Tuesday, November 19, 2019

The Faithless

art by Paolo Giandoso
The Faithless
  • The Faithless is a lifelike statue of a woman carved from salt that is kept hidden away within the ruins of an amphitheater in a stretch of wasteland south of Saltmire.
  • A gospel within the Book of Thorns states that the Faithless was once a live, flesh and blood woman who turned to salt for losing faith in the Broken God. The deity, angered at her disbelief, changed her into a monument meant to serve as a dire warning to his followers and as a demonstration of his divine might.
  • Legends say that the Faithless still lives and that her consciousness has been trapped in the form of an unmoving a salt-hewn statue for countless generations.
  • Some believe that if an innocent were to kiss the Faithless upon her mouth, she would be returned to mortal life and the affectionate visitor would take her place as a statue made of salt.
  • A lone hermit lives in a hovel near the amphitheater; he is the last of a long line of religious sages who has been entrusted with the duty of chasing off anyone who might free the Faithless from her saline imprisonment.
  • An apocryphal gospel not included in the Church of Aeonian Requiem’s Book of Thorns claims that if the Faithless is ever released from her curse, she will become the leader of a heretical cult that will cause the Church’s apocalyptic downfall.
More on the Church of Aeonian Requiem here.