The dwarves and the Second Sun
Far south, near the equator, there is a shiny sphere of light hovering miles above the salt desert: the Second Sun.
The dwarves believe that to be the source of the New World promised by the Demiurge, the perfect world that will slowly but steadily replace this one.
This growing new world, the New Cration, must not be disturbed. A circle land under the Second Sun, with a radius of hundreds of leagues, is declared taboo and untranslatable.
There are fortified monasteries that guard the premises of this forbidden holy land, but the border is so big it’s not that difficult to pass through and take a look.
Nobody ventured too deep into the New Creation. The closer you get to the Second Sun, the more intense the effects of its rays will be.
The light of the second sun creates. The surface touched by the light starts to grows things, things of all kinds. They can be plants, minerals, small animals, body parts of the humanoid or non-humanoid kind. A piece of cloth left under the creation rays can become a pond brimming with small fishes, a wooden cart can become a never seen before animal, a person can become a landscape full of life. The minds are affected too. The Second Sun will fill your head with ideas, images, visions of things that were, that will be, and impossible things not meant to be. Delirious prophecies.
The eyes are usually the first to be affected, with trees or rock or limbs coming out the eye sockets in bursts, like the explosion of a new reality.
The prospect of madness and disfigurement doesn’t stop the curious, the heretic, the thirsty for knowledge, the desperate for miracles. Many want to see what’s under the Second Sun or bathe in its impossible light. Most of them don’t return. Others run away at the first sign of transfiguring. Others are found warped and crazy by the monks.
One might think the terrifying experience would be punishment enough, but the dwarves don’t think so. The power of that holy light is an irresistible beacon: there’s always someone who believes to be the smartest and to have found a way to tame the creation rays. If someone has, they have not come back to speak of it. The trespassers must be given a harsh sentence that will deter others.
Who breaks the taboo is taken care of: everything that has grown on them is scraped off or otherwise removed. That usually includes the eyes. The now blind trespasser is then sent away by ship, on the northern continent. Some merciful nuns may give the exiled dwarf a musical instrument or a pet, something else to help them to survive as beggars.
The nature of the Second Sun is a contentious topic among scholars and theologians, so much so that the debate can be seen as one of the factors of the long-lasting diffidence between Axam e Uxali, the northern and southern continents.
The Holy Scriptures are a group of texts at the foundation of most religions: they tell the story of the cosmos before the departure of the Demiurge and the immediate events surrounding their disappearance.
While every church, sect, cult have put their spin on these texts, they have some core facts agreed upon by everyone. One of these facts is the shape of the multiversal cosmos before it collapsed on the material world due to the Great War. The various Hells, Heavens, Elemental Planes, Primordial Kingdoms that composed the Beyond are now part of the world. You can physically visit the Pits of Tartarus, and towns and pastures build over them. You can swim in waters shaken by the concept of Chaos itself. You can eat an ice cream made with ice that is the embodiment of the idea of ice.
The old cosmology does not account for two phenomenons with the clear marks of an extradimensional shard: the Black Star and the Second Sun.
The Black Star is the source of the power of the Antipope: described as a crystal by the few witnesses, it’s an object of pure Negative Energy. Conversely, the sphere of light that hovers over the salt desert, the Second Sun, is thought to be made by pure Positive Energy.
The Holy Scriptures mention neither these objects nor these sorts of energies, so the scholars had to fill in the gaps with theories and speculations.
The concept of positive and negative charges is generally accepted. Positive Elements emit energy and promote life, while Negative Elements soak energies and stifle growth.
The Radiant Auroras and the Steam Oasis are Positive Elemental phenomena, and they allow the Elves to grow lush crops in the middle of the frigid tundra. Similarly, Elemental minerals and Elemental Lightning are the staple foods of many animals: the positive charge makes nutrients something inedible.
The Negative Elements of Salt, Ash, and Dust create deserts that trap any energy. That’s why they are breeding ground for undead of various species: the patterns that make the souls do not disperse in the Mana Field but keep their shape, creating a hollow being hungry for life force. Mummification with Elemental Salt is the base of dwarven burial rites: through this process, the soul of the deceased does not disperse and, once the body reaches the Nirvana Caves, it can join the ghosts of the ancestors.
The question is: how it’s possible that a positive or negative charge exists without a medium?
The scholars of Axam think it’s just a matter of concentration: the Second Sun is just radiance, positive charged fire, the difference is that it’s just very charged.
The scholars of Uxali see the question in reverse: the Second Sun is pure “creation energy”, the positive elements are an impure e depleted version of it.
This “chicken and egg” scenario is not inane, it has deep theological ramifications. Why did the Holy Scriptures don’t mention these phenomena? Did they not have a home in the Beyond? Why none of the forefathers of the great nations, the Devils, the Angles, the Djinns, left any information about it? A lot of information about the laws of magic and nature passed through the teaching of those divine ancestors, why skip this fundamental one?
The Dwarves theologians posit that the Second Sun is qualitatively different than a simple Positive Element: it doesn’t just help life grow, it creates life ex nihilo. And not only does it generates life, but it also generates matter and ideas from nothingness as well.
The only creator is the Demiurge, therefore this must be its work. They promised to return ushering a new and perfect world, so this must be it. It’s a slow genesis.
This gradual view of the coming of the New World clashes with the messianic view of the main axam religions, Diabolism and Angelism. These specular and opposite churches pivot their belief system on the promise of a Chosen One that will conduct the true believers in the new perfect creation. Every prophecy tells about a sudden Revelation, not a long and slow discovery.
The dwarves use arguments to further their version: the Second Sun is new, it’s something that happened after the War; it’s in a perfect position, far from the most inhabited land, giving it time to grow; the fact that is over the salt desert, a negative element that would absorb and control the creative power seems too appropriate to be random; the Second Sun is getting brighter and brighter widening the circle of its influence.
The Diabolist and Angelist respond reducing all the effects to known facts nature and magic; they point out how the Black Star, the obvious counterpart of the Second Sun, doesn’t fit any possible divine plan; and what will happen when, in theory, the light of the Second Sun reach civilization? All life will be warped and merge with the world? Such annihilation doesn’t seem like the action of a good god.
This endless back and forth never helped the diplomatic relationship between the Dwarven Federation and the Axam’s powers, the Holy Infernal Empire, and the Anglic Unison. If only the Dwarves tweaked a little their belief they could go under the wing of one of the other churches, fostering collaborations and harmony. The Elves and the Gnomes did so. But no, the dwarves had to keep their fame of intransigent stubbornness.
Politics and Economics eventually trumped religious concern and now The Dwarven Federation is a good ally of the Infernal Empire. Still, you can see a Dwarf cleric and a Diabolist priest argue vehemently about the theological implication of the Second Sun.
Fistfights are quite common either.
Dwarven beggar payers are the only dwarves most people in the countryside of Axam will ever see.Dwarves come to the northern continent as a sailor and rarely (if ever) leave the harbor cities. Exploring a foreign land, especially for pleasure and not strictly business, is like “cheating” on the motherland. Home is the most beautiful place in the world, don’t even dare to look at other landscapes with googly eyes! So even if dwarvish people as a reputation of being travelers and wanderers, they will always be a walk away from a ship that could bring them back home.
This deep-rooted attachment to the land makes exile one of the harshest punishments.A serious crime like murder will be punished in the Holy Infernal Empire with death and some undead indignity, like being made in a zombie scarecrow. In the Angelic Unison, a dreadful mix of brainwashing and forced labor will make deplorable criminals contribute to the “greater good”.In the Dwarven Federation, you are marked and sent away, never to be welcomed in any familiar place, be it a dwarven district in a city or the homeland itself. Not only in life but in the afterlife too: Dwarven are all buried in the Nirvana Caves, a vast underground structure where the souls can “live” with their ancestors, creating a ghost underground citadel. This honor is not for the worst of the worst, the one sent away.Sometimes the mark of the exile has to be made: the executioner will carve a letter in the back of the hands, on the forehead, on the cheek, based on the specific crime. Some will be blinded others are already blind.One of the most common reasons for exile is to break the taboo of the Second Sun. The Second Sun is a sphere of light that hovers over the Salt Desert and has the power to create: everything touched by its ray will grow stuff, be it plants, rocks, animals. To be illuminated by the Second Sun is to become a landscape, a world. The eyes are the first part to be affected. The fools that cross the forbidden line and go to stare directly at the sun will become blind, with miniature trees or mountains or nests growing in their eye sockets.
All the exiled have and hard life in the foreign countries but the blind especially: they are not welcome in the dwarven district of the harbor cities. It may stay in town, in other neighborhoods, but they will have to face the insults of the compatriots they met. If you end up blinded by the Second Sun you deserve derision and scorn: you have been too stupid or too prideful, not pious enough or not strong-willed enough. Or a combination of those despicable traits.While other exiled may carve a place beside their compatriot aboard in the seaside cities, most blind beggars have then to venture inland. There, their exotic pets and their strange songs will earn them some copper coins.Many beggars are given an animal and an instrument by merciful nuns, so to earn something.The most common pets are the Bear-Cat, an arboreal omnivore that lives in the thick pine tree forest of the coast of the Federation. They have a strong smell of pine and resin, an olfactory camouflage that becomes a perpetual reminder of home.Furthermore, dwarves are famous for their mechanical instruments, and the beggar will usually play hurdy-gurdies, the “wheeled violins”. While difficult to master, the hurdy-gurdy is relatively easy at the beginner level. Only a few beggars were musicians before the exile, the most of them had other jobs: their repertoire is limited to simple songs every dwarf knows: lullabies, children rhymes, religious hymns, sea shanty, salacious tavern songs.Some beggars find out to have some artistic talent some even composed their songs. These compositions can be about what brought them there, the reason for their exile: most of them feature what they saw under the Second Sun. Other songs are songs of sorrow and longing, heartbreaking litanies about what they will never be able to see again.
