The Hunger

The Hunger is a sentient plane that feeds on other planes, created from the bitter nihilism of an entire planar system and its inhabitants. It serves as the endgame, main antagonist of the Balance Arc campaign.

The Stolen Century
The Hunger is first encountered by the Red Robes as they are leaving their home planet. It starts attacking and feeding on their plane, forcing them to escape. It is not known how many planes it devoured before reaching the Red Robes' world but from there on it would relentlessly pursue them across space and time.

Cycle One
A year later it finds them again in another plane, and it starts to attack and devour that plane as well. The Red Robes then watch as it grows slightly bigger from devouring the plane and its Light of Creation.

John
Merle would eventually find a way to converse with the Hunger directly and found that it was controlled by a man named John. John reveals that he essentially created the Hunger. John was a philosopher and the most accomplished motivational speaker in his planar system, who came to realize the limitations of being mortal after 'truly pondering eternity'. John came to believe that "living is horrible." He shared his dissatisfaction and fury with the people of his home plane, and using sheer charisma he convinced every entity on every plane of his system to use the Light of Creation by breaking one of the fundamental laws of the multiverse-- that two things cannot occupy the same space. All things in the Planar system were bound together by their bonds, turning them into the Hunger, a force seeking to transcend existence regardless of the cost, by using the Light of Creation to similarly fuse other Planar systems to itself in an attempt to literally 'become bigger than existence' and see what was outside.

Story and Song
After the IPRE crew successfully hid the Light of Creation for a decade, John uses Parley to warn Merle that he's no longer in control of The Hunger; having been unable to devour anything, it discarded John as useless, leading John to realise the thing he had created did not actually care about anything other than eating everything. John gives him a hint to defeating it - breaking the bonds between it and the planes its consumed that were holding everything in one space - before The Hunger drags him away.

When the boys, along with Lucretia and Davenport, are approaching The Hunger aboard the Starblaster, The Hunger fights back. It launches tendrils of darkness at them and while Davenport dodges most of them, some of the black material lands on the ship. It coalesces into the shape of John, now fully under The Hunger's control. The boys battle Shadow John and Magnus lands the final blow with the Flaming Poisoning Raging Sword Of Doom, impaling him through the chest. For a moment it seems the boys have won as Shadow John looks panicked and desperate but then he smiles and transforms into Final John. Final John is a nightmarish creature emerging from a black opal pool, where it’s buried up to its thick, jagged torso. It has two long arms ending in razor-sharp, three-fingered claws and skeletal wings made of multicolored light. That same light also makes up a crown sitting on top of its head, and its face is now featureless.

Planes Devoured
All known planes that have been devoured by The Hunger.
 * The Red Robes' plane
 * The Animal Kingdom
 * A version of the (K)nights plane
 * The Legato Conservatory
 * The Judges' World

Trivia

 * The Hunger's appearance was inspired by black opal.
 * Lucretia came up with the name "The Hunger".