The Lucidity Cages

You seek the lore of the Cage of Lucidity?Well, then. Wait and stew in the miasma of your frustrated desire while I draw the knowledge from my inner pool of mystery.Here: I have found it. I may no longer live among the blessed children of the Revered Queen, but I still travel the way of Gith. No part of that path is hidden from me, or from those I call my comrades.Among the wonders shaped, spun, woven, drawn, summoned, or bound by the hr'ak'nir are walls and other barriers made from the most rational notions the astral thoughtwinds hold. When complete, they appear as three-dimensional geometric diagrams, vividly glowing with the light of truth and covered with exquisitly detailed notation. The most common githyanki to request these items are the keepers of the nightmare steeds.Nightmares have been part of githyanki society since before the death of the last of the Nightmare Lords, granted to the knights-errant by the generosity of the Queen. A nightmare steed is a powerful ally for a knight, collectively as important as the great dragons are in the realms of crude substance. At first, they were bargained for at the Gloom Meets, with githyanki competing with fiends and heathen liches for the equines' favor, but this was degrading to both our Race and her mission. Nightmares were drawn from the service of the nether realms with promises of blood and spirit, and retained with the most sacred thing the githyanki can offer: status equal to their riders, sisterhood under our eternal monarch. But nightmares are not made of the same stuff as those that share the blood of Gith. While trained knights and stable-keepers can handle them, common warriors who spend too much time among the terrors of the Glooms complain that the fear and misery from which they were made infects their inner pools, sowing vile and distracting thoughtforms which grow with every mental exertion, in extreme cases causing ectoplasmic phantoms to flow from their eyes and mouths. A decree from the Queen herself directed the hr'ak'nir to produce a way to shield the nightmares' presence from the rest of the cities and castles. It was Kalonizir, previously known only for his whale-bone tools of divination, who came up with the process of spinning lucidity into barriers. It came to be that the Lucidity Cages were erected around every nightmare stable, so that only the stable-keepers and the knights themselves were subjected to the creatures' mighty energies. Still, the hearts of the githyanki burn with pride to see those glowing lines in the hearts of their places of dwelling. Truly, the craft and power of our race has no limit.