Orbitoclasts
Suspended in eternal, silent drift high above central Hazlan, the Orbitoclasts are a cluster of knife-thin, jagged stones—shaped uncannily like surgical tools used for cranial intrusion, particularly the dreaded orbitoclast once used to perform lobotomies.
Each spire hangs in defiance of gravity, slate-gray and blood-veined, turning slowly in place. Their movement is not dictated by wind, magnetism, or arcana—but thought. Scholars, madmen, and mage-lords alike have recorded how the Orbitoclasts change course in response to concentrated mental activity, psychic trauma, or the dying screams of spellcasters.
The Orbitoclasts are a floating constellation of thought-surgery, dispassionately circling the psychic wounds of Hazlan. To observe them too long is to feel your inner self unravel. To study them is to invite their touch.
“They’re not in the sky. They’re in your head. Look again.”
Geography
- The formation consists of seven primary monoliths—long, thin, metallic-black spears of stone ranging from 20 to 80 feet in length, all of which maintain a rough, ever-shifting orbit around one another.
- Dozens of smaller shards trail them like debris in orbit, some spinning, some stationary, some pulsing faintly with internal light.
- From a distance, they seem like massive, suspended surgical implements: bone awls, piercing hooks, and thin scalpels, all polished to a glinting sheen despite the windless sky.
Mages who approach too closely without protective spells report migraines, hallucinations, and bleeding from the eyes or tear ducts. Some claim to hear the hum of metal scraping bone.
Localized Phenomena
- Mental Interference: Spellcasters near the Orbitoclasts often experience fragmented memory, incoherent thoughts, or the sudden resurfacing of suppressed traumas.
- Psychic Feedback: Psionic creatures report being “peeled open” by the Orbitoclasts’ unseen influence, as if their thoughts are being scraped clean or forcibly excised.
- Memory Shedding: Prolonged exposure leads to thought-drain—the gradual loss of language, identity, or personality, particularly in those who cast divination or enchantment spells.
The spires also attract flocks of mindless birds, drifting in slow, hypnotic spirals, endlessly circling until they drop from the sky, brains liquified.
No consensus exists as to what the Orbitoclasts are or how they float:
- Hazlani arcanists believe they are extrusions of the Mists, drawn upward by an unseen force reacting to Hazlan’s increasingly unstable Weave.
- Psionicists claim the Orbitoclasts are dreaming machines, formed to harvest unwanted thoughts, perhaps created by an ancient race of surgical celestials or the God-Brain of Bluetspur.
- Cultists of the Godless Spine (a secret sect of self-mutilating philosophers) believe the Orbitoclasts will one day descend and pierce the skull of the world, granting ultimate clarity in death.
In rare moments, one or more of the monoliths aligns with a leyline nexus on the surface below. These events, called "lobotomies" by locals, trigger sudden surges of magical or psychic energy in nearby villages, often resulting in:
- Sleepwalking outbreaks, where entire communities act out forgotten traumas.
- Psionic bleedstorms, with telekinetic winds or levitating objects.
- The sudden disappearance of minds—people found awake, eyes wide, entirely vacant.
These events are recorded and dreaded, especially during astral conjunctions or new moons.
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