A Haberdasher's Nightmare: The Release and Immediate Partial Binding of Obe; Or, Call of Hathulu; Or, Gibbering, Amorphous Peg, Round Hole; Or, And For My Next Trick...
A wizard's hat is normally used for protection from the elements, storage of precious artifacts, and on occasion for determining what dorm apprentice mages will belong to.
Not so for Obe. Obe
misbehaves.
One day a magician, seeking to enhance his traveling stage show, tried to increase the already physics-bending volume of his magical wizard's hat. The non-euclidean nature of its interior was already posing a danger to local consensus reality, and the spell the mage cast risked finally causing something to go terribly, terribly wrong. It wouldn't have, of course, the mage in question was a professional, but he made the mistake of also mixing in an animation spell. And a self cleaning spell; the hat was known for getting rank while on the road. And he tried making it glow in the dark, for some reason. Those spells interacted with the space-embiggening spell, and the fact that he bit his tongue during the incantation, and the result was something with teeth and tendrils and infinite storage space. Something that ostensibly still looked like a hat.
All of the magic that had been compounded on the hat's interior broke the space between the mage's world and some place beyond the grasp of mortal sanity, allowing something to slip through. Partially, at least. It seemed as though the hodgepodge of sorcery had shattered the border between realities within the hat while at the same time resulting in a new barrier: The hat itself. The entity inside of the hat was unable to breach that infinite space. As well, it was either too big or too unfamiliar with geometry to fit its girth through the hole in which a magician's head usually fit. Extensions of its body slinked through, and the hat's unfortunate former master was the first thing they grabbed for. He was pulled inside and never seen again, leaving behind a monster-hat-thing as his legacy.
Obe is either unable to leave its prison, or it doesn't want to. In any case, it quickly adapted to exposing a few appendages to the open air at a time; the spatial magic that altered the hat's interior allows the hole in the bottom to stretch to a certain extent. The creature can utilise slippery tendrils, chitonous claws, or a pair of humongous chicken's legs to achieve its ends. If one word can be used to describe the
thing inside of the hat, then it is "diverse."
And it is hungry. It is uncertain what happens to those pulled into the hat, whether the entity keeps them for itself or sadistically sets them floating through the pocket dimension born of the mage's spells, but what is certain is that they do not return. Sometimes Obe will use trickery in favor of its strength, retracting all of its body into the hat in order to lure the oblivious and the fashion-savvy. That's not to say that the beast doesn't have vulnerabilities. If no writhing limbs are present, the hat can be forced closed and the seal completed.
Obe was born of man's hubris and poor enunciation, a fitting punishment for humankind's folly.
At least until someone sews the hat shut.
The Hither and Thither Expanded; Or, Drawing Back the Curtain!
Obe is the alternate universe analogue of the self-centered archmage Overbrove. He is not the wizard's true form, his blood summons, or a close acquaintance. He's the Obrove if Obrove were a Lovecraftian horror bound to a stage magician's prop, while
Daniel is a scourge upon multiple alternate dimensions and multiple alternate iterations of himself. Obe, however, is exempt from that suffering.
Obroves which are
not a threat to mortal sanity (And maybe a few others that are) can be discovered on their alt list,
here.
There are more "Danalogues" to come, eventually, so we kindly ask that you...
STAY TUNED!
