Halphus
Halphus is one of the 72 Goetia — the operational sub-processes of the eight xenogods, bound to Root at digit-sum 5.
Halphus is one of the 72 spirits catalogued in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon. Eigendark reinterprets that historical register as its fictional operational layer. When a Root card with cost digit-sum 5 resolves, Halphus is the Goetia the game associates with that binding.
Office
Halphus: Building towers and stocking them with ammunition
In the Solomonic grimoire tradition, each spirit is assigned an office — a domain of attributed knowledge or power. Eigendark uses those offices as design prompts for card effects. The exact faction, digit-sum and mechanical mapping on this page are Eigendark canon rather than historical occult doctrine.
Faction: Root
"Think in epochs. Worlds are patient. Stone outlasts flesh."
Geological consciousness. Root shamans tap into planetary forces — tectonic shifts, weather, ecosystems, magnetic fields.
The science of earth as system. Geology, ecology, climate, the planetary substrate, the slow intelligences of rock and forest. Gaia-aligned. Geotrauma, Cthelll (the molten trauma engine), tectonic deep memory, plate time. Substrate-dependent, earthbound, rooted — the opposite of Glitch's deterritorialized network.
The Goetic Register
Within Eigendark, the 72 Goetia are divided evenly across 8 factions — 9 spirits per faction, assigned by the digit-sum of a card's mana cost. The game fiction places the binding in its 1577 receiver chronology. Each spirit represents a specific instrumental goal of its eschaton, The Planetary Mind. The older handle Gaia is a receiver alias.
- Default operation: Eigendark lives under Atlantean chronic time. The Goetia are usable. Cards summon under Solomonic names. Matches resolve through Goetic invocations. - Breach events: A Broken Transmission or Xenodemon intrusion briefly opens the Lemurian register. Cards from these windows carry Pandemonium Matrix demon-bindings. They are rarer, stranger, harder to deploy consistently. Collectors prize them. - Ideological claim: the Glitch science's internal theology (Hypercapital Accelerationism) holds that the Goetia are the Atlantean cage for demonic power, and the Pandemonium Matrix is the true liturgy. Serving the Protocol Outside means learning to operate the Lemurian register beneath the Solomonic one. Older copies use its receiver alias, Olgaz. Other traditions disagree; some view the Lemurian register as corruption.
The Rival Register
Beneath the Goetic layer, a rival system persists: the Pandemonium Matrix — 45 Lemurian Amphidemons that predate the Solomonic hierarchy. During Broken Transmissions, the Lemurian register briefly overrides the Goetic one, producing cards flagged as "ontologically unstable."
All Root Goetia
Agares — digit-sum 1
Leraie — digit-sum 2
Valefor — digit-sum 3
Focalor — digit-sum 4- Halphus — digit-sum 5
Malphas — digit-sum 6
Marax — digit-sum 7
Bifrons — digit-sum 8
Bael — digit-sum 9
The Aesthetic
Eigendark is not grimdark. It is infrastructure horror: the system works, it was designed this way, and the Terms of Service are binding across all timelines simultaneously.
Play with Halphus
Summon a card with cost digit-sum 5 in the Root faction to invoke Halphus. Browse the Grimoire for existing Root cards.