My Travels in the Lands of the Pyromancers

These are the disjointed notes from the lost journal of Falklyde Wodinger. Alas, apart from these saved pages, we have little knowledge of that strange, eastern land. What little we have, we treasure.

-Brother Mallet Obrekian, Cistern-Keeper of Thartrus Monastery

All around this place, for a distance of dozens of miles, if one digs a mere two or three inches into the ground and applies a live coal, the uncovered soil instantly takes fire—almost before the coal touches the earth. This flame heats the soil but neither consumes nor marks it, and it is not terribly hot.

For unnumbered ages, gas generated by the subterranean stores of green-black oil, has escaped from the fissures in the limestone crag, and the fires caused of this gas, has lighted the prayers of generations of priests, as it blazed and flared away to the heavens.

...The Lands of Green Flame, the expanse of which one must traverse, in order to reach Venerable Akgku, is not without its dangers. Most worrisome of all, are the Ash-Reavers, those men and women who have been expelled or cast out of the Pyromancers Temple, for some unknown transgression. It was told to me, that these pariahs, escape and withdraw into the formidable and mostly unexplored deserts, and wander the dunes for all eternity, or at least until the next convergence of the World Vortex. These loathsome beings appear as emaciated half-humans, covered in blackest soot, and are purported to breathe clouds of suffocating ash from their mouths. I have gleamed little else, as to the actual nature of these cursed creatures, and was fortunate, for our caravan did not encounter one of the undead beings of Udross waste-lands, on our voyage to Akgku...

The Fire Temple of Iskravalanya stands in the near-forgotten city of Akgku.

Akgku, meaning First in tongues most ancient, is the antiquarian capital of the now defunct Kingdoms of Udross. Based on the nearby ancient inscriptions this has been a center of prayer for many ages. Though nearly devoid of citizens, the Cult of Fire, whose worshippers still dwell inside the city of stone and open air, have been attending the Everlasting Flame for untold generations, and still do, to this day.

The Temple is adorned with a hundred malachite stupas, each representing one of the Hundred Known Flames, while the central structure, shaped as a wide and irregular ziggurat, represents the Everlasting Flame itself. The center of the central shrine is an open, raised malachite pavilion. The temple expresses the idea of a closed world, that of a fiery beginning and a fiery end. The latter expression is felt when one enters the building proper.

During my visit, I have studied the oral histories and the dogma of the Pyromancers Cult. It is said by their wise-men, that the Everlasting Flame has burned from the time the World Vortex had subsided, four thousand years ago, and it is said, will continue to burn, until the the anticipated return of the next World Vortex, at which point, the insufferable winds will lick and suck up the flames, and cause a great, whirlwind of fire to engulf the Worlds of Men.

Beneath the Temple lies the Crematorium, a vast catacomb of twists and turns, built of granite, sandstone, marble and malachite, tortuous to navigate, for the uninitiated. The Crematorium is where the ashes of the Faithful and the Immolated are entombed, in special lyme and asbestos-lined conical casks and urns. For four thousand years (since the founding of the latest Fire Temple), the ashes of the deceased fire-worshippers have been buried here, and now, an uncountable number of urns and casks line the walls. Fissures carved into the rock of the Crematoiums walls, alight with a pale greenish glow, illuminate the way for those making their way along the eerie, deathly silent tunnels. Many areas of the Crematorium are filled with poisonous earthen gases, and perhaps most deadly of all, an occasional Urn Beast can be found haunting the endless corridors of stone. In fact, more than the occasional Urn Beast, truth be told, can be found inside the Crematorium.

Thieves and other undesirables, whenever spared the flames, are sometimes sent down alive into the catacombs below, cursed to wander its dimly lit halls of bottle-green tints and whitewashed walls painted with innumerable sigils and swirls of rusted red dye, annotating the cults four thousand year old history. Gloomy mausoleums, carved with infinite alcoves, filled with myriad cocoon-like casks and urns, some populated with lairing, fiery spirits, waiting to be unleashed. Many have been driven mad, expired of hunger or thirst, or immolated by the Urn Beasts over the millenniums, if left to their own devices below the Temple. It is whispered other secrets and horrors lie in the cyclopean vastness of the Crematorium, but tales of these mysteries sounded too fanciful to my ears, and they will remain unrecorded by this hand.

The Pyromancer and the High Priestess are the fanciful titles of the rather self-effacing and aloof keepers of the Temple, who prefer to be refered to as Oggonites, named after Ogonne, a beloved Pyromancer-Priest of a distant time and age, despite the fact the Temple itself is named after Iskravalanya, whom Ogonne revered in his day.

The current Pyromancer Supreme, Pagostipsis, the Nemvidimnoy, the Ever-Burning, is a shark-like man, hairless and seemingly sculpted of smooth, white chalk.

The Liquid Jewels, the Melted Jewels of Iskravalanya are all corundums, rubies, sapphires and diamonds, heated to their utter crystalline melting point, by the impossibly hot fires of the Everlasting Flame. The Jewels are kept floating in six ceremonial bowls of green chalcedony, ensorcelled to withstand the heat.

The Djarqa-Darra, the Lizard of Brilliant Flames, is a creature related to the ancient, long extinct race of Flame Salamanders. The Djarqa-Darra is the size of a small monitor lizard, with thousands of scales, blinding, ruby-red motes, each one aflame. The lizards scales are said to be so blistering hot, as to ignite all flammable materials and matter, within five feet of the creature. The Djarqa Darra is kept in a gigantic granite vat of heated oil at all times, inside the main shrine. Its escape could prove disastrous to the few but stubborn inhabitants of Akgku and its environs, in the estimation of this humble scholar.

The Key Which Never Burns is a palm-sized polyhedron of red porphyry, kept on the High Priestess person during the Bright Night celebration, and otherwise hidden in solid rock. It is said this mystical object, will be the only thing at the end of the world, which will not be burned into infinite ash, by the cosmic World Vortex. It serves as a symbolic anchor for the faithful.

Doka, a Doka is a small container for safely carrying a live coal. The device is useful for lighting fuses with minimum fuss. On a cold night, it can be used to warm fingers before a delicate task. I certainly hope to take one of these contraptions back to Haracon. We could certainly use them at the monastery.

Tumne-Jarkka, the Living Smoke During the Immolation Rite, self-sacrificing disciples and adherents willingly bathe themselves in the Everlasting Flame, incinerating themselves and sending countless wisps of foul-smelling smoke rising into the night skies. On nights of the Beggars Moon (thinnest crescent), this smoke will sometimes take on a near-sentience, and float over sands, rock, and hills into neighboring thorps and villages, making its way into the mouths and nostrils of unsuspecting, and usually sleeping folk. On the morrow, many of the Living Smokes victims begin to develop a strange compulsion, bidding them to travel to the Temple of Iskravalanya and pay homage to the Eternal Flame. I have witnessed this phenomenon with my own eyes, and am at a loss to provide a plausible explanation for this Exigency.

It must be noted that the Pyromancers of Akgku use the term, 'pyromancer', differently than we do in the West. Wherein our pyromancers are sorcerer obsessed with fire and flame, these people are priests and prophets, they derive their power from unknown sources. I would have to stay here, among them, many more years than I could dare to remain, to learn their secrets. I can however tell you and pinpoint, one definitive source of their power. Their uncanny and unshakable faith.

Game Notes: These collected passages, are the only words left from Falklyde Wodinger's famous work, My Travels in the Lands of the Pyromancers, each remaining, fragile page, saved and treasured by the Brotherhood of the Thartrus Monastery.

It can and should be used as an actual PC handout, if ever they visit a library, museum, or consult some sage into the whereabouts of some ancient land or some erstwhile cult of fire worshippers, dwelling inside an antiquated, labyrinthine city of stone. Many of the details are left up to the GM, as this provides merely a framework and some hinted plot hooks and locations.

It is implied that the lands of the Udross are long destroyed, and the PCs would be reading these notes, five hundred years after they were first written. Udross, the Lands of Green Flame, and Most-Venerable Akgku are now distant memories, ruins, its once-proud temples swallowed up by the merciless desert sands.

In a table top campaign, many moons ago, I used notes like these, when the PCs needed to find an intensely magical flame, in order to destroy an indestructible artefact (yeah, it was a while ago). It kick-started our Lands of Burning Earth campaign and the PCs quest to find the Everlasting Flame of Akgku. It was a distant age, a long-ago time, when Fire Cults were still cool in the unspoiled minds of early gamers, and not a dime-a-dozen :)

This could easily be adapted to any GM's favorite version of a fire cult.