Dauntless Light, Faithless Grief
Overview
Research regarding "Rebekah and Abishek of the Dauntless Light chapter and their conflict with the Child of Faithless Grief in the post-patrician era of Highguard" commissioned by Watt Lambrook, the Minister of Historical Research during the Summer Solstice 388YE. The minister specifically requested Octavia of Stream's Source Spire undertake the research. The Dauntless Light are reasonably well known at Anvil, and the Department of Historical Research extends thanks to them for their assistance in undertaking the study into their origins and the malignant creature known as the "Child of Faithless Grief."
The original document was a single block of text; the Department has done its best to introduce some section headers to make it slightly easier to read.
Dauntless Light, Faithless Grief
Being an account by Octavia of Stream’s Source of the lives of Rebekah and Abishek of the Dauntless Light chapter and their conflict with the Child of Faithless Grief in the post-patrician era of Highguard, by way of a survey of the history of the entire nation of Highguard for context
Frequent readers of the writings of Octavia Stream’s Source will know that she (I) takes a somewhat idiosyncratic approach to history, inspired by a long and enduring working friendship with the eternal Leviathan and its heralds. She (I) - and the spire of which she is a proud member! - are dedicated to the pursuit of history as an exploration of origins. When one wishes to understand the stone that lies on the beach, one must understand the mountain of which it was once a part.
So it has been with this research, into the Dauntless Light chapter of Highguard, and in particular the conflict between two of their members and a being known as the Child of Faithless Grief. To understand this tale - at least, what record remains of it in the historical record - one must understand the history of the Dauntless Light chapter: and hence the history of the territory of the Necropolis and of the Highborn themselves.
Highborn History
Long ago, fourteen ships landed on the shores of the Bay of Catazar. They were refugees, fleeing a plague that had destroyed their way of life. They were led by paragons of virtue, Atun and Atuman, away from a society that had for the most part fatalistically embraced death long before it actually came to them. This history has been well-documented in our time - there is no need to repeat the sterling efforts of Imperial scholars to the Sarcophan Delves some years ago. Atun and Atuman were real people - there is no question of that - and while one left and the other stayed there is no question in the mind of any serious scholar - even those liable to be sceptical of the Highborn approach to history - of these facts. Atuman founded a city in this new land, and it was called after the name that had been given to it: that is, it was the territory of Pharos. By all accounts his rule was fair. Accounts differ on whether he took the crown he was offered - the sources are extremely scant here, and Highborn scholars are quite clear he did not, so let us assume for the sake of argument he did not. He ruled. He died. He was buried in a tomb that it is said was his own design, on a headland looking out to sea. The Tomb of Atuman stands to this day on the edge of the city that we now call the Necropolis, looking out for danger and a sister lost to sea and sky.
Which is all very nice. But then, as the Highborn are perhaps less fond of pointing out, this new settlement eventually fell into corruption, with many of the “old ways” of Umshalla recurring here by Catazar. The Patrician’s Council - resting as it did on hereditary principles - fell into bad habits. The Tutamen family are somewhat notorious in the modern day - their heirs having led to the disaster of the so-called “dry patricians” - and indeed the historical sources reveal them to be an extremely noxious bunch. The Saravos family and the family Tassata (both cadet branches - a set of twins at some early point in the line divided their seat on the council thereafter) eventually left in frustration at the political in-fighting, and of course they went on to lead the founding of two of the great cities of our Empire, along with, for instance, the Kehment family who were driven out of Casinea by, yes, the Tutamen.
Where in this are the chapters? They began to be founded on the edge of the nation controlled from Pharos, in Bastion, Casinea, and Reikos. Not really in Pharos, it must be said, which makes the claims of any chapter of the Necropolis who date their origin to before the civil war somewhat optimistic. Here it is that the Dauntless Light enters the equation, because they do claim this - it deserves examination. Conversations with chapter historians reveal them to truly believe that their chapterhouse is one of the first structures built after Atun’s arrival on Sanctuary Sand - specifically, the lighthouse, traditionally lit by a brazier but now by Urizeni lightstone. Now - this lighthouse is, indeed, old - very old. It is hard to say to be sure, but it could date back to ancient history - before Terunael. Yet there are also stones here in the foundation and in the brick that look like Casinean stone and which bear the hallmarks of late Umshallan design. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the lighthouse that was built here in the time of Atun, but that it may have been a re-building of a structure that was ancient even then.
Clearly, however, this was not a chapterhouse at the time, for there were no chapters. The small town here now that constitutes the chapter and its supporting institutions probably existed, almost certainly originally to tend and support the lighthouse here. It is unlikely that any patrician family directly ruled here: a site such as this - tied as it was intimately to the legacy of Highborn naval exploration - would have fallen under the domain of the Navigator themselves. While this office was not free of the corruption that dogged the rest of the Highborn, it was for the most part a fair and neutral arbiter.
It is for this reason that the claim of the Dauntless Light to have been a chapter neutral in the civil war is a plausible one that it first seemed. After all, very famously the last Navigator, Permion, in his rejection of the Patrician’s Council in favour of the Assembly of the Virtuous, provoked the Patricians to the inciting incident of that war - Permion and his family’s death lit a fire that ultimately purged the Patricians from Highguard, and ended the reign of those born high by virtue of blood rather than virtue. The Dauntless Light may not formally have been a chapter when the war began, but clearly they were leaning that way, and the death of their direct liege probably pushed things over.
Why, then, did they not participate in the war? Their records are clear and on this occasion are reasonably well-supported by documentary evidence: they acted as a neutral party because they focused on those who had lost everything in the war - those displaced, wounded, widowed, orphaned. There is also a somewhat more cynical view that their records do not support - they may have, to a degree, been hedging their bets. It is easy to forget from the far end of history, but victory for the chapters was by no means certain. Ultimately, however, the decision to act as a sanctuary saved many lives, including some who would go on to found some of the great chapters of later history
Their decision to remain neutral did not win them favours with the new government that ruled from the White City, however. While many they had saved did move to Bastion and Casinea, and spoke in favour of them, it is fair to say that anyone living in Pharos who was not resolutely on the side of the Assembly of the Virtuous from the off was met with much suspicion and hostility. Obviously the city itself had burned to the ground, and there were many dead to bury. The Assembly of the Virtuous formally dissolved the charter of Pharos soon after assuming power, and designated the site of it as property of the state and as a burial-ground. The reality of life for many in Pharos - or the Necopolis, as it was now named - was a somewhat grim one in which day by day they raised war memorials to memorialise the dead of a war that, for the most part, they had lost.
An aside from your author. I can hear, even now, the cry of my dear Leontes in my ear. "Where’s the pie, Octavia," he’ll cry. "Where’s the sausage! I don’t care about the life story of the pig, you infernal creature!" He is very dear to me - and probably not wholly wrong here. This has all been a long lead up to get us to where the matter at hand begins to crest, a wave that comes in from the deep ocean of time.
It is the decades following the building of the Necropolis and the end of the war. Chapters have begun to be founded in Necropolis - by those who had definitively sided against the Patricians by and large - and governance of the territory has been released back to the chapters who dwell there to a large degree. It no longer feels - as sources attest that it did in the years soon after the war - like an unsettled territory under occupation by victors. It feels Highborn. Yet, look beneath the surface, and we do see in accounts of the time traces of what came before. Necropolis is politically the lesser entity in most matters pertaining to the Highborn’s governance. The Highborn Way - which resembles but is not identical to our modern faith - is, while bedded down here - still something which in living memory had been spread to Necropolis - the outside of the old patrician polity returning to this inverted and depopulated metropole.
Rebecca and Abishek
Two individuals, a husband and wife called Rebecca and Abishek of the Dauntless Light, are members of the Dauntless Light chapter. More than that they are members in good standing of the Assembly of the Highborn, which as we have discussed is much rarer for members of a chapter neutral in the civil war. Their names appear in certain long records of such things that still exist in Bastion. They are not easy to search - it was possible here only because the research request gave their names, chapter and approximate era, and even then it took a solid month of work. Still: it is a key part of this story, because a little is recorded of the vision that Abishek undertook, guided by Rebecca.
He claimed to have been within a great crowd of people, pushing past him on their way somewhere. He had a distinct sensation of being lost in the crowd - of looking for someone, a guardian perhaps, from whose hands his own had slipped. As he had this sensation of being in a vast crowd, so did Rebecca, and they were not initially able to see each other - they were in some sense without each other’s guidance. When Rebecca reached about her instinctively, interacting directly with the vision as a guide priest is of course warned not to do, the hand she took was that of a youth. This youth gazed at her in an “unholy manner” and she began to be overcome by an intense spiritual pressure - this is the terms in which she describes it - just as Abishek began to perceive the vision’s collapse. He saw enough in the vision to identify the location he was in as Umshalla, though given the persistent Highborn belief at this that one’s past lives were limited to one’s own bloodline (that would only truly be shaken following the First Empress’ revelation), it is hard to know how reliable this is.
As the two fell out of the Tent of the Visionary, they overturned a mirror which smashed on the ground. This will be important later. Indeed it is not certain that they did overturn it. In light of later events it seems not unlikely it smashed at the moment the vision ended of its own accord!. A team of exorcists were quickly fetched after it became clear Rebecca was showing early signs of possession, but after some effort they removed the presence that was about her - or so they thought. This will also be important later. This creature was certainly that which I (Octavia) have written and researched before: a wraith, a phantom of the beyond, a labyrinth spirit. This account, which in my earlier extensive survey of visions in search of such beings I did not find (which goes to show that a failure to find a source is not evidence of its non-existence), seems quite definitive - it was one of the “adversaries of life”, as the Axou might put it.
Mirrors
The account of the vision ends here. What follows I have managed to piece together painstakingly by following the document trail, but it is scant. I am grateful for the assistance of the eternal Leviathan who was able to offer some clarifying remarks about aspects of the incident, though only after I had recovered enough to remind it of the details. I was also approached by the “Speaker for the Drowned”, the herald of the Sunken Rope in whose custody Eilian Sweetwater and, I understand, the Child of Faithless Grief reside - they were able to provide an account of some of the events I describe, though from the somewhat warped perspective of a herald, of course. I say “I” here because I want to emphasise to the reader that this is my interpretation of events based on a multitude of sources. History is dead, and yet alive and all around us, and it speaks to us in deep currents that we must learn to swim with care.
The mirror smashed into three major pieces, which are called by some of the more mystically-inclined accounts of the incident “Weeper”, “Sufferance”, and “Fondness”. Scholars of astronomancy might well note these names with interest. It may be nothing! I am Urizeni. Anyway: someone picks them up - their name is lost to us - and is immediately affected by them presumably. They are the primary anchors of the spectre that has now been unleashed. This spectre was - is - called “the Wayward Child” or “Griefwalker” by some accounts, but the Child of Faithless Grief - the name used by the herald of the Two-who-are-One - is as good a name as any.
Faithless Grief
As other accounts of such beings suggest, it did not act in the open, at least at first. It is more accurate to say perhaps that it was a haunting that first affected many within the Dauntless Light, and then spread beyond, across all of Necropolis. A haunting of a person - what some inexactly call a possession - would always begin with the sighting of the child or youth in a crowd, in a recurrence of the originating vision. This was a haunting of the self - in the sense that it became clear on examination that the afflicted would require an exorcism, of no rank less than the ninth on any occasion (i.e. a considerable effort) but also of place, in that there was a distinct belief at the time that it was, or had become, bound to the Necropolis itself. Those who fell wholly under its influence one might call cultists, but this is an inexact term because it did not engender worship. It is more accurate perhaps to compare them to those lost to the madness of the horror of Screed.
While the spirit obviously did not control them directly, when under its influence individuals consistently exhibited four clear symptoms:
- a) the dreamless-disconnection from the self associated with the state of excommunication
- b) more disturbingly, an inability to draw spiritual strength from auras (possibly auras of any kind, possibly just auras created through liao - this is unclear and I am not a theologian by any means)
- c) a disinterest in or disconnection from collective acts of faith and in the Way as a whole
- d) a deep obsession focused on grief and loss that they had personally suffered.
When they gave in to the latter, they often began to experience a fifth symptom: guiding dreams of prophecy that they felt a strong impulse to see fulfilled. Many resisted - those with a trained or innate heroic will were still able to push back against the dark - but many succumbed and gave themselves to this so-called “faithless grief”.
The names for its anchors were either given by those seeking to combat these “Griefstricken” (I use this as a proper noun for clarity), or, disturbingly, by the Griefstricken themselves. They became objects of obsession for these poor individuals, who came to believe that somehow the creature was able to grant them visions of the beyond or connect them to those they had lost. Consider, again, the history of Necropolis. The livid scars of the civil war. A faith, carefully layered on, now beginning to unravel.
The response from Bastion is - there is no easy way to say this - somewhat cruel. The Thundering Tide and the Granite Pillar were deployed to quarantine the territory rapidly once the situation became widely known. The clearest accounts of this are found in war diaries of those serving in the armies. They are somewhat mixed in their feelings towards this act. All see it as a Vigilant act by the Assembly to cut off the poison of the affliction, but many wanted to journey into the territory and take the fight to the Griefstricken. The Assembly of the Virtuous declined. To be completely fair, some accounts of the time do suggest this was in part because of a wish to avoid invading the Necropolis with the armies of the virtuous twice in a century. Still - the decision not to act meant many more suffered.
Eventually, the chapter of the Dauntless Light and their allies began to make progress against the dark. They confiscated two of the three anchors and besieged the adherents of the Child in the fortification known as the First Sentinel. I note that to this day the woods of Highrod are profoundly haunted. It is generally believed by historians that the first First Sentinel was severely damaged during a bitter conflict between an occupying force loyal to the patricians during the civil war, but these accounts cast some doubt on that, and I do think perhaps many of these details have been carefully elided from many subsequent Highborn histories (and were only unearthed because, as I say, of the considerable resources and focus that the Department of Historical Research of modern times has at its disposal, despite the predations of our masked critics). I think it quite likely, on balance, that some accounts of the end of the civil war actually blur in details of this conflict, so as to obscure the truth - or, as my Highborn colleagues would say, to illuminate the actions of the virtuous.
They did not destroy the anchors, and in this they erred I think, but it is a forgivable error and perhaps not one at all. We have the benefit, today, of the insights of the Axou into these creatures: at this time they did not. They believed - and to be fair they could have been right - that to destroy its anchors would simply make the remaining ones more potent, amplifying the effects of the haunting that arose in its wake and reifying the presence of the spectre. There are no accounts of this in other accounts of such things; yet also each account is different from the others. Perhaps it was true - perhaps not. They believed it.
As such they believed they had to entirely destroy the creature to be sure of dealing with it, and that is certainly the preferred method. However they were denied access to True Liao. If before I was reserved in my judgement, here I do not reserve it: having studied the matter, I believe the Highborn Assembly of the time denied this request for political reasons alone. It is a disturbing finding because - for all I might quip about the Highborn approach to history - I respect the founding nation of our Empire deeply and believe they have been a profound force for virtue in the world. Here, they were not. So it goes.
Sealing
Abishek and Rebecca, and those of the Dauntless Light who rallied to them, were aided throughout their struggle by eternal allies of Winter, who from the description appear likely to have been the beings we now know as Khobel Tavah but are identified only as “bonded creatures of the abyssal depths of Winter, skilled in warding and disliking the Child for its pretentions to being a source of prophecy”. Some accounts suggest they may have had a long existing relationship with the magisters of the Dauntless Light - who, after all, are and have always been keepers of an ancient lighthouse, which Marriage Vows seem to have a certain fondness for. The Eternals had offered guidance and some material support to efforts thus far, but now, with True Liao denied to them, the Dauntless Light asked for aid in sealing the Child away.
Using the two anchors in their possession, they managed to force the Child to manifest aboard a ship, within careful wards. They sailed this ship to Nikephoros: the lighthouse there holds below it a sunken regio that the herald of Khobel Tavah described as the heart of “an old temple built in forgotten ages”. They forced the creature into the cave and into the regio, and the Eternal sealed the regio behind them.
Abishek died during this final struggle. The account of this is unclear and the herald of the Salt Pair would not be drawn on this, but it seems as if the closing of the door itself, severing the link between the Child of Faithless Grief and the material world, may have severed his own life force in some fashion. Rebekah did not die at this time, but by all accounts her mental and physical health degraded and she threw herself off “Rebekah’s Leap”. Disturbingly one piece of material I found suggests it was known by this name in her time - i.e. she was not the first such Rebekah. I dislike this. History ought not to rhyme.
The Anchors
Of the two anchors of the Child in the possession of the Dauntless Light, one was buried in Abishek’s tomb. This was “Sufferance”. The wardens of the Necropolis would not permit me to open the door, and apparently my name is on some sort of list so I am especially not permitted (it was one time!) - I think they would probably be open to the Highborn Assembly passing a suitable Statement of Principle, however. The other… is more difficult.
It is hard to say exactly what happened afterwards because this is where the Eternal interests ceased and where Highborn accounts do not care to share any detail. The Dauntless Light chapter themselves, who were obliging in making their chapterhouse available to me, were not aware of this history. Khobel Tavah’s herald seemed to think that the magisters who had a close relationship with their masters died or were cast out by the rest of the chapter at this time. There is, visible through a careful study of absence in the historical record, a palpable sense that people wanted to simply move on. People are like this. I met someone the other day who had not heard about the Cold Sun crisis a handful of years ago because they had spent the entire period trading metals in the Sarcophan Delves. I count amongst my dear friends a man who was a sworn follower of the heretic Yael before the revelation of her lies. And so on. So, too, with the crisis of the Child of Faithless Grief.
It seems likely, though I am not sure, that those exiled from the Dauntless Light - those who had been closely involved in the resolution of the crisis - may have carried with them “Fondness”, the other anchor that had been in their possession. Maybe they destroyed it. (I am not clear why they did not do this with both of them but… perhaps they believed it might one day be useful if the Child ever escaped). If they did not, I cannot be sure what they did with it - but I do know where they went. The survivors of the crisis - of the Dauntless Light and others - decided to leave the Necropolis, and travelled west to Sarvos. There, however, they did not join the city proper. Instead, they founded the town of Trivento, which has always thought of itself somewhat apart from its larger cousin. Triventans have always had a reputation for being somewhat dour - this might go some way to explain why. If “Fondness” still exists, it may be there.
Finally, “Weeper”. I mentioned that the First Sentinel had been besieged, but the siege was not broken before the end - and it was in the possession of one of those Griefstricken there, the accounts I could find are clear on that. Maybe it was taken from there - or maybe not. The woods of Highrod are, as I say, profoundly haunted. Perhaps this is part of why.
Conclusions
So - this is the end of it. I have included the information on these anchors because I sense this is where my commissioners hoped I would go with my investigation. I have provided the additional context because I think it is important to consider how resonant the Child’s nature was with the conditions of the post-civil war Necropolis. Is that part of the nature of such phantoms, that they echo something of the time that births them? Only the Paragons could tell us such things. History, as ever, offers only questions as answers.
Further Reading
- Origins of the Highborn - Historical research relating to the Highborn origins in what is today the Sarcophan Delves
- Highguard history - An overview of the history of Highguard
- Eater-of-Hope - 383YE historical research into a creature similar to the Child of Faithless Grief