Crayak

Template:Infobox Animorph

"I'm just a gamer. Like you. But with a perhaps different philosophy. I don't play the game to save the species, but to annihilate it. I play the game of genocide. This galaxy has even more potential games within it than the galaxy I left behind. I will cleanse this galaxy of all life, too. Then, when no sentient thing is left alive, I will kill you, Ellimist. That's my game. Shall we play?"

―Crayak to the Ellimist

Crayak is one of the major antagonists in the series and the antithesis to the Ellimist.

History

"Approximately a hundred million Earth years ago, we became aware of a new force in the galaxy. Not a species, an individual. He was a fugitive from another galaxy, chased out of that galaxy by a power even greater than he. Greater than me. [...] This new force, this individual, began to make his presence known in our galaxy. And he had different ideas from ours. He sees a universe of conflict, pain, and terror. He craves fear. Not his own, of course, but the fear of others."

―The Ellimist

An omnipotent being, Crayak is described as a blood-red cybernetic eye sitting on a throne miles high. Crayak has a servant called the Drode, who accompanies him and carries out tasks at his command. He first made his appearance as he watched Jake as Temrash 114, the Yeerk in his head at the time, was dying from the Fugue.

Little is known about Crayak before he arrived in our galaxy. It was stated in The Attack that he was driven from his own galaxy by a power greater than he or the Ellimist. It is speculated that Crayak has since become more powerful than that being, but his game with the Ellimist keeps him in this galaxy. However, this greater power is never identified in the The Ellimist Chronicles and the Ellimist himself states in The Attack that Crayak's ultimate goal is to 'spread his power throughout all galaxies and destroy the one power greater than himself'. It can be safely assumed, then, that this greater power is on a level beyond both Crayak and the Ellimist in the present day.

Crayak's original biology is briefly glimpsed by the Ellimist when they first meet - he is described as 'evolved for the surface, or perhaps even for a subterranean life'. Crayak is identified as having massive, muscled limbs, as well as the single, dominating red eye that comes to be his trademark.

Encountering the Ellimist

"A hundred million years ago, we fought, Crayak and I. I wanted to stop him, to stop his destruction. He wanted to eliminate me. The result was something neither of us could tolerate. The battle we fought destroyed a tenth of the galaxy, millions of suns, millions of planets, a dozen sentient races. A dozen sentient species, and more who would have achieved sentience, all destroyed, destroyed for nothing! But Crayak was damaged as well. The fabric of space-time, the software, as you humans would say, the software that runs the galaxy was damaged, twisted by the sudden explosion of our power. All Crayak's knowledge of space-time was now shattered. The few threads he had gathered to him were yanked from his grasp. Millions of years of effort wasted. We fell back, back from our test of wills, our war."

―The Ellimist to the Animorphs

When it arrived in the Milky Way, it began to play a series of games with the being known as the Ellimist. These games were impossible to "win", as any action taken by the Ellimist resulted in massive death of innocent creatures. Eventually, the Ellimist and Crayak fought a war against each other. But after witnessing the destruction of said war, they agreed never to fight openly again.

Glimpsed by Jake

"A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to move, on a throne that was miles high. Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly... left... right... I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way. And then it saw me. The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me. It saw me. It SAW me!"

―Jake upon seeing Crayak for the first time

To be added

Propositioning Rachel

"I want justice. Jake destroyed my Howlers. Now I want you to destroy Jake."
"Never."
"Rachel. Think! I'm offering you a chance to destroy the Yeerks once and for all. To save the life of every human on the planet. Are you willing to sacrifice billions of lives to save just one?"
"You can't make me murder Jake."
"I can't make you do anything. You have free will. What you do with it is up to you. You can use it for good. Or you can use it for evil. Now, listen. Be sure you understand. I'm offering you a chance to save the world. I'm offering you the chance to be a force for good—or for evil. What is it going to be?"

―Crayak and Rachel

To be added

Personality

"He is a strange perfectionist, in a way. He wants a galaxy cleansed of creation. His goal, I soon realized, is to destroy life. His method is to use one species against another, strong destroying weak, and then strong in turn being destroyed by the stronger still. He believes that there should be only one species. A single sentient race, which would be subjugated by him."
"What is this guy, a Nazi?"
"In the moral sense, yes. But he has different visions of what constitutes total power. He wants to be able to control the strands of space-time itself. Not merely to see them and understand them, but to hold them in his fist and dictate the very laws of physics and nature, to recreate the galaxy in his own image, and someday to spread his power throughout all galaxies and destroy the one power greater than himself."

―The Ellimist and Cassie

To be added

Creations

• Crayak's Plant Parasites
• Howlers

Races Wiped Out by Crayak and the Howlers

• Folk
• Graffen's Children
• Laga
• Mamathisk
• Mashtimee
• Nostnavay
• Pemalite
• Ron

Trivia

• Crayak is inspired and based off of the flaming red eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings.