Crayak
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Crayak is a fictional character from the sci-fi book series Animorphs, written by K.A. Applegate.
Description
The Crayak is a nearly omnipotent, super-powerful entity appearing in the form of an armless cyborg creature with massive limbs and nothing but a blood-red eye for a head. The Ellimist, upon first viewing him, contrasts his appearance with The Ellimist's own appearance as a winged humanoid and conjectures that Crayak evolved from a burrowing species in an underground ecology rather than a winged, aboveground species as the Ellimist did, wondering what effect this has had on his psychology. When he first meets the Ellimist, he wields vast technological powers similar to his, commanding a huge fleet of ships. But, while Ellimist loves to create and protect, Crayak prefers chaos and destruction, and has no regard for the rights and desires of others. While the Ellimist is a distributed intelligence who exists within all the ships he commands, Crayak's mind is housed within a huge, central flagship crafted from an asteroid, with the rest of his fleet directed by races he has enslaved. Crayak and the Ellimist directly oppose each other several times, and whenever their differences break out into open war the resulting battles are described as enough to destroy whole worlds and civilizations. This goes on until the Ellimist falls into a black hole and finds a way to embed his consciousness within it, becoming a true deity able to control time and space; Crayak soon duplicates this feat, and the two godlike intelligences, unable to harm each other, must now pursue their goals indirectly.
For millennia, Crayak has been locked in eternal combat with his foe, The Ellimist, in an age-old "game" with the galaxy's creatures as their gamepieces. Neither of them daring to assault the other directly, fearing that the very structure of spacetime would collapse under their immense power, crushing them both along with everything they have worked to accomplish over the course of their millennia-old game.
Crayak's history is largely unknown, but the Ellimist says he was expelled from another galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago by a greater power than him, and he wishes to venture back there one day to destroy this power once he has become great enough. This vague origin may be inspired from the biblical account of Satan being expelled from Heaven. His appearance and manner may be greatly inspired by the character Sauron, from the Lord of the Rings.
The Great "Game"
At the end of the Cretaceous Period, Crayak attempted to destroy Earth. He failed, thanks to the Ellimist, who from afar, manipulated space and time, causing Crayak's violent attacks on the helpless planet to miss. Realising that the Ellimist was almost impossible for him to destroy directly, Crayak agreed to play a "game" with him. In this game, neither the Ellimist nor Crayak would use their power directly, but would instead manipulate forces smaller than themselves to alter the course of the game. Crayak's greatest assets include the Howlers and the Yeerks. Some believe that the Kelbrid are also Crayak's followers, but it is highly improbable.
Mode of play
Crayak plays his game of destruction by toying with insignificant characters and civilisations throughout the galaxy, having them destroy each other. He hopes that by repeating this process over and over again, the galaxy will become void of life, and will be left to be ruled by him through his creations, the Howlers. Crayak's Howlers have succeeded in wiping out many races such as the Pemalites and Graffen's Children. Apart from using his mindless shock troops, Crayak has also manipulated natural forces to destroy numerous species, such as altering their climate or sending plagues to destroy their crops and plantations. Crayak also has a minion named Drode, whose name means 'Wild Card'.
Unlike the Ellimist, Crayak rarely personally appears in avatar form to speak with the Animorphs; when he does do so, his appearance is described as an enormous and terrifying vision, and he speaks in barely-comprehensible rants that are represented IN CAPITAL LETTERS as though screaming uncontrollably. This hints at the disturbing implication that the central intelligence of Crayak is now incurably insane; all "rational" communication with Crayak, negotiations with Crayak's side, and even most of Crayak's plans seem to originate instead from the Drode, who is the figure most commonly shown directly opposing the Ellimist.