Lunia: More information?

Themes: Isolation, Love, Hope
By the light of a thousand stars, travelers that first reach the Holy Mount are introduced to the stillness and quiet of Lunia. Lunia is the first layer of the Holy Mountain that is Mount Celestia, home of the archons and the dead spirits of the most righteous of paladins. There is no sun; Lunia is draped in perpetual twilight, with neither sun or moon above to light the beings that tread on its silver ground. This is a land of sleep, rest, healing, and love; the most pure of all actions mundane. One does not need to be a hero to find their final destination to be Lunia; one only needs to be a good, law-abiding being, someone who has followed the tenets of lawful goodness all their life. They never needed to take up sword and shield. Common among the petitioners here are librarians, doctors, good samaritans, unassuming beings that never strove for the stars. They are rewarded (or punished?) by existing in a world of twilight, without either positive sun or negative moon to reinforce their actions. They had the opportunity to be the mayors, researchers, saints of their respective communities, but they never shot high enough. They are now cursed to be the gatekeepers of Mount Celestia, helping those that travel through, those that have the ability reach higher levels of the Holy Mount. They have no such ability; they are tied down to their lives, their communities, their sense of duty, their desire to let the entire situation blow over. They're good people, but they've all lost any sense of hope: there's nothing to strive for anymore. Far from being the mindless automatons of the Grey Waste, they're as good souls as you'd find anywhere else, but seek to involve them in anything that has a chance to alter their own destiny for better or worse, and they'll shrink. They fear change in death as they feared it in life, and so make their own minor actions, hoping to ultimately steer themselves towards the glory that they feel they are capable of. They are respectful to everyone, for anyone could be an archon in disguise, judging them silently with their golden eyes.

Of course, the archons of this layer are probably the only thing that protects the petitioners from any events that could possibly harm them. It is the archons that deal with the fiends that attempt to storm the Holy Mount, deal with the Clueless that would seek to confuse the natives' malleable souls with their thousands of questions, deal with the cocky planars so sure that they're destined for the Eternal Light at the top of the Mount. The leader of the archons in Heart's Faith is Xek (Paramortal/Sword Archon/LG), a being that walks as one with the twilight. He commands a sizeable group of archons that deals with anything out of the ordinary in Lunia. A body traveling Heart's Faith had best be careful to not make themselves anything out of the ordinary. It's likely that most archons on the layer have some sort of tie to Xek, so it's best to extend the prior warning to the rest of the layer (and beyond, it's just good advice anywhere you go, really).

Heart's Faith is the town that most people climb out of the Silver Sea and enter. As a result, it's more of a traveler's town than one really indicative of the petitioner villages that exist elsewhere throughout the layer. Healers are common here, and the entire town is watched over by strange winged lion beings called "lamasu". They are rare to show their face, but the leader offers advice and wisdom on a daily basis to those that seek an audience with him.

The Silver Sea is described by visitors as one of the most serene places in the multiverse, at the right moments. The sea is comprised of holy water, water that makes entrance to the Holy Mount one of continual, forced baptism: a body doesn't have a choice whether or not to be blessed in the Celestian fashion. This same feeling is pervasive throughout the plane; Mount Celestia is its own being: a machine, changing the meek into heroes, changing the shy into saints, and bringing the wicked and foolish to its knees. The petitioners of Lunia know this better than most; they have been trapped at the foothills, outside the machine that might have made them something better than they were in life. Fiends that enter Mount Celestia find not a blessing but a curse, a silver sword crushing down on them, preventing fliers from flying - their only chance of life the Zovari, who tend to be helpful to most everyone. The Silver Sea is said to have an almost intoxicating affect on paladins, clerics of the gods of order, and such: the waters are said to smell sweeter than anything else in the multiverse, for it marks the promise of unity with the ideals that they strive to protect. Peering into the waters is a revelation for most; the Silver Sea is a mirror, shining back the true face of the body who peers into it, showing him what he truly is. Most people know this. For those that have taken a bath in the blood water of the Styx, the Silver Sea of Lunia symbolises a recentering of themselves, a rebirth into a life that they once had lived. No memories are returned: only the sense of oneself, and for a body that can't really remember much, that's something like a miracle in itself.

The stars above Lunia are said to be different for each body that looks up at them: the constellations contained within are indicative of the spirits that rule those that gaze up at them. Petitioners of Lunia claim that the most powerful constellations above are those forming a swan, a sword, and a mouse. Others exist (and are largely individual), but those three seem the most common and most prominent in the gaze of the petitioners. The swan, a symbol of the beauty that they wish they could become; the sword, a symbol of the justice that they wish they could be reinforcing; the mouse, a symbol of what they truly are. The petitioners of Lunia, meek and mild-mannered, expect no promotions, hope for no promotions. Their subconscious urge them forward, onward, away from obscurity, into the world of risk - but that is a small voice, one that only gets marginally stronger as the centuries drift away like comets across the skies of Lunia.

A few petitioners have gathered strength and left Lunia, ascended onward to the higher levels of the Mount. Jordon the Blind (Petitioner/Human/LG) is probably the most uplifting of the tales of those that have left the lands of twilight: after many centuries of obscurity as a small pharmacist, a wounded sword archon found his way into Jordon's apothecary in the middle of the Forest of Sound. She had battled and destroyed a swarm of wounded vrock that had made its way out of the Silver Sea, but became deathly wounded in the process. Jordon, then a sighted being, managed to nurse the sword archon back to health. Her name was Biinya (Paramortal/Sword Archon/LG), and in time, as she recovered, they fell into the most platonic of affections. She saw within him a good soul, one that was tied down by the quiet world that he lived in. One day, she became fully healed, and made ready to go. Though she loved him, there was nothing that she could do: he was too much a slave to his previous mortal existence. After she was gone, he realised that he had lost her forever, but did something very uncharacteristic of him. She was gone, for the sixth layer of the Mount, to report to her leader her status. He would never make it off Lunia, he believed. That was sixty years ago; today, he still seeks her, climbing ever higher towards the summit of the Holy Mount. The light of the mountain has made him blind, so unused to the light was he, but he seeks her still, somewhere around the fifth layer of Celestia. Someday he will find her, and the two will be reunited. He is sure of it.

The Forest of Sound, where Jordon the Blind hails from, is one of the more interesting places on Lunia (itself often very a drab world that hangs equally between darkness and light). Within it, the trees are made of only silver, and when the wind blows, a silvery chime can be heard rustling through the metallic sounds of the forest. Lantern archons are the only archons that enter it; those glowing seekers find peace in the solitude and the sound that the forest generates. In the wind, it is said that the Forest of Sound's tinny tune is a whispering voice, speaking to those that have the ears to hear it of a time long ago, when the Forest was constructed by the Archons in an attempt to emulate the natural life of the more chaotic side of the Great Ring. Their trees and plants were transformed from the swords of their warriors by magic, and as time wore on, the trees and plants slowly regressed into their base material - steel. Now, the forest is a land of quiet contemplation, where petitioners go to hear the stories of the wind, to learn from the past, in an attempt to affect their present and future.

The lantern archons are everpresent on Lunia. Wherever a body goes, it's likely that there isn't a lantern archon far. They are the newest of the archons (really not even archons, if a body is being technical), but they represent the souls who, in life, actively sought the creation of goodness and social order. The petitioners of Mount Celestia see the lanterns as lucky, when the reality is that every lantern is watched extremely closely by their respective hound archon to which they are assigned through a mental link. The purpose of being a lantern is to observe life on the Holy Mount enough so that they truly begin to understand the true tenets of law and good. Even for the most shining of the stars on the Prime, this process usually takes centuries. After a certain amount of time, lanterns sometimes give this quest up in their heart of hearts, and end up detached from their hound. They do not become asuras (only archon of hound or higher status are cast out as such), instead finding their lights dimmed and the fire within them nearly burned out. They have slipped through the cracks, unable to catch up with those around them, unable to move fast enough to advance within the machine. The most despondent of these archons become but silver stones on the shores of the Silver Sea. When a body climbs up those rocks onto dry land, they should be aware that they are stepping over all those that tried and have failed to attune themselves to the Holy Mount. The archons know this, know it as they travel the Plane, that if they are unsuccessful, this is their end.

Lunia is a place that symbolises both the beginning of journeys and the end of journeys. It is a place at the foot of the highest mountain in the multiverse, a place where nearly anything can happen. Underneath its stars, people are born, die, enter the mountain, leave them, swim in the Silver Sea - where a body can swim all day and never get wet, and find their true selves. Lunia is a land of self-discovery, a land of tests, where a body first begins to really understand whether or not he can really cut it on the Holy Mount. For some, there is success. For others, regrettably it probably is best that Lunia is as far as they got. The fabric of law and order can have no faults, no imperfections.

After all, this is Mount Celestia.

Perhaps fallout from the attitude that the light aasimon Lyina's decision to channel the collected fears and doubts of the populace of Sigil into the sea of Lunia, perhaps the final result of the millions of dark souls that would have attempted to corrupt that holy sea for their own ends, but certain waters of the first layer of Mount Celestia have been looking rather shadowy lately. About a mile out from Heart's Faith, the Silver Sea seems to have taken on a hue more akin to nickel than the sheen that gives it its name, and even darker spots abound there. The zoveri, guardians of those waters, stay away from the mass, maybe half a mile wide and still growing.

Lantern archons that get too close to that spot in the sea usually don't end up seeing again, their potential sucked into the water, drained by the fears and regret that seem to permeate the area. Sometimes they manage to pull themselves back to the mainland, their glow a mere shadow of what it was previously, blinking about the pains and terror that they've suffered. The shadowy sea hasn't yet grown to the point where the Celestian High-ups feel a need to do anything about it yet (after all, most hardships are another test in their eyes), but should they actually get confirmation as to the fact that whatever is out there is derivative of some of evil, a body could be sure that the seas would be purged.

As it stands now, the areas of the sea that have become refuge for an unusual group of people. The twisted asuras Eysen (Pl/male asuras/Athar), Archaeologist and Explorer, has made his was to the polluted spot of Lunian sea, hoping to find something, some artifact, some relic, that can prove his former power fallible - and thus destroy her. It's also said that a twisted zoveri outcast has made his way to the depths, where even now he hopes to raise the waters of the Silver Sea above Lunia, causing his former tribe to ascend all at once - while drowning Heart's Faith. See, he was expelled from his former zoveri tribe for claiming that his people had things off poorly: they could not leave the Silver Sea and thus were unable to see Mount Celestia, and purify themselves. Uncontent to wait for the Coming of The Corquen (the day that the zoveri believe will herald a new dawn of their race and allowing them ascension), they sit amongst the corrupt waves, making freedom their own way, hoping to earn ascension through their own paths.

The planes tell a million tales. Some are more happy than others, but on the Outer Planes, Upper or Lower, there doesn't seem to be something like a final happy ending in sight. The Lower Planes corrupt and destroy their inhabitants - at least they usually get right down to the point - but the Upper Planes are far more insidious; they show a body all the wonders of paradise, all the things that any berk could dream for, and dangles these things right under the noses of their visitors. They show them their final reward. They show them the places that their souls will live on, in peace and happiness. If a body has already seen the Promised Land, what else does he have to do in the Planes?

Mortals are Primes, at heart - whether or not their immediate ancestors were "planar" or not. The Outer Planes weren't meant to become what they were; ideology should have been seperated, the Upper Planes ending up as the ultimate reward for good souls, and the Lower Planes ending up as the ultimate punishment for the evil. Somewhere inside this grand plan, however, something went wrong: good and evil have become nearly indistinguishable on the planes, with the forces of law and chaos often providing the distinguishing point for the two ideologies. Mortals, never meant to see their paradise or punishment before the final day, now walk the planes, seeing things with mortal eyes. Those that manage to stay alive end up with a sheen of arrogance around them, the arrogance that any Prime would recognise as the unmistakable attitude of a planar. This attitude is, in effect, a defense mechanism. Should mortals actually ever truly realise what they were seeing, their weak psyches would end up burned to the ground, destroyed by the fires of the truth. This happens often: some of these broken people end up dead, burned out by the fires of their mind, unable to comprehend what they've just seen. The lucky ones either break on Mount Celestia, or find their way there in time. The archons direct them to the Hospital of the Plane-Scarred, on Lunia, near the blessed forgetfulness of River Lethe.

On some mornings, a body walking through the foggy mist created by the Lethe might have a tendency to forget why they've come there in the first place; such is the air around the Hospital. Usually the layer's standard twilight is thick with fog, water coming off of the Lethe, obscuring the Hospital's brilliant red banners that seem to call to wanderers through the fog. As a body walks along the silvery roads to the Hospital, he is watched from the windows by countless lantern archons, looking to gaze upon the face of the sick, the wounded, the needy, and hoping one day to be like the warden archons that look over the patients. At the door, people are met by the archon Kybel, a wise elderly warden being that watches over the patients and ensures their forgetfulness.

Patients at the Hospital are treated by both mortal and archon alike, given intense emotional support so that they might someday be ready to rejoin something like society. Those that are rehabilitated are returned to the Prime; told by the Celestians to live a peaceful and quiet life before attempting to wander to their final destination. Some return to the Planes, searching for something that they can't describe, something intangible: lost loves, perhaps. The places of their birth. Their family. Sometimes they can functionally rejoin society in the Outer Planes, those that return to the Great Ring, that is. Most of them manage to live the rest of their lives in peace on the Prime, with little memories of their past, after imbibing enough Lethe water to make someone forget their own name. In the end, names don't matter. Compassion does.