The Monitor

The Monitor is the third of the Triarchs and the eldest of the Primordial Ones alongside the Source and the Greater Darkness. Whereas they personify creation and entropy, light and dark, the Monitor personifies balance as the living embodiment of universal equilibrium and cosmic awareness.

The Monitor has been known by many names and epithets. To some, it is the Watcher Eternal, the Preserver, and to the Maltusians, it was Archor the Sustainer.

The Monitor’s original origin was as a being that awoke one day on one of the moons of Oa. The Morrison Cycle has portrayed the Monitors as an entire race who personify separate universes; Scott Snyder’s Dark Metal work extends this even further. My thesis is that the Monitor is the actor behind agents like Destiny, Harbinger, and possibly even Metron. I include him here as he sits perfectly between the Source and Void.

Nature

Between the alpha of the Source and the omega of the Void is the Monitor. The Monitor does not define the Universe as the Source does, nor does it seek to ignore it like the Great Darkness. It is the observer-eternal of things inside this Universe. The Monitor exists at a primordial higher level as the Over Monitor or Monitor Superior and as a more incarnate avatar known as the Monitor Incarnate, Mar Novu.

Monitor Superior’s very essence resonates with the cosmic heartbeat of the Source and the anti-heartbeat of the Greater Darkness. The Monitor perceives, records, and balances the forces that shape existence with each cosmic heartbeat. This is its true universal consciousness that transcends our understanding. The Monitor Superior perceives all of all space and many possible timelines simultaneously. While aware of the intricate connections between past, present, and future, it does not intervene directly in the affairs of reality, for its very nature is that of observer and balancer.

In times of great cosmic crisis, the Monitor Superior may manifest aspects of itself – guardians, scribes, or harbingers – to subtly guide events back towards balance. The greatest of these is its own avatar, the Monitor Incarnate. Of the Triarch, it is only the Monitor who has ever incarnated physically.

To behold the Monitor Superior is to see the universe beholding itself, an endless recursion of awareness that threatens to overwhelm mortal minds. Conversely, the Monitor Incarnate appears to have chosen its form in order not to overwhelm such minds. He still has a commanding presence and a formidable intellect, but is also wise and patient. The mystery of the Monitor Incarnate continues to captivate seekers of knowledge across countless realities. Few have found his satellite fortress, even fewer are invited into his presence. Inside is a vast cosmic library, storing the knowledge of all that has been, and that is.

History

During the First World, the First Age of the Universe, which occurred shortly after the Big Bang, primordial ripples in the Platonic Field — self-emerging thoughts and ideas — could, if they were of sufficient amplitude or underwent superposition with other similar fluctuations, become self-sustaining. The new autonomous thought forms represented the first life in the Universe, titanic intelligences which literally thought themselves into existence.

The first of these beings to emerge were the twin entities known as the Source and the Void. The Source’s first pulse of awareness sent ripples through the primordial void, transforming chaos into order. In response, the Greater Darkness’s anti-heartbeat stilled the runaway order. Their confluence caused their younger sibling, the Monitor Superior, to come into existence. Its presence was a moderating influence on the other two, balancing their influence.

During the Second World, the age of the immortal races, the Monitor Superior became aware of universes beyond our own and the others of its kind across the Multiverse. In response to this, the Monitor sought to understand its own individuality as distinct from the others of Monitor-kind. For this reason, it created an avatar called the Monitor Incarnate.

This avatar took on the name Mar Novu, the Monitor of Universe-One, and created a great satellite watchtower from where he could view all of creation. From here, he dispatched his heralds, the Harbingers, to either deliver disaster-averting prophecies or to collect information and testimony from places he could not go.

The Monitors from across the Multiverse gathered on the world of Nil in the Overvoid, a created pocket in the Bleed where they developed a sophisticated culture and technology of their own. This new race, Monitor-kind, came to view themselves as a product of the Overvoid and its entanglement with its constituent worlds. To them, the Overvoid itself is conscious, and Monitor-kind are its attempt to understand itself.

As the worlds of the Multiverse diverged, so did the personalities and aspects of their Monitors. This defined the relationships between them. Mar Novu was one of the eldest of his kind and a respected statesman; he was one of the few of his kind to form a close bond with another of his kind, Wox Querm, the Monitor of Universe-Two. Between them, they begat a son known as Dax Novu.

Novu’s greatest rivalry was with that of the Monitor of Universe-Three, Mobius. Universe-Three was a dark reflection of Universe-One where the Greater Darkness outdominated the Source and where anti-matter rather than matter dominated. Mobius was an engineer who sought to master the secrets of anti-life and to rule rather than monitor his own Universe. Eventually, Mar Novu and Mobius fought in an epic battle that left them both drained and virtually lifeless.

Mar Novu was almost killed and was left in a deep regenerative hibernation sleep within his satellite watchtower. In his stead, his son, Dax Novu, steps up to become the incarnate monitor for his father’s universe, but only until his eventual fall and imprisonment on Nil.

Servants and relics

The Monitor’s Watchtower

The Monitor’s Watchtower is a broadly spherical space station comprised of hundreds of levels of archives, computer databanks, and vaults. Heroes and adventurers are only summoned to the Watchtower in dire emergencies. When summoned, they will most likely gather in the large central viewing gallery with its massive circular view port.