46. The Diablo Armament
Dalriada - Final Boss Chest
Creator: Unknown
Eikons were perhaps one of the greatest threats to the Allagan Empire, and the Allagans devoted a great deal of their resources to two primary means of combating them. The first were warmachina akin to the Ultima Weapon, designed to feed on the very life force of the Eikons they were built to destroy. The second were biological weapons resembling the recently unearthed Diablo Armament, designed to harness the power of entities from the void.
The Allagans had long believed the voidsent could make for powerful thralls. However, there were two key obstacles to their weaponization.
Firstly, there was the matter of preparing a suitable host. The strength of the voidsent one may summon is largely dictated by the vessel it will occupy. The entity that might inhabit the corpse of a coeurl, for example, would be several orders of magnitude weaker than one inhabiting the corpse of a behemoth.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, was the unpredictable nature of voidsent and their need to feast on aether. A binding spell could be cast at the time of their summoning to subjugate them, but the efficacy of these incantations drops significantly when employed against the higher echelons of voidsent.
In short, the Allagans required immeasurably powerful hosts and an equally potent means of binding these creatures to their will. Neither could be obtained through natural means, and so, as one might expect, the Allagans turned to science for solutions.
In the end, they chose to use genetically augmented components to create what they believed to be the perfect host, paired with the restraints used to imprison Meracydian dragons.
The weapon discovered in Zadnor was in all likelihood an interim vessel for Diabolos, a demonic voidsent believed to occupy the second rung of the voidal hierarchy. It would not be easily summoned, much less bound, and so researchers speculate it could not have been encountered until after Emperor Xande formed the pact which opened a gateway to the World of Darkness. Moreover, it is quite possible the ancient Allags intended to unleash this chimerical monstrosity upon the fledgling nation of Bozja to test its capabilities.
Though we but glimpsed its power, it appears the Allagans succeeded in creating a formidable addition to their arsenal, perhaps even comparable to the Ultima Weapon. It remains to be seen if more such weapons lie buried beneath the plateaus of Zadnor.