Tiresias

Tiresias was an lifeform from the planet Helios.

Background
A unique lifeform from Helios that evolved in the center of the planet. As there were no other lifeforms or plants in the core of the planet, the creature evolved to survive by feeding off subspace energy which washes around the Galaxy like ripples on a pond. The creature survived but just barely.

Later when advanced lifeforms began to evolve and create primitive communications equipment, those radio waves began to wash through the galaxy. The radios waves increased the energy and frequency of the subspace waves allow the creature to feed and grow.

While it lay hidden within Helios, different lifeforms evolved on the surface, the Helians. The Helian began to ruthlessly exploit their environment and while mining the planet for ores discovered the creature.

Initially the Helians had plans to terminate the creature, but gradually came to realize that by tapping into the signals that creature absorbed to sustain itself they could monitor everything that happened into the galaxy. Possessed by the vast power Tiresias contained, the Helians founded the Collectors to collect knowledge. They incarcerated the lifeform, using the most brutal ways to gain information from the galaxy. Upon discovering that that the lifeform's sensory organs were at the tips of its tentacles they dragged them to the surface, entombing each limb in a column of marble to create the Temple of the Five Winds. This temple, along with others across the galaxy acted as communication devices. A few such as Stone Hedge were remnants were known examples. The Collectors eventually created a vast computer to interface with the creature which later in combination would be called Tiresias.

For thousands of years Tiresias lived in constant agony under the Collectors to do their bidding. The FOEs having already captured Helios, wished to use its power to locate the remaining bases of the Friends. However for all Tiresias's accumulated knowledge, it is primitive and slow and hardly the state of the art. The FOEs aware of this limitation have thus tried to acquire The Server to use its processing power to sift through Tiresias's data and bring the Friends to their knees and locate the Weaver.

Tiresias's torment was eventually stopped, with the help of an entity from N-Space, a space beyond comprehension, who sent out three human children and their alien companions to deliver The Server to its prison. Through it Janus proceeded to destroy the bonds holding Tiresias prisoner. Now freed Tiresias was finally allowed to die, after being allowed to use his rescuers eyes to perceive the universe for the first time. The entity fulfilled, it peacefully died.

Abilities
Tiresias was a huge, quivering bloated mass of transparent flesh. A horrendous creature that helplessly looked like a cross between a decomposing octopus and a diseased jellyfish. It body was garish, with iridescent flashes of color seething through its body like sheet lighting.

When it was imprisoned by the Collectors beneath Helios, ten colossal tenatclelike limbs climbed from the cavern into the pillars that held up the Temple of the Five Winds above. The tentacles were clamped immovable into the bare rock with gigantic metal bands. Its body was surrounded by cables, tubes and ducts that were maintained by the Collectors to ensure that Tiresias survived.

Ironically despite being filled with knowledge from every star in the galaxy, Tiresias was blind to all the input. Thus he was unable to see reality for what it was, never able to see the sun or sky or stars.

Appearance

 * Outernet: Book 3: Odyssey (2002)