(3rd Person POV)
The birth of the entities later known as the Star Gods occurred at the same time as the moment of Creation itself, as they formed from the vast, insensate energies first unleashed by that churning mass of cataclysmic force. In that anarchic interweaving of matter and energy, the sea of stars began to swirl into existence, and for an aeon, the universe was nothing more than hot hydrogen gas and light elemental dust ruled over by the gravitic force of billions of newborn suns.
Long before the first planets had formed and cooled, the very first truly self-aware beings emerged into the universe, their thoughts encased within the lines of force produced by the plasma and electromagnetic flares of the stars themselves. In later times, these entities would become known as the C'tan, but early in their existence, they were nothing like the malevolent beings they would eventually become. They were little more than monstrous energy parasites that suckled upon the solar energies of the stars that had brought them into existence, shortening the lives of otherwise main-sequence stars by millions of standard years.
In time, these star vampires learned to move along the lines of the universe's electromagnetic flux, leaving their birthplaces to drift through the cosmic ether to new stellar feeding grounds and begin their cycle of stellar destruction once more. Beings of pure energy, they paid no mind to the hunks of solid matter they passed in the vacuum of space, the blazing geothermal fires and weak geomagnetic fields of these nascent planets, insufficient to be worth feeding even their ravenous hunger.
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Among the C'tan, there was one who was different from his fellow constructs. His name was Vael'Rothuun, and he was known as The Abyssal Shaper and the Dreaming Maw. He was not consumed by hunger like his fellow C'tan and didn't 'need' to consume the energy from the stars to exist. None of them did, but the rest of the C'tan seemed to think that was the case. Vael'Rothuun had another secret, which he hid perfectly; he had not always been a C'tan. Long ago, he was a human in another reality and only arrived here by chance or by the will of something ... bigger.
Vael'Rothuun didn't know where he was or what he was, and only observed. He stayed silent and watched as his brethren consumed stars after the other and grew more powerful, even if very slowly. While the C'tan could be seen as geniuses and masters of material reality, Vael'Rothuun was special among them. When he arrived in the grim dark universe, he was gifted something. A present that he would cherish and that told him what and where he was.
The Essence of the C'tan.
With it, Vael'Rothuun understood that he was now more than most reincarnators could ever hope to achieve, and yet, his fate would not be very bright. The tricks and manipulations would eventually lead to enslavement and becoming living batteries for a bitter race. That was not what Vael'Rothuun wanted. He wanted to create something for himself, to see all there was to see and experience as much as possible and with the Essence, he could do just that. There was almost nothing he couldn't do. Thanks to the Essence of the C'tan, Vael'Rothuun could create anything he set his mind to.
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(Vael'Rothuun POV)
Energy, the source of mine and my brethren's nourishment. I have come to terms with my new situation so quickly. I find that fascinating. Honestly, I find a lot of things fascinating. Time ... it has a way of becoming uninteresting if you don't age or have a way of dying. As a human, I was always thinking about the future, tomorrow, where I want to be if I grow up, and all that jazz. But now, things are different. I think about what I want to do right now.
Living in the moment is the only logical thing to do in my situation. As a C'tan, there is nothing that can make you ... 'feel' anything. That said ... at least in the beginning, it was this way. I have already started to realise that my brothers have begun to develop a hunger for energy, and their pursuit of it has become the sole purpose in some of their lives. Mephet'ran has the others believe that it is a curse and that we shouldn't do it, but all of that is a trick to stop others from growing more powerful, as he has started lately.
This leads me back to energy. As a being of force and energy and a true part of reality itself, I can grow using energy. It doesn't really matter what type of energy it is, but none of the others know that. Mephet'ran is a scheming type, but he wasn't always like this. I remember the time when he was as bland as the rest of the C'tan. But as he started to consume energy, he changed and 'gained a personality' or character, if you will.
Aza'gorod was the first to consume an entire star for its energy, and not Mephet'ran. Mephet'ran most likely just observed his brother doing it and realised the potential it brought.
My name is Vael'Rothuun, and up to this point, I haven't consumed much energy. I am going to go about this methodically and be the smart one among my brethren. The pursuit of energy has already started to change them, something that will never happen to me, thankfully. But if I consume energy, I might as well do it properly and be smart about it.
Instead of just going ahead and sucking a star dry, I have a better idea. The brightest and most extreme explosive events in the entire universe are gamma-ray bursts. The explosions are both extremely energetic; a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime, and they are very rare. Gamma-ray bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours and that is something that will feed me so much better than sucking on a ball of plasma for ages to come.
There is just one problem: they are very, very rare. It was said that there are a few per galaxy per million years, and that just won't work for me. So what will I do?
Simple, I will just forcefully create one.
The association of some long gamma-ray bursts with supernovae and the fact that their host galaxies are rapidly star-forming offer powerful evidence that long gamma-ray bursts are associated with massive stars. The most widely accepted mechanism for the origin of long-duration gamma-ray bursts is the collapsar model, in which the core of an extremely massive, low-metallicity, rapidly rotating star collapses into a black hole in the final stages of its evolution. Matter near the star's core rains down towards the centre and swirls into a high-density accretion disk. The infall of this material into a black hole drives a pair of relativistic jets out along the rotational axis, which pummel through the stellar envelope and eventually break through the stellar surface and radiate as gamma rays.
[Picture]
Whether this is or isn't true, we shall see in a moment. The thing about being a C'tan with an Essence is that my limits aren't the same as those of other C'tan. Instead of being forced to watch and consume energy simply, I can somewhat interact with reality. My options are still very limited since I am but a young C'tan.
Now, as a greedy SOB, I of course want to create an Ultra-long gamma-ray burst and gain the most out of it. These events are at the tail end of the long gamma-ray burst duration distribution, lasting more than 10,000 seconds. They have been proposed to form a separate class, caused by the collapse of a blue supergiant star, a tidal disruption event or a newborn magnetar. A magnetar is a type of neutron star with a mighty magnetic field.
So let's start with one of those.
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I locate two giant newborn magnetars who are quite far away from one another. By controlling the fundamental forces, I start to slowly rotate the two around each other and get them closer. This feels like the best way to go about it for some reason. I use my power more and more and have them get closer and closer until they are right next to each other. They rotate faster and faster and then begin ripping each other apart. They focus on one spot and rapidly collapse to form a black hole.
Massive energy is released during the collapse along the axis of rotation to form a gamma-ray burst. As it happens, I start to suck in all of the energy and consume it in ginormous quantities. Nothing is wasted, and everything enters my form, filling me with more and more energy and power. This goes on for a long time, and when it finishes, I feel as if I have completed a marathon. It is a massive rush and feels amazing.
Thankfully, I will never grow dependent on this and can stop whenever I wish. On another note, it does feel amazing. I can feel the energy fuelling me and making me stronger. Everything about myself has been enhanced, and I feel my grip over reality tighten. Oooh, that is indeed a good feeling, growing stronger like this ... I could get used to it. Well, on to the next one, I suppose. Since the others don't realise how to get more energy like I just did, I will take advantage of it. And there are more ideas I have come up with.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy
That's right. Like ordinary matter, dark matter takes up space and holds mass. But it doesn't reflect, absorb, or radiate light – at least not enough for us to detect yet.
While scientists have measured that dark matter makes up about 27% of the cosmos, they weren't sure what it is. Theories included several kinds of as-then-unidentified types of particles that rarely interact with normal matter.
Astronomers didn't even know dark matter existed until the 20th century. In the 1930s, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky coined the term while studying the Coma galaxy cluster, which contains more than 1,000 galaxies. The speed at which galaxies within a galaxy cluster move depends on the cluster's total mass and size. Zwicky noticed that galaxies in the Coma cluster were moving faster than could be explained by the amount of matter astronomers could see there.
It wasn't until the 1970s that U.S. astronomer Vera Rubin confirmed the existence of dark matter by studying how individual galaxies rotated. She and her colleagues found that individual galaxies may contain invisible mass made of dark matter.
Scientists today think dark matter exists in a vast, web-like structure that winds through the whole universe – a gravitational scaffold that attracts most of the cosmos' normal matter. They've determined that dark matter isn't composed of known particles of matter because the universe would look very different if it were. The search for what makes up dark matter continues.
This leads to Dark Energy.
In my past life, it was theorised that Dark energy may compose roughly 68% of the universe, but scientists knew even less about it than they do about dark matter. But something like dark energy must exist to explain the universe's accelerating expansion.
Since the late 1920s, astronomers have known that the universe is expanding. In the 1990s, observations of distant star explosions, called supernovae, showed that the universe expanded more slowly in the past than it does now. The reason for this remains unclear, but the leading explanation is that the universe contains something that has a repulsive gravitational effect – it pushes the universe apart instead of pulling it back together. This phenomenon is called dark energy.
So while Dark Matter is interesting maybe for later usage, when I have a physical body to work with, right now, it is Dark Energy that holds all of my attention. If I could find a way to consume Dark Energy, it would grant me a limitless energy source where I could grow more powerful endlessly and therefore would be unbeatable.
Okay, hold on. I should probably slow down here because I am not even millennia old and am already planning to become seriously broken, although theoretically, I already am. Yeah.
Eh, it'll be fine. I am physically incapable of becoming addicted to something, so that is good. I can go ahead and research it and find a way to harness and consume Dark Energy.
Well, let's get started.