Clear Rays
"Not all syimlin wish to give up their cultists. More adherents means more power, more prestige. This was especially true during the times before the banquet, when the deities lived faelareign lifespans and holy inheritance wars raged.
"Rivals wanted to brag about their follower numbers so others believed them superior. Thus, eons ago, an enterprising deity created marks. These blessings bestowed a tiny bit of divine Touch upon those who carried them.
"While followers vied for such Touch, others regretted accepting the marks. The reasons they wished to discard them varied, but it became obvious, many syimlin did not want to remove their blessing. They wanted enormous follower counts, and they ignored the will of the lesser.
"This is why Sun Adherents developed Clear Rays."
~Elthe, High Priestess of Sun
from The Sun Healer's Manual
from The Sun Healer's Manual
***reference to self harm
Clear Rays
by retired Sun High Priestess,Kasoris
In this article:
all artwork by Shade Melodique
The Problem
Lorgan asked me for a brief explanation of marks and Clear Rays, as many of our companions may not be familiar with them. I cover marks in a supplemental document (forthcoming!).
It cannot be overstated, how zealousy ancient syimlin guarded their influence. If their chosen inheritor succeeded them, they knew their legacy would continue, and their reign remembered. To promote this, blessings became an integral part of worship, for they not only linked followers to a deity in a personal way, they could pass the control of a specific mark on to an approved heir.
For the unlucky, like, say, children who did not adhere to a syimlin's cult as strictly as their parents, the mark bound them to a being they either did not, or no longer, worshipped. Stress, depression, and self-harm became typical reactions as the faelareign begged for the marks' removal and were denied.
Most syimlin refused this small nicety. They assumed allowing followers to leave would make them appear weak, ungenerous, and not the kind of being that could attract and hold a following. And if the follower planned to leave them for another syimlin's cult?
Sometimes punishment ensued.
Marks should be nearly invisible against the skin, a bare brush of color that does not attract attention.
Why? In the past, more overt marks made identifying, and clashing with, rival cultists easier. The blessing, which was supposed to be a personal link between a deity and a faelareign, prompted violence rather than peaceful coexistence.
As the grumbling about the marks increased, ancient syimlin opted to make them less obvious to causal observers. Instead of placing them on hands, they set them on areas normally covered by clothing or footwear, like the upper arm, or the arch of the foot.
This, of course, did not work for water-dwelling dryans, nymphs and sprites, so the deities gave them transparent marks, almost indetectable except by those who knew what to look for.
Research
Desperate, followers searched for a way to remove the blessing. The most vocal, and the most desperate, were ex-priests and priestesses who no longer saw guidance from, and attachment to, their deity. They searched religious texts and ancient works for a way to remove the marks, with little success.
Until Rethardiel.
Rethardiel
Half dryan, half elfine, Rethardiel had a mid-life crisis and decided Sun no longer represented him and his spiritual needs. He found more kinship with then-Water Aranabellis, a Sendelwrek dryan of his mother's people.
Nervous about the confrontation with the most powerful syimlin, he slipped to an altar in the dead of night and asked for release. He felt the soft presence of Sun, and a tug on his arm where the mark lay--and it faded away.
No demands to stay, no judgement, just an acceptance he needed to move on.
Rethardiel, an accomplished whizan, recognized the combination of spells Sun used to remove his blessing. Curious, he dove into their history, searching for a way to combine them so any healer could use the spell, not just a deity.
He firmly believed Sun had provided him with the means on purpose, and he thanked his ex-syimlin for the honor.
The Solution
Rethardiel discovered the information he sought buried deep in a Sun temple archive known as the Abundance. Within an ancient tome, a long-dead Sun priest described a ritual he and his peers created to eradicate the Syimlin of Whirlwinds' Touch from his followers.
What this syimlin had done was not written in the pages; the priest only stated that it was very, very bad, and that his adherents, as one, disbanded his cult.
But they still held his Touch. He recalled them through the bond, and desperate to shed his influence, they turned to Sun healers for help.
And help they did.
They created a meld-spell through trial and error, developing a combination of Bonfire (modern Retravigance), Sincere Lucidation, Compromised Ascension, Caloothe, Raingot, and Scardevane. Each had a purpose, each had a potency, and together, they formed Mark Eraser.
Mark Eraser was not a name Rethardiel liked, being a sophisticated whizan with sophisticated tastes, so decided to honor Sun by naming his version Clear Rays.
The Abundance burned just before the Banquet. Sun saved the documents, but the structure and relics were destroyed. Might this have led to his decision to form the Gift of Life pact with Death? Perhaps.
His followers built a new archive that became his primary temple on Talis, Spiral Sun Temple. The archive outgrew Spiral Sun, and the entirety moved to Resplended, a building across from the banquet hall and one that is forever growing to house the new while retaining the old.
Clear Rays
Clear Rays did as it said; it used Sun's rays to scrub away unwanted marks. Because this was a Sun spell and linked to Ga Son (who is the eldest syimlin and someone thought to have created the planet Sensour), other syimlin did not protest outwardly (in private was a far different tale).
Bonfire burned the marks, Sincere Lucidation added Sun's Touch (where the Rays come from), Compromised Ascension gathered the 'ash', Caloothe soothed the skin while Raingot washed the 'ash' away, and Scardevane eliminated residue.
Rethardiel shared the spell with his Sun-healing friends. They, in secret, removed marks. After a few years, the practice became wide-spread enough, the healers overtly advertised the service, and had far more patients than they expected. No matter one's syimlin or ability to pay, Sun temples removed blessings on everyone who wished it, and the practice continues to this day.
I suppose it's obvious, that some syimlin detested this spell. The problem was, if they attacked Sun temple healing quarters and eliminated healers using it, they risked the wrath of Sun—and no one, EVER, wanted him to look on them in rage. This reticence allowed the use to grow and become a foundational healing spell among Sun adherents.
Under the heavy clouds of fear because their syimlin might not approve, other healing orders left the casting to Sun healers.
Once the Banquet ended the most violent syimlin and therefore the inheritance wars, Clear Rays came out of the shadows. As time progressed, it became an entrenched part of worship, and rather than experience the embarrassment that they could not attract a following to replace disenchanted members, syimlin removed their blessing themselves.
Even that waned, when religion fell out of favor and syimlin fell into the realm of myth. Millennia passed, and Clear Rays became an esoteric spell known by healing scholars and few others.
Modern Clear Rays
When the Flayn Monarchy invaded Sensour, beliefs were flipped on their heads. Interstellar peoples were real! And so were the syimlin who fought against them. Death deities from around the globe destroyed the fleet, and the common peoples realized that beings they thought were characters in myths became the deciding factor in who won.
Cults swelled with new, exuberant members. And, inevitably, some became disillusioned and sought a way out. Greater syimlin let them go, but not so with the lesser.
Why? Most lesser syimlin had never experienced a boon of followers, and were desperate to retain them.
While magically gifted, their strength never equaled that of the greater syimlin and their mantles, so they often remained local deities with no influence outside their small spheres. The revelation that divines existed caused larger cults to overflow, and seeing the glut, people turned to local deities for spiritual needs. Perhaps they possessed no mantles, but they were still divine.
With the growth came new power and influence.
And, as with the syimlin during the inheritance wars, they did not want to give up their new-found prestige. More followers meant greater status, and they jealously clung to their adherents. Temple scholars, realizing the need, taught healers Clear Rays, and once again, they cleared blessings away from the living.
Greater syimlin have mantles that increase their magical power. Only a handful of lesser syimlin do (like the Lord of Pineapple), and they received them after the Banquet. This means mantles, for the most part, are not part of lesser syimlins' divinity.
Faelareign start the journey to become a deity when they are either 1) exposed to a great deal of magic power, absorb it, and survive, or 2) are the child of a syimlin. If they meet certain power milestones, they are welcome to ask Death for the Gift of Life. There is no guarantee she will grant it, but if she does, then a new syimlin joins the ranks.
To make it simpler for modern healers, seventy-five years previous, Sun's high priestess, Elethe, created a phrase in Sonkowtrow, Sun's Song, the holy language. Words spoken in Sonkowtrow have power, so added a weight to the healing that previous incarnations lacked. The phrase prepares both the healer and the patient for more intensive spellcasting.
Elethe trained the healers to use the phrase muevre pueplon virche to start the healing. Through intense repetition, one could recite the phrase as they mentally sped through the spells, casting them quickly before an enraged syimlin realized what was going on.
An added benefit of using Sonkowtrow is that, if spoken by the ex-adherent, their desire to be rid of the mark would infuse the words, and the magic would respond accordingly.
As blessings require consent (and Ga Son has not been kind to those who transgressed this), the ex-follower is now cut-off from the syimlin.
Often, the Sun temple helps the ex-adherent to relocate, for while a syimlin cannot punish ex-followers, the remaining adherents are under no such mandate.
Clear Rays is as important as ever when it comes to religion; my daughter Vantra has proven this. She expands on what she was taught, broadening the uses in surprising ways. She may well form a new area of study without realizing it.
Muevre pueplon virche means "flee dark magic".
Dark, in this case, means unwanted, something that depresses the soul. It does not refer to an inherent badness or evilness in the blessing, as some uninformed cultists like to think.
In the Evenacht, the holy language works a bit differently. If one is a powerful magic user, Sonkowtrow phrases actually cast the spell, no silent recitation of the longer cant involved.
Reckoning phrases work much the same way, as they provides ghosts without a magical background a way to manipulate Touch. Touch is how ghosts interact with everything, so it's a necessity.
In both cases, the desire to succeed must back the spells, or they will fail.
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