Winter Manifesture
"Of the Summer and Winter Manifestures, this was the more damning. It brought forth the unprecedented wave of cold that saw fit to eradicate all life under its authority."
Winter's Source
The Winter Manifesture, Mother Cold's1 prison, marked the first stage of Dandoleon's Breaking. Chaimut had the facility constructed on a floating island, just beyond Dandonleon's edge, ensuring his daughter would never escape, nor would the natives attempt to reach her. While the Goddess of Winter was contained, her domain was not, causing a vast aura to radiate from the Manifesture's edge. Half of Dandoleon was engulfed in Winter, a condition entirely foreign to the plane; in the steepest mass extinction on record, the Winter Manifesture destroyed the majority of life on its half of the plane. Dandoleon had become a waste bin for foreign gods, who held no consideration for the mortals within.Confounding Dimensions
Only one report has been supplied regarding the Manifesture's design, which describes bizarre, incongruent dimensions when observed from the outside. An illusory effect is placed upon the facility: as you move about the front-facing side, the building will move naturally in relation to yourself; the interior, however, remains stable, as if it's leagues farther than it appears. The illogical parallax is heightened by the building's small size, which is large for a single mortal but rather insubstantial in the face of its purpose: divine incarceration.Architecture
Inhabitants
No mortal residents traverse the colonnade or arcade, and any entities that are present are of dubious sapience, sentience, and general biological origin. The primary examples are the odd scales that line the arcade walls, as they respond to physical interaction and disperse warning signals to surrounding areas- while it was originally assumed to be an arcane alert system, dissection triggered a physiological response. When cut, the scales expelled ringing tones and erratic flashes, subsequently tightening against the surface they encompassed.
Another group of suspected creatures was referred to as "constellations," which are composed of matterless bundles fixed together by unknown means. The witness described the curious creatures as eye floaters, given their physical positions were always locked to an onlooker's peripheral vision; the moniker was also physically accurate, as their outlines shifted without definition and demonstrated phases of light and darkness. They often shift behind corners and obstacles, perhaps to avoid inspection. In the rare instance they're squarely focused on, the constellations daintily fade away, either killed or apparating between deeper dimensions.
The Static Valley
The Amphitheater
Survivor's Report
The following is the sole testimony to come directly from the Winter Manifesture, and abridged at that. Describing it is a curious ferryman delivering parcels between the planes: The reason for diverging from his route and entering the Manifesture is unknown. His countenance, I must add, left me uneasy. He was not wholly truthful in his ignorance of the location's dangers. I feel he was there with ulterior motive, but untempered anticipation prevented him from guarding the secrets he had found
-Epiphany, Scribe of Dandoleon
Testimony of Kolos
"I had diverged from my route, see? While delivering a parcel on behalf of the Ancient2, one which was a millennium overdue, I had designed a path of inarguable efficiency. That path would squarely cross the voids beyond the Manifesture, but the island's near gravitational allure beckoned me to enter. I succumbed to curiosity. There are so few places untouched by investigative eyes, and any further delay could be excused; what is a year on a thousand? And I would surely not be a year.
Its frozen white lawn, cast in radiant light against the abyssal backdrop, blinded details until approach and prolonged gazing. A gray path led from the edge to the colossal facility. I struggle to call it an encampment or prison for its... alluring revelry; It seemed an infinitely large interior contained somehow by stone walls. Amphitheaters behind valleys, behind arcades, behind colonnades- none of which seemed to move regardless of distance traveled left or right, unlike the stone exterior, which seemed itself mundane. Turning around, one could see Dandoleon. The maps are truly out of scale, for Dandoleon was but a speck in the distance when viewed from the Manifesture.
I knew of the Manifesture's existence and reputation. None had been there before myself, shy of [Huereina]. I thought, 'to be the first to do a thing?' Such a cause was rendered trite as I rowed the void to the island's perimeter. Some dilapidated structure trailed off the uninviting gray path and into the darkness, from which I entered. It appeared to be a ladder or perhaps a railway of dwarven make. It led nowhere definite, but something so rugged certainly wasn't constructed by the island's prisoner.
My skin is thick leather. No heat or cold has ever pierced me, but I could almost feel the lifeless frigidity of the reticent place. Snow matted the ground, but not once in my visit did the wind blow, nor did I leave any footprints. It's as if the land rejected life and erased its evidence.
My approach to the outermost colonnade wasn't impeded by any guardians or warnings, aside from the slick, icy glass that coated the stairway. Traveling deeper through the interior proved otherworldly, as if the entrance had been a portal to a larger plane, 'greater than the sum of its parts.' The columns made corners of elongated plots in an open hall, but any pair of columns to walk through led deceptively further or closer than it appeared. Your eyes play tricks on you there. Further inside were the arcades, where every stretch of stone was veiled in squamous opalescence, refracting light and further confusing your senses. A faint chiming began, but there were neither hanging bells nor wind to blow them. It rang from the arches as you entered them, and then further down, from distant archways out of sight. I concluded that the infinite distance in either direction was the work of colossal mirrors, and reflected chimes were merely echoes. 'Yes, that must be it,' I had thought. It was a simple justification to excuse walking deeper.
Beyond the dozens of arcades, I set my gaze upon the first valley: a dead, furtive thing that none but myself could navigate. There was no stairway to lower oneself, but instead a steep escarpment enveloped by mats of the archways' scales. I summoned my raft and drifted in the open air for a safe descent- I'm quite versed in wading the third dimension freely. It became clear as I turned to face the terminal arcade that it was at the zenith of a mountain. I was uncertain if I was inside or out. The boundless valley must have been a full planet, winnowed of any life or geologic activity. Not a plant, fungus, fish, bird, mammal, insect, or any other living thing skittered about. Everything in this space was given definite, unchanging shape. Lacking such biological diversity, the cosmetic diversity left a marked impression. Cyclopean statues dotted the land below. Waterfalls that were stagnant... stagnant, not frozen, no... stood between floating obelisks and chalice-like craters. Stripped, oblong boulders lazed through the water, appearing as whales. Large impressions up hills and mountainsides gave the evoked thoughts of gargantuan traveling creatures or impressively identical mining operations. The chiming continued here, jumping between statues. These ringing idols were again covered in opalescent scales and had little in common with anthropogenic statues as I drew nearer for investigation. They were granitic formations, naturally resting as depictive spires. Spires that appeared as a terrible, upright, tusked cervid skeletons with bundles of veins that ended in hornlike flowers. It was my impression that their eerie erosive patterns were intentional displays of decadence. No manner of wind, rain, or life was present for natural decay to occur.
The journey exhausted me at this point, but I intended to pass the valley and reach the amphitheater or beyond. The chiming welcomed me at certain vantages, which bounced and rhymed with things ahead. I almost resolved to find a cave before going onward, but the discomfort of evident trespass would keep any sleep from being restful.
I beached myself on a high monolith just shy of the amphitheater, scouting for any threats among its abundant absence. I peered beyond the theater's steps and saw an open stone stage, which met flush with a plateau wall. I call it a plateau, but in reality, I believe it to be a mountain cleaved clean down its center. From its base to the top was a thin, unadorned opening. This vacant doorway housed a dark discomfort of indulgence. There were hues of black and dark blue, undulating and squirming with some depth. As a chime next to me rattled off, I saw a confluence of scales glow faintly down the amphitheater and into this dark entryway. Nodes along that path chimed as well, as if sending a message to whatever was within the mountain- this was the first circumstance that informed my egress. No less discomforting was the presence of ethereal rivers beginning to flow from the scales: they climbed to the sky in singular columns before fragmenting and exploring the ground below. The sniffing arms brought to mind aquatic hydrae, but my attention was ultimately redirected to the voidful orifice in the mountainside.
I felt compelled to enter, and nearly without the independence to reject such a draw. I'd never been unable to place the source of my desires until then, not in eons of traveling. I knew it must be some intrepid magic, beyond whatever spells I had previously experienced. Then I recounted my experiences... I knew cold, though I had never felt it before. I was compelled to continue, marked by chimes as I went on. I wished to stop in a cave. All these things which may portend my demise, or leave me defenseless to it, had occurred in such short order. My resilience had been my enemy, masking the clear enchantments put upon me to come to this horrid place. Still, I wasn't leaving the monolith, and I ached to join with the kaleidoscopic void within the mountain.
I thought back to the chimes, evidently tracking my progress. My conclusion, crazed as it may sound, was that there were living things... not living in our conventional sense, but of some sort, that resided behind these boundless walls. Either invisible or part of the squamous opalescence, these things were giving word of my arrival and progress to whatever lay behind their confluence. After deliberation, I elected sanity and rowed back the way I came. The chimes erupted, expediting my progress. Everything that seemed unliving reached out to me with treacherous desire. The obelisks, whalelike boulders, and the seeming statues warped and stretched. They no longer appeared as solid objects, but as dark splotches supplanted and fixed in my vision. I looked away, but they streaked back into the bounds of my vision like lines of black paint. The lines shook with a disgusting visage, invoking images of spiders squirming to escape their old husks. Upon surmounting the escarpment that gave rise to the arcade, they attempted to grasp at me. Gauging their distance was impossible, being set upon my vision, but I sense that they scarcely missed my neck. Continuing onward, the arches began to shrink, and the outer colonnade stretched as I ran through. The floor elongated and curved, and my legs along with them, as if intense intoxication had overtaken my body.
All chaos came to a halt when I fled the outer stairs. I immediately left the island and have no intention to return. I have no reference for what may have been luring me into that mountain void. Was it the Manifesture's prisoner? Perhaps the source that forced her to remain there? It may have been some alien creature, or a source of power for the chiming things. I admit, I have no idea. My resolution is that I will never return to the Manifesture, and recommend others follow my example. If even my own daemonic protections nearly failed, then I suspect most others would quickly devolve into thrall, stumbling forth to their demise.
1. Mother Cold, or Huereina, is known to extraplanar human societies as the Goddess of Winter. With no humans to be found in Dandoleon, her imprisonment by Chaimut left her with no hope of support.
2. Milin Orphi, titled the "Ancient Ithitar" (abridged to "Ancient" in this case), is the patriarchal commander of demons and devils alike. Known for colluding with Chaimut in the past, his machinations convert the cosmic entropy of his gods into moral decadence and may serve a function in the Manifesture. While theories of his assistance in constructing the prison are unsupported, the cervid rock formations in the Static Valley may be an intentional likeness to Orphi's typical visage.
Comments