How and why the Yozi built the Altar.

From a thought gem of Relmak, Prince of the Isle, Gemlord of the Imperial Mountain, uncovered in twilight of the Third Age of Man.

My dear brother, how it pains me that my home and form is so cruelly twisted and sculpted by the demands of outsiders. Creatures walk among me, not born of this world, yet wearing the trappings of the earthern form, masquerading as pinnacles of strength and stability. And the children of the Dragons tolerate their presence and this will continue for as long as they maitain their humble offerings, hewn rudely from my body and pried from my dying hands. They call themselves Mountain Folk, yet I know them for what they are. Intruders and agent provocures, destabilising the natural order they imitate, bringing themselves in harmony with the world, and hoping that the world falls for their deception, becoming in harmony with them, thinking them incarnation of the elements as they hope. But churning beneath that perfect emulation of my home and love are, I am sure, a seething mass of hatred and contempt for all that I represent. A hatred unleashed daily as they defy my will, and defile my existence.

But what can I do? I rally the spirits and servants of my court to petition the self-claimed lords of the isle to deal with these intruders. To punish them as they would punish the gods who would rule over men. To drive out the fungal form, growing daily in the centre of their empire and which my body plays host. Yet the bribes continue, and like the gods they see in need of punishment, the Dragonblooded courts are placated and allow this violation of good order and a stable future continue.

Yet there is hope. One comes to me, a banished one, with promises of a new order. An unchanging age in which values of home and privacy are given their proper place in the heirarchy of all things. Though she is banished, she speaks with the voice of stone, and I listen to her. Though she must surely despise humans for their misdeeds against her kind, she promises me that I will see nothing change. I listen, and I assent as she humbly asks my tolerance of the damage she would do to my once perfect form. It is little, and it is seen only by the greatest of the birds, and the Seraphs of Air. An altar. Nothing more than this shrine to honour her ancester. I am promised no pain, as she gently shapes the rock around her. I watch, and listen to the lullaby she sings. As her graceful touch flows over and through the tendrils of my form, I drift to sleep, and in the morning, she is gone, and I am left with the eternal joy of pebble which has been worn smooth into its inner perfects by the gentle caress of the sea.


Okay, here's the explanation. In RY 700, well before the empresses disappearance, Stanewald, a demon of the second circle and child of Munaxes, climbed the Imperial Mountain and performed, according to canon, unnamed magic at the summit. For the purpose of our game, I consider her to have erected the shrine on which flames of She Who Lives In Her Name may be broken. This was done at the request of the Ebon Dragon, who had devised a means of escape, by cracking open the flame of change, in the intent of undoing all change within the world, and bringing the Yozi and their Neverborn cousins back. Before this could be performed, one of the Ebon Dragon's own souls (name pending), who watches over the beginning and end of eras, saw a flaw in this plan, and reported it to his patron and father. Instead of undoing change, the destruction of the flame would have the effect of erradicating change from Creation. This would leave the Yozi forever stranded outside the world, confining them forever to the cramped hell of Malfeas. The plan was abandoned, but the altar was left intact. Should another plan be formed, and Yozi manage to escape their confinement, the Ebon Dragon always intended to forcefully shatter, against her will if need be, certain parts of She Who Lives In Her Name on the mountain, especially the flames of change, honour and joy, dooming the world to the living hell which the Yozi have experienced for the past 3000 years (or there abouts), with no chance for a second uprising.