Pillars of Qilak
by Wm Jay Carter III, 6/24/15
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| a seraph |
Nation: Seraphim
Condition: Wild, Elaborate
Weather: Thunderstorm
Color: Light Brown
Keyword: Awesome
After strapping the pirium-wrapped bracers to your arms you tighten the pirium-toed boots on your feet to ensure they don’t fall off mid-flight. The company of seraphim surround you, caked in the light brown mud significant to their religious rituals. The lead escort gives you the nod to activate the levitation gear. Doing so, you rise with them into the night. Lightning flashes in the distance and the thunder soon follows, cracking and rumbling across the cloudy sky as if in recognition of the seraph who lies dead high above.
After strapping the pirium-wrapped bracers to your arms you tighten the pirium-toed boots on your feet to ensure they don’t fall off mid-flight. The company of seraphim surround you, caked in the light brown mud significant to their religious rituals. The lead escort gives you the nod to activate the levitation gear. Doing so, you rise with them into the night. Lightning flashes in the distance and the thunder soon follows, cracking and rumbling across the cloudy sky as if in recognition of the seraph who lies dead high above.
The funeral site is composed of a levitating henge of pirium pillars encircling the sacred space, blue electricity infrequently snapping between them. In the center hovers a pirium bier, bearing the body of the slain. All around, the attending seraphim don their pirium circlets, glowing brightly in the night, making the scene feel somewhat like a candle-light vigil in a human cathedral. When all have gathered an elaborate ritual begins, thunder rolling after each plea to the Strangers of Darkness. At last, all seraphim close their eyes and the pirium henge is lit up by a web of blue lightning. When you look again, the body of the deceased is gone.
The seraphim have many uses for pirium, a rare metal the bat-folk consider a gift from the Strangers of Darkness. Most uses are practical: providing light in the darkness, storing mana for use in magical equipment, and—most notably—serving as the primary material out of which their levitating citadel, the Pirium Spire, is made. Some uses, however, are connected to their sacred rituals. Such is the case with the Pillars of Qilak.
The Pillars of Qilak were first discovered in the vaults deep within the Pirium Spire. At first glance, each pillar appears to be a tall chunk of raw pirium ore. When activated together, however, several things begin to happen. A charge of blue electricity begins to build up between them, they begin to levitate, and—ignoring all attempts to prevent them—they take up a unique position in the sky above the Eye of the World. Accompanying the Pillars is a platform which positions itself exactly in the center of the pillars, which receives the sum of all the pillars’ electrical potential in one grand burst.
The Pillars of Qilak were first discovered in the vaults deep within the Pirium Spire. At first glance, each pillar appears to be a tall chunk of raw pirium ore. When activated together, however, several things begin to happen. A charge of blue electricity begins to build up between them, they begin to levitate, and—ignoring all attempts to prevent them—they take up a unique position in the sky above the Eye of the World. Accompanying the Pillars is a platform which positions itself exactly in the center of the pillars, which receives the sum of all the pillars’ electrical potential in one grand burst.
As the seraphim have no earth in which to bury their dead, they have taken to using the pillars and platform for their funerary rituals. At the height of the ceremony, the blue lightning of the pillars discharges and anyone (or anything) on the platform vanishes—”taken by the darkness,” according to the seraphim priests. To be sure, there is never any residue of the departed, though whether they are so completely consumed as to have no ashes, or actually transported to some other plane, is yet to be conclusively confirmed.
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