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The Leviathan is an ancient deity that exists outside the mortal plane. It seeks to enter the human world, which is separated from him by an all-enclosing barrier protecting it. However, the Leviathan is not just another typical demon or eldritch god bent on world domination. It is formed as the manifestation of the tension between the modern world and the premodern world and the rage it creates. Originally it existing as the concept of there being something greater than man, such as gods or the supernatural, that could not be controlled or reasoned with. Modern ideas spurred on by the scientific revolution and the enlightenment encouraged humanity to understand their surrounding environment with a new perspective that focused on rationality and proven facts based on trial and error analysis. The new relationship between humanity and the world began to displace older ideas like religion and superstition. This has led to a time of increasing religious indifference, where people are more concerned with their number of likes on social media accounts and only token tribute is paid to old practices of worship. This concept of the Leviathan was then shaped by the encroachment of modernity into the old world and the clash between the two. The Scarlet King solidified into a sentient entity after it was defined as such by the SCP Foundation, a group devoted to securing anomalies in the interest of protecting current civilization and sustaining its normalcy.

An organization known as "The cult of the Leviathan" seeks to reincarnate their deity on the mortal plane directly in the form of a human child with Leviathan's soul. The group seek to return the world to its premodern age where humanity feared the unknown and looked to gods and deities for their sustenance and continued survival. While the cult is powerful and has access to resources, it is small and operates in secret to avoid persecution by governmental forces who see them as dangerous madmen. After being born into the world through mortal means, he will grow up to become the living manifestation of their god and subjugate humanity to his rule, with the cult at the helm of power. As the Leviathan became real, so too did a history of its existence reaching back to the Dawn of Creation, altering history to include it. The cult has essentially created a reality warper who can retroactively rewrite the world's timeline, inserting itself into various points of our history's past. As a result, several cultures and empires have risen and fallen in the revised history, displacing important events with new ones and essentially being the narrator of its own story.

As this being has the ability to control the timeline, it stands to reason that it can manipulate things to make itself the winner of past events, establishing the cult as a far more prominent group in the modern day instead of a small organization forced to operate in secret. It could even make itself an already summoned entity who has already achieved world domination and humanity's enslavement. What could prevent a deity who can alter time from making itself the winner?

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  • $\begingroup$ Okay, Leviathan is basically the Scarlet King $\endgroup$
    – Leviathan
    Jan 15, 2022 at 0:14

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Leviathan is who we said he is

Leviathan only has the power to alter the timeline in so far as is required to make himself real. Before Leviathan entered our world, who he was, what he did, and what he is yet to do was already written into the collective consciousness of man. When he became real, time was rewritten to make his entire mythos became real (past, present, and future), but this does not mean that Leviathan is in total control what the new reality is, he is only becoming what he is already meant to be.

There are variations of the Leviathan myth in almost every mythology of European/Middle Eastern origins, but they all basically go something along the lines of there being a great sea-monster that was defeated by God/Baal/Zues/Thor/etc. at some time in each civilizations pre-history. But would return to reek havoc on the world before being defeated again at the end of days.

By becoming real, Leviathan's defeat is not only possible but guaranteed because he can not make himself real without also making real the deity who is destined to destroy him.

The group seek to return the world to its premodern age where humanity feared the unknown and looked to gods and deities for their sustenance and continued survival.

Given the mission statement of the cult of Leviathan, this also gives them a sort of motivation for summoning a massive world threatening horror into existence. By summoning Leviathan, they believe they will also be summoning the gods into our world.

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It isn't control over the time line

History might be rewritten, but one thing is certain. The god becomes real at a certain point. The way that happens can alter, but the point when it happens can not. That means some events cannot be altered, as they are requirements for the god to become real.

This goes much further. The god doesn't really control time. It is merely injected into the time line. Like a complicated equation on one side has an answer. Now the god is real, the answer changes, so the equation has to change. Some things are fixed, others are variable.

An example below. The X and Y were fixed to give 8, but have been changed to give 9 the moment the god entered.

  • (7 * X) / (1 - Y) = 8
  • (7 * X) / (1 - Y) = 9

In the end, the god has only a limited control over the time line, making her/him not all powerful, yet still giving it great power.

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History Isn't Real

The past is gone, and all that remains of it are memories, and the stories by which we rationalize the present state of things.

Your god cannot actually control the timeline. Once your cult brings him into existence, only history needs to change to accommodate him. History is not the past.

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What could prevent a deity who can alter time from making itself the winner?

If the Tralfamadorian view of time would be true, not even a deity could alter it. Simply said, time flow is the consequence of our incapacity of experiencing all at once.

To them, all events in time have happened and are happening simultaneously. Nothing can be changed, and nothing matters.

"The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes—“with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other"

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/establishing the cult as a far more prominent group in the modern day instead of a small organization forced to operate in secret./

The small organization does not realize that it is a tiny subset of the far more prominent group.

The small group bringing the Leviathan into the world succeeds. It brings the Leviathan into being at the start of the world. The Leviathan has always been. The persons who think they are planting a seed that will grow into a sapling do not recognize the ancient forest around them as their own doing.

The success of this small group is hugely, tremendously, inconceivably beyond their own small ambitions. Their success is so large as to now be irrelevant for the members of that small group, except in that they exist in the world they made. The world is what it is now because of their efforts. The far more prominent group is everyone and everything.

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The Leviathan Can't be Controlled or Reasoned with:

The Leviathan exists because it will exist, and that necessitates that it always existed. But the very nature of its power is such that conscious goals and self-serving behavior are irrelevant to it. Despite it being the embodiment of human angst and ignorance, it has no desire or motivation - it simply is an elemental force. It will either cease being a child once it incarnates, or it being a child will be irrelevant, because it's mortal existence implies it is limited by petty concepts like "before" and "after."

So history distorting is irrelevant. Leviathan may distort history infinitely, like the concept of primordial chaos it comes from. Perhaps when all possible realities have existed, one will be incompatible with Leviathan, and it will cease to exist, replaced by a reality where Leviathan could never have existed. So after a moment and eternity, things will settle down into a reality that always was defined by Leviathan never having existed except as a concept. Despite everything having changed, it will all be as it was before and always would be.

Maybe.

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Control of the flow of time

(as opposed to control of the timeline that you used in your exposition ...)

Leviathan simply takes note of everyone who attempts to alter history, and sets their flow of time to inordinately slow (1 second for offender = 100 years for the world). They freeze in place, and by the time they realize anything has happened, the history they were trying to alter is the dead past again.

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