From: Anders Sandberg <nv91-asa@nada.kth.se>

The Return of the Ancient One

The Ancient One is a powerful being, also known as Saturn,
Chronos or Father Time. This primordial Pure One represents
the sluggish material world, the prison of matter and time
imprisoning the spirit. Aeons ago he was banished into the
outer darkness by the younger forces of life and energy that
spread through reality despite his attempts to curb them. But
the Ancient One is more than indestructible, he is almost
reality itself, the son and first victim of Ialdabaoth the
Demiurge. And now he is returning. 

The Ancient One accepted his banishment into the periphery of
reality with fatalism. But as aeons went on, some of the
dynamic spirit which spread through reality influenced him,
and he began to long to return to the bright centre of being,
to yet again be the acknowledged ruler of everything. He
waited for an eternity, slowly developing new power and a will
to return. Then he slowly began to creep back towards the
light. But the closer he got, the harder the journey became,
and he soon found himself stuck in the borderlands of reality
in the region the humans call the High Umbra. 

The will of a Pure One is indomitable, and even if he couldn't
get any closer, he still tried to send tendrils of his being
into reality.  Seeping through the hidden cracks of time, they
touched the strange landscape of light and power which had
developed. Life abounded, reality flowed and changed in places
while being almost crystalline in others. Curious beings,
infinitely smaller than himself, existed and acted in
incomprehensible ways, ruled by strange laws.  The confusion
of it all frightened the Ancient One, who was used to the
peaceful stability of inert matter and darkness. It lashed
out, but reality only grew back in even stranger forms and its
tendrils dissolved into a myriad of independent lifeforms. 

For another eternity the Ancient One pondered the situation.
Finally it reached the conclusion that the problem was the
plurality of everything. Of all the Pure Ones, only he was
left; all others had splintered into microscopic shards and
Avatars. To restore reality, he would have to restore unity.
He reached out in the Umbra, and absorbed a small concept. And
another one. He began to absorb lesser spirits, Quintessence
and then whole realms. As he grew, his hunger grew too, and
soon he was absorbing large chunks of reality into his being,
uniting them with everything he had devoured. 

The tiny beings of the bright new reality didn't notice
anything at first, except a strange emptiness spreading
throughout reality.  Where there once was life and activity
suddenly there was only a nothingness, calling for more to
fill it. Anything weak enough not to withstand the lure of the
Ancient One would vanish into the abyss never to return. They
called the phenomenon Oblivion. And deep inside the empty core
of nothingness, the Ancient One is slowly growing.