Yaerwhyl, The Candles of Euliess

"The Candles of Euliess are cold and bright. They will shine. They will not stop.

-Last words from a journal recovered at the old Euliessan border, Anonymous

Shrouded in fog, an entire people reduced to a cemetery of wax, their land dissolved and ruined, their creations, once singularly magnificent, now faced with the slow cessation of their rain-soaked forms. The cessation of a world, heralded and accompanied only by the glittering starlight which hands above, ringing the landscape in unfathomable melancholy. Once, there were fools, disenfranchised with themselves and their efforts, who sought a deal with a bitter, sobbing god. Mistakes made, faces forgotten, the fools became as candles, casting no shadow, remembered by none, fading into nothing. They slept beneath the earth, between the spires, below the sombre rain, as a nation rose around them, built of artistry and ego, a hundred young voices screaming to be heard. The screaming grew, and the people went deaf, and in the quiet pause of the alone, the fools whispered, warning their heirs of the fate that awaited. Like a poison, their wails drew a deep sorrow from the earth, and the ancient, isolated god -Pale Longflesh- came once again, carried on the brilliance of arrogant, aloof fools. Placing their desires above them, burning their scalps and blinding their eyes, the people of Euliess went mad with inspiration, their flesh becoming as wax and their minds as wick, alight with the bright fire of solitude and numinosity. And so a people went silent and alone into the night, shining, shining and never ending. Never ending. Never.

Civilization and Culture

History

The Candles of Euliess is the term used to describe not only what eventually became of it's inhabitants, but also the beings which led to Euliess' fall, following their own foolhardy bargain with the Betrayed One, Pale Longflesh. Originally, the Candles were believed to be a group of hearthless spirits, alone on the road but together within one another. Fighting and bickering, these spirits understood little of the hearth they had found in one another, and were ultimately tragic, together and somehow alone. Purposeless, they sought meaning in the promises of a skinless, protean god, an ivory king of elder serpents and liars. This was Pale Longflesh, who was one of the nine sent to "bring peace" in the sermons of the western serpents. Longflesh offered them a wish, clearing a hole in their own souls, placing within them a single, cold ember. The spirits, young and ignorant, accepted his offer and were eroded. Chasing that spark inside of them, the spirits forgot conflict, forgot hate and forgot love. Forgot struggle and forgot joy. Forgot themselves and forgot one another.
Left as nothing but as bright, lonely stars, the spirits wept, and from them fell tears of wax, drowning the void of the road and filling the land. Some echo, or memory remained of their once old lives, and like salt in the boundless ocean, drifted amongst the wax for aeons. A new people came, the wandering folk, the spirits of a new age, and in their search they found this echo, clutching it close and careful, holding the tender flesh of it in the warm darkness of their arms. From this was born a new people, a new era. Once frozen land gave way to spires of impossible dreams and intimate hopes. In the rain sung stories of the old people, the candles now buried and grey. So Euliess was born.
High and proud, the spires grew, their walls bolstered with new memories, thoughts and ideas. Among these spires' creators, an awful inheritance occured, and the words of an ancient bargain resounded on the voice of the falling sky. The folk of Euliess, so unlike their predecessors and yet so similar, saw flickering, just out of sight, the dance of errant candlelight. Consumed by that single promise, aged and vile, the people fell. One by one, they descended the stairway of clay, their bodies and constructs melting away, their voices joining the whisper, their lives lost amidst the rain. Alone again, Pale Longflesh sat amongst the Yaerwhyl, the finest masterworks of Euliess, land of makers, and set them down, diffuse and whole, across his altar, illuminating only his pale waxen flesh.