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"Arctic Moon and Ice Castles, New Hampshire” ~ By Ryan Zipp

#full moon #ice #ice castle #blue #moon #black white blue

The Divine and Dreadful Face in the Frost, and the Final College of The Triangle

Slowly melting one hundred miles North of the Ruins of Tyralinthian, there has scarcely survived the gaunt remainder of a reinforced castle cut from primeval frost. In the Forgotten Times, it was a colossal fumarolic chimney in the very center of the Frozen South. Transformed by humanity thousands of years ago into a divine idol, this site of antiquity is internally carved out at its base to house medium-sized armies and externally fashioned to honor the harrowing faces of the flesh giants who ruled Atma’Zae for ten millennia. In an Age that came long before, the gryphons, the dragons of the sea and primates from the Northeast all worshipped the mighty and supposedly immortal ogres. Each race was eager to demonstrate fealty and ingenuity with their signature innovations, crafting and gathering styles. The Ancient Gods accepted enormous offerings of collected and carefully netted natural resources and food from the gryphons. The sea drakes presented powerful gifts of a far more ritualistic and magickal nature to their ten-millennia campaign to the North. But the ogres were most impressed with men and women of the Realm, and secretly feared them, for their natural talents in synthesizing raw materials and magic into systems and structures that were far more advanced than anything the mighty but simple-minded ogres could possibly conjure in their wildest and most dream-like machinations. Having only taken minor structural damage from recent distant seismic activity and sitting in the middle of a newly marginally toxified atmosphere, this already dilapidated construct was designed to stand strong by a species that was considered a simple and disposable ape throughout the previous Ages. Frequently retrofitted for multifarious uses by both the flesh giants and humanity over the course of eleven-thousand years, this site has served as a place of gaining divine favour, a military outpost for small and middle-sized armies of crusading ogrish soldiers, a research laboratory for a famous plague doctor, and most recently a mere landmark and iconic tourist attraction. In these, the Days of Ash, it has become the final residence for a hermitic order of high mages who have lost their ancestral home to the Nemesis.

Once known as Ugg-So-Gnixx, ogrish for The-Face-In-The-Southern-Frosts, crusader ogres passed over and ever northward through this harsh, bitter cold region, once noted geographically for its many tall fumaroles spitting out steam and gases directly from the Core of the World. While the ogres’ numbers diminished rapidly for their holy war with a species of competing giants, they became keenly aware of the existence of another smaller-statured species in the Far Northeast. Unlike the gryphons and naga of the World, this species of ascended and intelligent monkeys could not fly or breathe underwater, but possessed remarkably well-honed survival skills, versatile communication abilities and imaginative methods for crafting weapons and edifices from nothing more than hacked wood and rough stones. Around twelve thousand years ago, originally emerging from the Sapien Rainforest along the eastern continental coastline, these apes had come out from dense and wet tree lands to build their first settlement by the Eastern Sea, which had no name, and was landmarked by three emergent pyramids as an extension of their worship and reverence to the three closest stars: Xear, Nuc, and Qo. The flesh giants, although initially ambivalent toward the intelligent apes, quickly recognized this genus as a potential threat to their continent-wide reign. The ogres approached the apes with an offer; supplant sun worship for ogre worship and serve them in their war efforts against their eight-legged arch nemesis or be instantly annihilated. Under duress, 30,000 of these monkeys were uprooted from their new home and forced to travel over a thousand miles by foot to the Frozen South to prove their endurance and ability. The Gods instructed the apes to create a symbol in the frost that reflected the formidable face of their new deities. Choosing the region’s tallest natural ice tower as a construction site, humans quickly fashioned pickaxes and shovels to hallow out complex lower and upper tunnels and windows. Like worker ants, the monkeys from the Northeast reshaped its outer icy turret into something that would hopefully make the flesh giants appear aesthetically dignified. For the ogres were ugly, and nothing more than their slave masters. Using improvisational methods of formation and reinforcement, this tower would have long ago melted away if not properly internally supported by whole tree trunks, wood pulp and sawdust. Within months of its construction, the ogres became impressed with the pragmatic, quickly mobilized and artistic efforts of the apes. And the apes were kept alive allowed, for now, to serve.

Renamed Pschivraxx after the fifth God-King and the World’s most prominent plague doctor, this Great Scientist used this deeply secluded and distant tower to analyze and research unconventional alchemic methods to ward off the Second Contagion that ravaged the population of Atma’Zae approximately 400 yesteryears ago. While nearly one-third of humanity had been wiped out by this endemic disease, which turned veins black and caused one side of the neck to swell until asphyxiation, the God of the Infected invented sophisticated new herbal formulations in this location, combining common herbal ingredients and heavy metals broken down into powders such as magnesium and calcium to create a humble remedy. Known as the Pansy Pill, it was a mineral rich, swallowable and easy-to-mass-produce white tablet derived from this region’s own vitamin-rich arctic pansy flowers to ward and kill off the deadly bacteria that caused the great infection. Pschivraxx visited each of the major continental cities and townships of Atma’Zae and recommended elementary sanitation methods to purge build ups of the Second Contagion in local waterways, sewers and alleyways. Famously, Pschivraxx would goad and yell at town mayors and regional governors in front of their own citizens to get their hands dirty and personally help with the removal of trash, rat nests, and corpse-infested piles of junk from creeks and narrow passageways so that fresh water and foot traffic could safely pass through their townships once again. Now populated by around 150 surviving high mages from Tyralinthian, the highest-ranking wizards and sorcerers of The Triangle were called to this site by an unknown force only to discover Pschivraxx’s library, crafting facilities, study chambers, and laboratories in slightly scathed but serviceably working condition. This is now the last College of the Magi, and its few remaining conjurers work tirelessly to find the source of and solution to the Unlearning, which still remains a mystery after four decades of continent-wide decay.

Lore Entry # 10 (click here for art)