- Narrator: The Ellimist
The Ellimist tells a dying Animorph the story of how he came to be.
Tropes:
- Alien Arts Are Appreciated: The Ketrans, as well as the majority of the species captured by Father, have no concept of music. Father introduces Toomin to music when a Skrit Nanote ship carrying an alien musician crashes on his moon, giving Toomin the means to finally beat Father.
- Alien Sea: Father's moon is almost completely ocean, with a ship graveyard on its biggest landmass. The sea itself is home to Father and Father alone, as anything that falls into the water gets snared by him and absorbed into his being.
- Always with You: Aguella's Ghost Memory says this to Toomin before he absorbs her into his mind.Toomin: I am making you a part of me, Aguella. Do you understand? I am downloading you, your thoughts, your knowledge. All that you were. Are.
Aguella: I was always a part of you, and you a part of me. - Apocalypse How:
- The Capasins cause a Class 3a in the Ketrans, destroying all the floating crystals on their planet and leaving it uninhabitable for the handful that survive.
- Crayak gleefully causes multiple Class 2s to Class Xs during his many games with Toomin.
- Arc Words: "Let's play a game". Toomin starts out as a gamer playing a video game where alien races are pitted against each other, and ends as a god-like being pitting actual alien races against those favored by another god-like being.
- Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Toomin's spaceship fleet body jumps out of Z-space and gets lured into a black hole by Crayak, causing him to end up in three different planes of existence at once; the physical plane, Z-space, and whatever's in a black hole. His consciousness survives Crayak destroying his physical body, and he becomes one with space and time. Crayak follows suit when he realizes what happened.
- The Assimilator: Father makes a game out of causing ships to crash-land on his moon, then recovers the corpses and reanimates their minds to gain more knowledge of the universe.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Lackofa describes Toomin this way. Toomin is a gamer who'd rather relax and play video games, but when pressed, can come up with excellent solutions to the problems he faces.
- Cosmic Chess Game: Toomin and Crayak's game begins with the two of them as Mechanical Abominations wagering on the deaths of entire planets. It evolves into them battling it out across the galaxy, destroying entire star systems in their wake. Finally, an accident with a black hole leads both of them to become higher beings who can blink out reality in an instant. In a darker part of his mind, the Ellimist admits to himself that he needs Crayak's game to stave off the loneliness and boredom that comes with being a higher being.
- Creating Life: The Pemalites were created by the Ellimist from fragments of DNA collected from across the galaxy. He removes any aggression and gives them the purpose of seeding life throughout the universe.
- Creative Sterility: Father's Fatal Flaw, for all his power, is that he can only copy what he finds in the minds of his victims. He's unable to improve the alien musician's music, while Toomin figures out how to turn the audience of the dead to his favor over the thousands of times they have a musical duel.
- Derelict Graveyard: Father's moon has one with all the alien ships that crashed there, dumped there by Father himself. Toomin later uses it to build his new spaceship body.
- Detonation Moon: Toomin destroys Father's moon after he finally manages to leave. Just as well, with Father's death, all the corpses preserved in the water decayed to the point where the ocean became inhospitable.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Many of these happen across the galaxy as Toomin and Crayak play their game. It only ends when the Ellimist stops Crayak from blowing up prehistoric Earth.
- Evil Versus Oblivion: Crayak eventually admits that destroying all life in the universe will leave him alone for all eternity, which is why he agrees to the rules of the Ellimist's game; so neither of them can destroy reality itself.Crayak: It's a pointless game that has no winner.
- Exact Words: In the prologue, the Ellimist says that, once he gives his answer to who he is, the dying Animorph will ask another question, which he will answer, "and then..." trails off, implying that he will continue answering further questions in turn. After answering the question immediately following the main story, the Animorph dies, finally having received some amount of closure.
- Floating Landmass: The Ketrans live on large crystals that float three hundred miles above an inhospitable surface. This feature turns out to be unique to their homeworld, which poses a problem when they're trying to find a new planet to live on.
- Framing Device: The Ellimist comes to talk to An Animorph who has been mortally wounded. The Animorph demands to know who the Ellimist really is, and why he plays games with entire civilizations. And so, the Ellimist answers...
- Gamer Chick: During Aguella's introduction, Toomin notes that female gamers are rare in Ketran society.
- God in Human Form: Toomin creates a mortal Andalite body for himself so he can remember what it's like to not be a god-like being by living as an Andalite. From the point of view of the primitive Andalites, a stranger walks into their herd, kills an unstoppable predator with a futuristic weapon, then settles down with them and invents a telepathic language. It's no wonder modern Andalites view the Ellimist as an ancient trickster god.
- Hand Signals: The primitive Andalites communicated this way, as their thought-speech was limited to only projecting emotions at each other.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: The book is narrated by a Ketran, and thus Toomin uses words and phrases that are analogous to a human equivalent.
- Hope Springs Eternal: Toomin falls into a Heroic BSoD after his games with Crayak destroy many inhabited planets. He retreats to the Andalite homeworld, where he starts a family with a female Andalite named Tree. After their first child dies, Toomin asks her how she can just decide to have another, to which she admits that some children will inevitably die to disease, predators, or bad luck; the only solution is to have more children than the universe can kill. This turns out to be the answer to Toomin's game with Crayak, make more alien species than Crayak can wipe out.
- Last of His Kind: The Capasins's attack on Ket leaves only seventy two Ketrans alive. Crashing on Father's moon left only Toomin alive.
- Legend Fades to Myth: In his second body, Toomin becomes well-known through the galaxy as the Ellimist, a cosmic being that ends wars and creates solutions for problems that mortal species can't solve themselves.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Father induced one in Toomin after Toomin survives the spaceship crash. Toomin sees himself back on his home planet, mingling with friends and having juvies with Aguella, but whenever he questions the illusions or remembers reality, he snaps back to his true situation: Floating underwater, tangled in Father's tendrils, and surrounded by the preserved corpses of his friends and lover.
- Mechanical Abomination: After absorbing Father and all the minds it consumed, Toomin creates a massive spaceship fleet to house his new consciousness. He tries to play a benevolent version of this trope, using his Sufficiently Advanced Technology to act as a peacemaker between warring alien races, but then meets Crayak, who at that point, is a planet-sized machine using his own Sufficiently Advanced Technology for destruction. After a series of mind games between them destroys many inhabited planets, the Ellimist flees to the Andalite homeworld and makes a mortal body for himself. When his Andalite avatar takes a look at his original body, he sees a withered, bird-like creature plugged into a massive construct of metal and crystal, and wonders if he can even recognize himself.Toomin's narration: It made me sad, somehow, to really see myself from the outside. In my mind’s eyes I was still a Ketran male. To any other eye, I was a terrifying device of unrivaled power.
- Million to One Chance: Toomin becoming one with space and time after being destroyed in three different planes of reality was one such chance. Unfortunately, the fact that it even happened allowed Crayak to replicate it for himself.
- Mind Hive: After Toomin absorbs all the minds in Father, he can call upon the memories and personalities of Father's other victims to aid in his objectives.
- Mutually Assured Destruction: When their final game begins, the Ellimist and Crayak can destroy and recreate the universe on their whims. Neither finds the idea appealing, so they agree to play an indirect game instead, using mortal aliens as their pieces.
- My Skull Runneth Over: Toomin has this problem after absorbing all the minds inside Father. It's the reason why he builds a giant spaceship to plug his new mind into.
- Oblivious to Love: Toomin manages to be this while Aguella is openly blasting him with pheromones, much to her frustration.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: "Ellimist" was Toomin's gamer handle. By the time the series takes place, it's the only name the universe knows him by.
- Rage Quit: After losing too many games to Crayak, Toomin runs off into Z-space to put as much distance between the two of them as possible. Crayak takes it as a victory.
- Sadistic Choice: Each of Crayak's mind games with Toomin involve one that causes the extinction of at least one alien race, in no small part because Crayak is great at applying Morton's Fork to every scenario.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Capasins wipe the Ketrans out, leaving only an handful to escape their doomed planet. It turns out the Capasins saw broadcasts of Alien Civilizations and assumed the Ketrans were playing god with real species, and decided to save the rest of the universe from them.
- Self-Applied Nickname: Toomin's given name is Azure Level, Seven Spar, Extension Two, Down-Messenger, Forty-one. Ketrans choose a personal name by liking the sounds it makes.
- Simulation Game: The Ketrans had a video game called Alien Civilizations, in which players create one alien species each, then pit them against each other in a battle over who makes the other go extinct first. Toomin was terrible at the game because he made his races too compassionate.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: With his spaceship body, Toomin can make the impossible happen for mortal races. It's the reason he becomes known as a god throughout the galaxy.
- Surprisingly Normal Backstory: Despite all its terrifying eldritch horror he causes, Father turns out to be nothing more than a predatory sponge that can link with the nervous system of its prey. Toomin notes that when he absorbed Father, he absorbed a hollow shell.
- The Unchosen One: The Ellimist reveals to the dying Animorph that he didn't choose them to fight the war against the Yeerks; they were "An unwitting contribution from the human race to its own survival" in his words. The Drode's accusations of "stacking the deck" in Back to Before give away this Animorph's identity: Rachel.
