Light of Fontan/Hannibal's Reports
1. Dear nobles of Fontan,
When you have time, please travel to Fontan and join the Light of Fontan religion. We worship the Gods of the Celestial planes: The Sun, The Moon and The Stars.
The Light of Fontan temple (in construction in Fontan City) is built upon the site of an ancient civilization. My brother Asdrubal was the one that discovered it not long ago. He was digging around looking for buried treasure ( I think some wench told him it was a good idea!) and he came across a stone slab in the ground. Thinking he’d found treasure he commanded his troops to remove the slab. To everyone’s shock and bemusement, there was just a dark, cold chasm, with no obvious signs of *anything*.
He sent me a messenger telling me of this strange “hole” in the ground. I told him that he should keep guarding it until I had time to get there. Some time ago I had to travel to Fontan to deal with this, and since then the site has kept pulling me back to it. As if there was something, no….. some-*one*, begging me for help.
2. The first time I arrived there I commanded my troops to lower me down on a rope. They seemed glad that I volunteered myself, their eyes were avoiding mine, as if they knew something I didn’t. I couldn’t see anything until I hit the ground. I lit my torch and only then realized I was stood in a massive chamber, painted in artwork of creatures I have never seen before.
It was dark, but I wrote down everything I could describe. Here is a copy of my original writings:
“It’s freezing down here and I think I’ve just about had it with my stupid, cowardly troops. Anyway, the room is about 10m high and 20 metres wide in a pyramidal shape. It seems I came through the top of the pyramid. I wonder if this is the entire structure, I can’t see any signs of anything below me. The walls all have paintings of people fighting bizarre looking animals….there’s what look like hybrid creatures, half man – half….something else. There’s also birds, but not as we know them, they have reptile like faces and skin, with jaws instead of beaks. It’s hard to tell what this all depicts, it might be a story or just random pictures.”
I hauled myself back up the rope. I’d seen enough to know I should be careful and come back with some equipment and better lighting. This “find” obviously needed to be studied in detail.
3. Asdrubal kept asking me questions at this point. I told him to be quiet, he’s not the brightest and I feared if I told him what some of the pictures showed, he might cause a widespread panic. I brushed him off as I knew I had to, whatever was down there, it could be devastating to our people.
The next time I went down to the dig, I setup a more permanent base of operations at the centre of the chamber. I lit the torches and the room became fully illuminated for the first time in perhaps generations. It was strange, the stone slab that sealed it appeared to be thousands of years old, worn and full of roots seeping their way into the cracks. However, the inside looked as if it had been built within the last few years. There was no damage to anything, and the paint was vibrant, not dull like the paintings we have.
There was no evidence of this place even having existed as a myth, so what the hell was going on. Who built this place and for what reason? I think what was most disturbing were the images of people fighting creatures that were….not from this world.
4. As I looked around the chamber, I decided I should try and document the objects. This might shed light on what this place was and would help to keep a useful inventory in case of looters. Here’s the extract of what I found:
“North Wall:
A bookshelf with 10 books. All written in some unknown script. Looks a bit like how our ancient writing was, but it’s not the same.
East Wall:
10 Swords, all pointing to the North Wall.
West Wall:
10 Axes , all pointing to the North Wall.
South Wall:
10 Bows, all pointing to the North Wall again.
Nothing else, apart from the paintings of course, which happen to cover the entire room. I’m beginning to realize that there must be a story here, as the pictures appear to follow a sequence. It starts at the North Wall, goes around each wall, and spirals all the way to the top. From what I can tell, it ends at the North Wall aswell. Unless there’s more to this place, I think the answer to this enigma are the books. While I try and figure out what to do with that, I’ll make a log of the story of the pictures.”
At this point I was deeply worried, the pictures were grotesque in places. The events depicted were…. disturbing.
5. This was getting bad, I knew I should bury the lot, but something kept me going. Something kept drawing me back. I had to solve the riddle, I just didn’t know how.
Asdrubal was starting to suspect I was “losing it”, but what did he know? To him the world is “black and white”, and this to him would definitely be evil. My common sense was telling me that this place should be buried and forgotten. I can’t explain in words, but for some reason I had to finish what I had started. It was almost as if I knew this place was an answer to something we did not know about.
I pushed my torch closer to the North Wall. It lit up the entire face clearly. The pictures at the bottom were much smaller than the ones at the top; I guess so it was possible to get the maximum amount of information across without needing the viewer to climb up the walls. I touched the first wall near the first painting in the elaborate sequence. It was incredibly smooth, either the paint was extremely thick or the stone had been carved that way. However they did it, it was clearly at the limits of our anything our technology could create. One odd thing about the wall, was its temperature. It seemed to be as warm as my hand. I took off my shoes and stood on the stone floor….it was warm also. I can offer no explanation for this.
6. So there I was, stood in the Pyramid, looking at the first picture on the North Wall in the lower left hand corner. It took up the entire bottom row of the Wall, and it depicted a battle of truly epic proportions. I looked at it in amazement. Maybe I’d spent too long on the battlefield, or maybe we really didn’t have great artwork. The depth of colours and perspective were astonishing, it was like they had taken the real world and placed it onto the wall.
On the left hand corner of the wall was an army of many battalions, from various Flags. Thousands of knights, all in formation, ready to charge forward into what lay over to the right of the painting. What lay there was a castle, no…it was a fortress. There was water behind it, and so the fortress was surrounded by invaders. The fortress was under siege and from what I could tell, there were not nearly as many troops defending it as there were attacking. The troops inside looked just like the troops outside, except with a different flag. They had similar armour and even had similar expressions on their faces. I think the picture showed that the war was a pointless one, and that they fought for false reasons. It doesn’t appear to show any siege that I can remember, and although the people are certainly like us, they are subtly different. The flags and some of the siege weaponry are totally unknown also.
7. The next picture lies on the East Wall. It shows what has to be the middle point of the battle. Waves of invaders were charging forward, most getting slaughtered on the walls, but a few successfully scaling the defences. The sun was setting, and shadows were casting long shadows on the invaders, as if they were being cursed. The fortress inhabitants didn’t escape the darkness either, in fact they were suffering the most. There were markings, possibly speech bubbles, next to some of the knights. Some of them were holding the slain of the enemy as if they would their own brothers. Only now did I realise that two of the flags were similar, one of the invaders and the majority of the defenders were almost identical. It looks like there must have been a civil war.
The next picture was on the South Wall and showed the aftermath. The sky was black. Thousands of bodies littered the battle field and the fortress. The civil war had been won and the new flag erected; it was almost the same as the old one. All the knights had distressed faces, not victorious ones like I was expecting. Looking at it this way their war appeared stupid. There were no heroes, no victors even. Everyone lost, *badly*.
It made me think about the recent battle with Avamar, there are many sieges, but obviously this came to mind instantly. The civil war, the darkness…. I wasn’t sure if it was coincidence or if there was more to this somehow.
The East Wall showed the dead being buried in mass graves, for there were too many to give them individual resting places. The place was still dark, but the people were distraught, almost for fear of their lives, maybe wishing they had died in the battle. In the background the troops were being filed into ranks once more, to fight again against some other enemy. In the very far distance were troops originally from the fortress, evidently running away from whatever fate was trying to catch them.
8. Looking back to the North Wall, the story continued at a higher level. But as the walls were getting smaller as they got higher, each level depicted one event in a panoramic type view, a full 360 degree landscape, that spiralled up the top. On this level there were troops from many nations fighting on a very large battlefield. They were fighting in all directions, under tens of flags. There were a few from the losing side in the civil war, scattered around fighting other people’s wars, seemingly trapped in an endless cycle of bloodshed. The winners of the civil war were also fighting again, but they were just a small feature compared to the overall picture. I could see oceans in the distance, with islands, perhaps continents, each with yet more troops fighting. The darkness from previous paintings had gone, but there was still something wrong. The light from the Sun was much dimmer than it had been on the first picture, as if it had lost some of its strength, perhaps weakened by an unknown force.
I wanted to know why they were fighting. There was writing under each picture along a bar. I knew I had to understand it if I was ever going to find out the details. Having glanced at the rest of the paintings, I was also hoping that there would be some explanations.
I looked up to the next level. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing…
9. The painting seemed much like the others to begin with. There were armies at war and random battles occurring all over the place. In one corner though was a temple. It was in the grasp of some sort of darkness, creeping up from the ground, smothering its bright walls. And all around it were foul, lothesome creatures. They were gathering quietly while the knights fought each other. I’ve seen monsters before, plenty of times, but not like this….this was like a view of pure horror.
The final level showed the obvious outcome of this horror. The fiends were massacring the knights, peasants, women and children. No-one could escape their terror. And they did not use swords or axes, but weapons that were grafted onto their body parts. Perhaps the most terrifying part of the painting was the lack of hope. The temple had literally thousands of evil creatures surrounding it on the ground and in the air. Darkness was spreading from the spire, casting its shadow over vast distances.
I decided I’d seen enough. The paintings were of a distant place, obviously not related to anything here, I hoped. There was only one thing left to do, translate the books and try to get some answers about this place.
I spent weeks painstakingly trying to find words that I could match with English equivalents. And then one morning I woke up, and everything was readable. I understood the books as if they were written in English. Why this happened I can’t explain. Maybe it was divine intervention?
10. Each book was an in depth guide to becoming a Knight of this religion. Here’s the list of titles:
1. Integrity 2. Trust 3. Honour 4. Respect 5. The Path 6. Courage 7. Weakness 8. Strength 9. The Unseen Prophecies 10. The Seen Prophecies
The books were all at least 500 pages long and fairly fragile to hold. The opening part of the first book explained that a knight must tackle each book in order. This would shape the knight into a true warrior that understands the values he protects. The rough translation is as follows:
“A knight first and foremost must have integrity, without that the knight can be corrupted and turned against those he cares about most. Trust allows the knight to gain honour and then respect, from his contemporaries. After the knight has gained respect from his superior, he must then follow The Path. This is when the knight travels to distant places to uphold the values he has learnt so far. The destination and style of the journey is usually chosen by the knight’s superior, to create a personal experience unique to each individual. Once the knight returns, a new set of challenges await. The superior in charge of the knight will devise difficult and sometimes dangerous problems for the knight to overcome. The knight’s courage is tested first, and once the knight has passed that test he/she is almost ready. However, in order to gain the strength to fight even in impossible odds and under extreme physical pain, the knight has to endure a period of weakness. This is usually carried out by starving the knight for one month whilst having to train daily from dawn to dusk. Other tasks have been known to be handed to knights, at the discretion of his/her commanding officer. There are other circumstances, and in special cases a knight may be waived through this if there is sufficient evidence of past experience in this regard. The final part, Strength, has no task. The knight will now have gained strength from completing each book, and as such, the book Strength is more about the ethics of combat. Every knight that completes the training will receive a copy of the final book during the graduation ceremony. This will help the knight to make decisions outside of battle, so that when he/she enters battle, the dead shall not have died in vain.”
The overview apparently made a good argument and my first thoughts were how useful they would be in training our new knights.
