Artifacts/WellSouls

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The Well of Souls

Artefact N/A (Solar rank)

History

Even during the First Age, in a time of flying ships and giant war Manses, the Well of Souls was at once one of the most honoured and most feared artefacts of its day, for the tragic tale of its creation and of the downfall of its creator was well-known.

Bronze Oak was a highly respected Twilight Caste Solar, the wise and powerful ruler of a collection of cities that lined the northern edge of the lost Starlight Sea, forming a strong mercantile empire within the Solar Deliberative. His wife, Ivory Claw of the Higgan, was a Lunar of the Full Moon Caste, master of her husband’s armies and in concert they kept the peace for centuries. Most astonishingly, while many of the Solar-Lunar pairings of that time were for political convenience, Bronze Oak and Ivory Claw truly loved each other, and many tales were told of the extravagant lengths they went to prove it to each other. The Elentch barbarians of the eastern deserts still tell tales of the man who came and stole the snow from the top of Gargyn, the Restless Mountain as a gift for his love.

However, even during the golden time that was the First Age, all was not peaceful. Even before the Great Curse truly took hold of the hearts of the Solar Exalted, there were those amongst them who were not worthy of the power granted to them by the Unconquered Sun. One of these, shadow-cursed Yana, came into the lands of Bronze Oak during his flight from the retribution of the Solar Deliberative. Ivory Claw impulsively decided to try and catch the accursed villain before he could leave, and so she gathered her finest hunters and together they set out to track the traitor down.

Yana was too cunning and too powerful for Ivory Claw, the power-granted him by his Yozi masters and the power of the Sun that he blasphemed against conspired to thwart the over-confident Lunar. Instead of being the hunted, Yana became the hunter, slaying mortal and Terrestrial alike amongst Ivory Claw’s hunters, leaving a path of terrible slaughter wherever he went. Eventually, only Ivory remained alive, as Yana wished, and they faced each other on the snow-capped peak of Veres, the highest mountain in Creation after the Imperial Mountain on the Blessed Isle. Ivory Claw fought valiantly, but in the end Yana triumphed, and it was said that at the same instant that his blade – Kolgorak – pierced her heart, it pierced that of Bronze Oak as well. The next morning he told his generals to organise a party to retrieve his wife, and told them precisely where she could be found. When her body was returned, broken and bloody, he broke into abject weeping, it was later said that that was the last time for three centuries anyone ever saw Bronze Oak show emotion.

His rule continued following the death of his love, but his subjects said that his heart had hardened and where before his judgements were tempered with mercy and kindness, now there was only the unyielding stone of the law. His subjects still loved him, though, despite the hardening of his rule, and the empire continued to prosper and grow.

Then, one morning many years after the death of Ivory Claw, Bronze Oak awoke from a dream with a feverish vision showing him what he must do to once more be with his love. In the execution of this task he travelled down paths long forbidden, enacted dark magical rituals and made terrible bargains with powerful and cunning demons. He passed into the misty and sunless realm of the Underworld, there to seek veins of the black metal known as soulsteel that he mined and brought with him into the sunlight of Creation.

For decades he laboured obsessively on his project, bringing his empire to the edge of bankruptcy and ruin as Bronze Oak offered lavish prizes to those who could retrieve for him the most precious and valuable objects scattered throughout Creation. One morning, his most trusted ministers crept into his palace, which had long since sunk into disrepair and neglect following Bronze Oak’s dismissal of the retainers, to speak with him about the effect that his project was having on his people. In a fit of rage he slew them to a man, and issued a decree that from that moment on, any that had the temerity to step within his palace would meet the same fate.

Eventually, the task was completed. The artefact that he had seen in his dreams all those years ago was finally completed. A vast mirror forged of soulsteel, three times as tall as a man, polished until nary a ripple could be seen in the absolute blackness of its surface, bound within a ring of bright orichalcum, runes of great and terrible power cut into the golden metal. Bronze Oak called it the Well of Souls, for the souls of all who had ever lived could be dipped from it, but he had an interest in only one.

Then, one morning after his great work was completed Bronze Oak was again seen to smile. The haggard, unshaven appearance that had become his wont was gone, and when his ministers and advisers asked what had caused this change he introduced them to his love, Ivory Claw. The power of the Well had caused her to be reborn, she had been given flesh and could once more experience the joy of a sunrise and the delight of a lover’s touch. The empire of Bronze Oak began to prosper once more and over the next few years almost all of the damage that his neglect had caused was repaired and made new.

The temple that the Well of Souls was held in became a place of pilgrimage for thousands of people who wished to speak with their loved ones again, sometimes merely to say goodbye, other times to ask advice or even plot revenge. Over the years, however, stories began to spread about it, tales were told of how during certain times of the year ghosts could pass into Creation of their own accord. Rumours were spread telling that the guards stationed around the temple were as much to protect the city from the Well as the other way around, but Bronze Oak refused to accept that his greatest creation could be flawed, and so the gossip continued.

As the years passed, poor Ivory Claw felt nothing but sorrow in her heart, for the joys of being one of Luna’s Chosen were forever denied to her. The rush of the hunt, the thrill of the kill, the sensation of flesh flowing from one form to another, all of these and more were gone forever. Not only that, but she could feel time slowly ravaging her new-found body, the corruption to which she had been almost immune now seemed to spread like wildfire. She confronted Bronze Oak, asking him why he had brought her back into a body that seemed to want to kill her almost as soon as she had returned. They fought and argued, and Ivory Claw turned to leave, saying that the years remaining to her were hers to spend, and she wished to see Creation once more. At the gates of his palace she turned to wave farewell to the man that she had once loved, just as Bronze Oak called upon the mighty powers of the Solar Circle, obliterating her utterly.

Now overcome with remorse, he rushed back to the Well and called to her, but she did not respond. He was later found weeping uncontrollably, slumped against the mirror, sobbing her name over and over. Months passed with no change, he refused to eat or drink, and only the prodigious constitution of the Solar Exalted sustained him as he wasted away before the eyes of his ministers.

Then, on the first day of Calibration he vanished. The guards at the temple denied having seen him leave, and none of the doors showed any sign of tampering, it was as if Bronze Oak, lord of an empire, had just disappeared into the air itself. Some said that he had walked through the mirror and into the Underworld, to search for the soul of his love once more and beg her forgiveness, but the truth of the matter was never known.

After the Usurpation the Well of Souls was taken from its temple and placed in the City of Pillars, whose true name and location has long since faded from memory. There it was guarded from use by the less virtuous, and also to prevent the souls of the murdered Solars from telling the truth about the Usurpation to any who would care to ask. It was lost, like so much else, during the chaos that followed the Great Contagion and the incursions of the Fae. Since then the Well of Souls has become part fable, part cautionary tale with parents, fearful for their children, telling stories of others who went searching for it and returned half-sane and barely-alive, if they returned at all. These stories also create a new generation of scavengers and artefact-hunters, however – some of the children that these tales are told to find that they light a fire deep within their hearts, a fire that can only be quenched with adventure.

Powers

The full extent of the powers of the Well of Souls was never truly explored – even the ever-curious savants of the First Age were wary of unleashing its full strength, the Underworld being a realm of shadow and nightmare even then. However, the known abilities of the Well are listed below:

• Any being, mortal, spirit or Exalt, can speak with someone who has died and passed into the Underworld. Simply by touching the surface of the Well and concentrating on the person in question the user can see and speak with the spirit in question. To do this, the user spends a point of temporary Willpower and depending on the target, makes a roll to see if they can get through.

If the target is a dear friend or loved one, or anyone with a deep connection to the character, the roll uses Charisma + Occult at a difficulty of 1. If the target is not personally known to the user then the roll is Intelligence + Lore at a variable difficulty (1 if the user has extensively studied the life of the spirit in question, 5 or more if the user thinks “that guy who did that thing”). The spirit knows who is trying to contact it, and can choose not to answer the call, but usually will barring exceptional circumstances (such as being caged by a Deathlord). If the user spends 5 motes of Essence with the point of Willpower he can force the spirit to talk. This effect lasts for an hour, or until the either party wishes to end the conversation (unless the spirit was forced).

It should be noted that the spirit does not move through the Underworld to reach the Well of Souls, instead the viewpoint provided by the Well shifts to the location of the ghost.

• By spending a point of temporary Willpower, 30 motes of Essence and taking a health level of unsoakable lethal damage, a ghost found using the power above can be given temporary flesh and be brought back into Creation, if only for a little while. The damage caused by this manifests as a wound and the fragments of blood, bone and flesh taken are what give flesh to the spirit – the wound cannot be healed by any means until the flesh-clothed spirit returns to the Underworld, after which it will heal normally. Those reborn in this manner retain all of the knowledge and skills they had while alive, but none of the Charms or special abilities that are granted to Exalts, God-bloods and other enhanced humans. The Well of Souls will sustain the person until the next sunrise, at which point their borrowed flesh dissolves back into Essence and their spirit flees into the Underworld, unless the cost is paid again. This process can continue indefinitely. The reborn person is treated as a heroic mortal for the purposes of combat and receiving damage, and is perfectly capable of being wounded and even killed. It should be noted that the new body has the same age as the person did when they died, and so someone who died of old age will not survive for very long (a few days at most).

• During the five days of the Calibration the Well of Souls becomes a gateway into the Underworld itself and, likewise, during the five nights it is a gateway from the Underworld into Creation. 10 motes of Essence and a point of temporary Willpower will allow one to cross over the veil of death (or life). This gateway opens onto the area of the Underworld that corresponds with that part of Creation, and the only way to move it is to move the Well of Souls itself – a massive undertaking given the extreme weight of the artefact.

• The greatest of the powers of the Well of Souls also requires the greatest sacrifice to use – it can bring the spirits of the dead back into Creation permanently, giving them a new life from that moment. This avoids the implicit hold that the user of the Well has over the reborn soul that the use of the temporary return power provides. Performing this task is neither easy nor safe, however.

The person who wishes to bring someone back must pass into the Underworld during the Calibration, using the gateway power of the Well as listed above. The soul to be returned must then be physically located within the Underworld and brought back to its location. Then the user and the ghost walk through together, the user pays with 50 motes of Essence, three levels of unsoakable aggravated damage that refuse to heal for a year and a day, and a point of permanent Willpower. The ghost must then make a Willpower + Conviction test against a difficulty of 5 (the user can reduce the difficulty by one for each 10 motes of Essence and point of temporary Willpower, down to a minimum of 1). If this test fails, the ghost cannot force his way through the Well of Souls and remains trapped within the Underworld until next Calibration.

If the user is unable to return to the location of the Well in the Underworld within the allotted five days, then he must remain stuck within it, or find another way out (i.e.: the border of a shadowland). The ghost cannot be brought to flesh by any means other than using the Well, however.