose a different means of survival, but it too chose a kind of parasitism.<br><br>They exchange shards where they meet. In these shards are codified memories, as well as the most effective techniques they have observed.<br><br>The planetoid is small, the range of options limited. A message is broadcast. Mutual agreement. They will move on.<br><br>
''Migration.'' - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref>

The two devoured the plants and took back their shards, forming once again into two singular entities. The second entity suggested to the ancestor that the two attack each other, in small, measured ways, and then recombine their shards and attack each other again so that they might find the combinations that survived and discard the rest.<ref>But something else occurs. A broadcast from the other, followed by an attack.<br><br>A carefully measured attack. The two creatures ruin one another with friction and pressure, burning hot, and shards are destroyed. Many are partially destroyed.<br><br>The other creature joins shards together into combinations, discards and destroys. Repeats the process.<br><br>New shards are created. Different functions. Forced mutation. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref> After experimenting like that as well for a time, they destroyed that world as well, sending out countless fragments of themselves to other worlds.

The Warrior's ancestor landed on a world with advanced technology. The entities learned of gravity-warping technology, and were studied in turn by the species. Some of them sought to rule; those they had bonded with lost the war, and the entities were rooted out. They formed three larger Entities, who destroyed the planet and fled, offspring scattering in every direction. This time, they controlled their paths with gravity and warped space.<ref>The next world encountered has sentient life, civilization. A complicated, rich world.<br><br>It is a symbiosis, this time, more than parasitism. The two species learn from one another. The shards code the 'technology' of this new species into their memories. They learn of warping space and gravity.<br><br>[...]<br><br>The cycle is cut short by a forced exit, as the shards are rooted out and destroyed by the natives of this civilized world. They meet, they bind and again they share ideas. Richer perceptions, complex technologies and more are fashioned in the unity of three larger creatures. It is through differences in the greater entities that a richness is created, new derivations, new connections that none would be capable of on their own.<br><br>The planet is expended, the offspring are cast off in every direction once again.<br><br>This time, they are capable of moving, of controlling their course. Gravity, warping space. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref>

The cycle repeated over three thousand times, and they grew more powerful each time. At some point, The Warrior's ancestors divided themselves into two entities, [[Warrior Entity|Warrior]] and Thinker, who would travel in pairs together. Each had slightly different attitudes and capabilities, so that they could compare different ways of doing things.<ref>After more than three thousand cycles, there are safeguards, there are protections. The arsenal of abilities, powers and protections the creature possesses have been built up. The entity remembers past failures and has adapted so they will not happen again.<br><br>The entities travel with partners now, moving in spirals while maintaining a measured distance from one another. Each is slightly different from the other, taking on a different role. Attacker and defender, warrior and thinker, builder and destroyer.<br><br>This divide is so they are able to take a different stance, shape their shards in subtle ways and clarify the results when their shards are compared and joined once again – some shall be kept, others discarded. Some will turn up interesting possibilities that can be explored when new shards are invented at the cycle's end. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref>

===Approaching Earth===
As Eden began to approach Earth, she drew towards Scion before they began to pick out various sub-worlds for themselves and their shards. She felt that Scion's constant communications were distracting as she was using her powers to begin mapping out their actions after their arrival. She started to reform herself for a deeper simulation when she noticed a third broadcast. Recognizing that it was a broadcast from another Entity, Eden hesitated before sending a broadcast signaling her location.

The third Entity sent a garbled reply and Eden spent time analyzing it. She was then met by the [[Abaddon|third Entity]] who rammed against her in an ancient tradition meant to exchange shards. She worked to salvage key shards and give ones she could afford to lose on to the other Entity. Eden and the third Entity broke apart before Scion broadcasted his concern.<ref name="I26 1">The lesser one crossed paths with the entity's counterpart. For a duration, they intertwined, meeting through multiple realities, their bodies rubbing and crushing against one another.<br><br>A sharing of details, a wealth of knowledge, from hundreds of cycles. A sacrifice of the same.<br><br>The lesser one moves on, bloated with new shards and knowledge, but the counterpart flounders.<br><br>It sacrificed too much.<br><br>''Concern.''<br><br>''Confident.''<br><br>The counterpart is not worried. The signal carries notes of hope for the future. The counterpart will replenish its shards, its stores of knowledge, memories and abilities at the conclusion of this cycle, reuniting with the entity. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref>

Eden sent a confident response back and allowed Scion to take over some of her duties before she looked through her new shards.<ref name="I26 1"/> After looking through them, she began to form a simulacrum of the host species, set out criteria for an [[List of Possible Futures#Eden's Perfect World|optimal future]], and then looked for a future that matched that optimal future.<ref name="I29 1"/>

Scion interrupts the simulation, asking about their destination, and Eden absently agrees. She thinks on the future she had seen and starts to refine it. She reorganizes herself as she approaches their destination and sends Scion a confident reply when he expresses concern. Eden continues to work on her reorganization until she hits the ground.<ref name="I29 2">The gravity of the planetary bodies pull at it. It loses great clumps of shards.<br><br>It loses more. Its focus is now on holding on to the shards critical to making this future it has seen a reality. A world perpetually in conflict, the groups and factions kept small enough that none can challenge it.<br><br>All energy it can spare goes towards the reorganization. Shards must be discarded, or it will dwarf the destination planet. It casts shards off, and it retains shards that will allow it to draw power from those shards.<br><br>''Danger'', the Warrior broadcasts.<br><br>''Confident'', this entity responds.<br><br>It picks a reality. Up until the moment it hits ground, it works to reorganize itself. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref>

On the way down, Eden alters one of the third Entities' shards, replacing her own ability to find the optimal future. She realizes that she has made a mistake too late to fix it, and hits the ground hard at one world's version of [[Wikipedia:Ivory Coast|Cote D'ivoire, Africa]].<ref>In the doing, it alters one of the third entity's powers, replacing its own ability to find the optimal future.<br><br>In that very instant, it recognizes that it has made a grave error. The simulated world and the glimpse of the optimal future are already gone from its grasp. Too late.<br><br>The perspective changes, breaking away, distant, confused, detached. The impact was too hard. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref><ref>Cote D'ivoire, early 1980s, alternate earth with doors to Contessa's world and to Doctor Mother's. They limited access to the doors and later built the complex around her. - [https://redd.it/4plwx6 Wildbow's comment on Reddit]</ref>

Later, Eden starts to pull herself together. She starts to experiment as she works to create a humanoid avatar. After some time, she raises her head and opened her eyes to see [[Contessa|Fortuna]] standing before her. She realizes that Fortuna possessed the shard she had discarded and restricts it - rendering her and others like her immune to the shard's future-seeing power.<ref>And the gray fog descended on her mind, blinding her. A barrier, a blind spot, a future she could no longer see. Had it set the limitation more firmly in place?<br><br>The godling smiled. It ''knew'', because the power she was using was the same power it had used to glimpse the future, to find that ''particular'' future where it had the world divided, drowned in conflict.<br><br>As far as the godling was concerned, she was blind, as helpless as anyone else. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref> Eden then dismissed Fortuna before it continued to create her avatar and bent over.

[[Doctor Mother|A woman]] would help [[Contessa|Fortuna]] drive a knife into the avatar's neck, causing the [[entity]] to struggle and fail to form its body.<ref>The woman behind her took hold of the fist that held the knife. She stepped forward, driving the knife down, as if she were an extension of Fortuna.<br><br>Plunging into the spot where the spine met the skull.<br><br>They fell from the hand, dangled for a moment by their grip on the knife. It cut free, and they dropped to the ground.<br><br>Fortuna let one leg fold, pushing at the ground with the other. She rolled, breaking the fall. The woman fell a little harder.<br><br>The entity moved, and everything around them stirred. A thousand hands, a thousand arms, not all attached to the hands, legs, feet, ears, eyes, faces without features, expanses of skin, they twitched and writhed.<br><br>The noise around them faded, the heartbeats going still, the breathing quieting. The movements all around them stopped. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref> Severing this connection when Eden was most vulnerable dealt the critical blow to the entity.<ref name="29.x eConnectionCut"/>

===Legacy===
Eden did not immediately die; she was effectively left in a coma.<ref name="29.x eConnectionCut">There was only the ''thing'', hanging in mid-air, struggling to form itself and failing. It breathed in rapid huffs, in obvious pain.<br><br>It wasn't dead, but it wasn't alive. A connection had been severed in a moment where the godling was most vulnerable.<br><br>The woman spoke.<br><br>"Again? The heart?"<br><br>But Fortuna was sure this was it. They'd carried out the last step. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref> As she was in an interim state where she had not distributed or discarded nearly enough of her powers, [[Cauldron]] could harvest her body as a source of [[Cauldron Vial|serums]] to give people powers by connecting them to Eden's [[shard]]s.<ref>Ten vials, to start. Five hours to prepare each vial. To saw off the body part, to find a way to break it down, then to package it. Each vial correlated with a specific map coordinate and they took photos to record every step of the way, to ensure no clue was missed.<br><br>Then they'd found ten patients, who had downed vials in separate rooms. People who'd been terminally ill.<br><br>Six made it out.<br><br>Contessa watched them, saw the beaming smiles on five faces. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref> By 1982, this harvesting process truly killed Eden<ref>"I can. I've been thinking about it. What is the key thing about the one we killed?"<br>[...]<br>"I felt the hostility. I felt how the one we killed, in the vision it had of the future, it almost enjoyed doing what it was doing. If the golden one is similar at all, then all it takes is an accident."<br>[...]<br>"So our solution... it's going to take one of two forms. Either we break him, somehow, or we find something we can use in the broken parts of the one we killed."<br><br>"Feeding it to people." - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref> as Cauldron took away the powers she needed to survive.<ref>"''He's killing it''."<br><br>"It's already dead," the Number Man said.<br><br>"''He's killing it deader,''" I said.<br><br>"Granted," the Number Man said. He sighed. "There's nothing left in it. She took powers it had probably planned to give to others, distilled them. Then she dug in other places, and she took powers it needed to subsist. It died and went still." - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/venom-29-8/ Excerpt] from [[Venom 29.8]]</ref>

Although the Thinker focused on holding its [[shard]]s in reserve<ref>They are more engaged now, as they close the distance. They negotiate who can place shards where, and this entity now holds its shards in reserve.<br><br>The Warrior is focusing on refining the shards, and this entity is, in turn, focused on refining the future. A set goal, a reality.<br><br>Too complex to convey to the other. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/interlude-29/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 29]]</ref> to deploy them as needed to make the [[List of Possible Futures#Eden's Perfect World|optimal future]] a reality, the [[entity]] did discard some shards to avoid dwarfing the planet upon arrival.<ref name="29.x eOptimalDeploy"/><ref name="I29 2"/> In 1982, [[Scion]] initially destroyed many of these shards on sight as they were [[Shard#Dead & Damaged Shards|dead]] and would fail to provide usable results.<ref>It can see its shards showering down from above like meteors traveling the void. The first to arrive.<br><br>It can see the shards of the counterpart.<br><br>Not all are intact.<br><br>Dead shards. Damaged ones. Vital shards, even, going to hosts.<br><br>The entity destroys these on sight. They are corrupt, ruined. They will fail to provide usable results. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref> However, he soon stopped bothering once he found out that his partner was truly dead;<ref>Extending its perception over the world and other realities, the entity can sense everything at once. It can sense conflict. Wars.<br><br>It remains aware of its limited lifespan. Three thousand and six hundred revolutions. To search like this costs a tenth of one revolution's time. There is more than enough remaining before the cycle concludes.<br><br>Or there ''should'' be.<br><br>The entity abandons the search. Enough information has been obtained for it to know.<br><br>The counterpart is dead. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref> his partner's death left him emotionally crushed and deeply depressed.<ref>In seeking to understand the host creatures, the entity had coded shards to emulate them. It is those same shards that experience the entity's first ever emotion.<br><br>''Crushed''.<br><br>The entity comes to experience a deep, profound sadness, for the very first time. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref> Thus, it is possible for the rare [[natural trigger]] to have an Eden shard, such as [[Vikare]]<ref>The entity sees a shard already taking root in one of the vehicle's passengers. One of the dead shards, damaged. The entity's vision allows it to see the man's inside, the damage. He is dying of a systemic issue in his body, producing the wrong type of cells in the wrong places.<br><br>The entity reaches out, feels others touch his hand before the male finally makes contact. A simple wavelength serves to kill specific cells.<br><br>The shard will grow now, damaged as it is. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref> and [[Leet]].<ref>'''Wildbow:''' Some shards are damaged. Or 'dead'. Which isn't saying he's Cauldron.<br><br>But I've digressed/derailed enough. Bob's thread. No more on that subject. - Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref><!--https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/32822594--> [[Valkyrie]] notes that some of these triggers had shards with a more malicious design intended to break their hosts; an example is the man forced to create [[the Tower]].<ref name="II9.i eScholar"/>

===[[Gold Morning]]===
[[Scion]] found her body; [[Taylor Hebert|Taylor]] speculated he used his precognition ability to find a world where he would find his partner, unaware that she was harvested for powers.<ref>"And Scion?"<br><br>"''Scion's occupied,''" I said.<br><br>Scion was cupping the face of his counterpart. The figure, no doubt grey skinned as the body parts that made up this area, was slack jawed.<br><br>''He looked for futures where he'd find his counterpart'', I thought. ''This was one of them... just not what he wanted or expected. Probably not even something he thought was possible''. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/venom-29-8/ Excerpt] from [[Venom 29.8]]</ref> He began destroying her body; however, the [[PRT]] Strike team led by Taylor was able to use the body one more time to psychologically wound him.<ref name="29.8">"''Sveta''," I said. "''Now''."<br><br>She anchored herself on three different areas. Then she grabbed the burning corpse.<br><br>She flung it at Scion.<br><br>''Can't hurt him physically''.<br><br>Maybe emotionally.<br><br>He reeled, perhaps a little stunned. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/venom-29-8/ Excerpt] from [[Venom 29.8]]</ref> Throughout Gold Morning, the human forces repeatedly used several other imitations of Eden's body to torment Scion.