The Pyre of the Faith

No roads led to the suspected battlefield, so Iocathe had to drop her power wagon off at a roadside power station and continue on foot between the hills. The mechanic at the power station used her map to point out a small clearing nestled at the intersection of three small valleys, but it was his warning that echoed in the Prime Cartographer's mind:
"Best the faithful lie where they lay."
She shook her head. It was one thing as a Cartographer to respect and record the cultural superstitions of a people, and quite another to engage in the practice herself. The locals all avoided this place as a result of the High Ecclesiarch's curse, but despite all of the prayers and invocations of the Ecclesiarch and his followers, the First Princeps had easily won the day, with no hint of the divine fire and lightning that was promised in kind. But that was before the dawn of magic...
The forested path she was on was strangely silent, with only the tromping of her boots to echo in the still wood. Even the stream she was walking with was unusually still, flowing lazily into languid pools covered in algae. Iocathe adjusted her frock. Though it seemed cliche, there was something unsettling about the area, enough to where a callow mind would easily mark the cause as curse.
And then she saw the first post. A tall wooden pole, scorched by an ancient flame, with a number of rusted bolts hammered into it, sticking out of the ground at a haphazard angle, yet solid and planted to the touch despite at least a hundred years of weathering. The second post was around the next bend, and when she got to the clearing itself, Iocathe found it not clear at all, instead littered with hundreds of posts all across the way. Here, one or two of the posts had fallen, but that did little to dampen the mental image in her head as she walked between the poles. The vanquished, defeated in battle, forced to nail their holy scriptures to the beams. Forced to watch their faith burn in a conflagration that spanned the entire valley floor...
The thought was eerie, but still, there was work to be done. The cartographer opened her pack and withdrew her pad and charcoal. If there were any ghosts to be found here, they would have to let her sketch in peace.

Geography

The Pyre of the Faiths is the site of a former battleground dating to the early stages of The War of Unification, roughly two hundred miles away from the old Nasse border. At the time (and before the much-later construction of the Power-Wagons roads), cutting through the Pine Hills on foot saved five days worth of travel time around the southern detour, and control of the three-way pass was of local importance for travelers, though the pass was and is too narrow for carts or Power-Wagons. The hill range served as a natural border between the two petty pre-Unification kingdoms.

Ecosystem

The area around the Pyre site is typical of the hilly woodlands along the eastern expanse of the West Saibh continent, an evergreen forest interspersed by numerous streams and lakes. The clearing at the battlefield itself, however, is denuded of trees, with the poles serving as mocking replacements.

History

Though the location of the Pyre was a battleground, the battle that took place during The War of Unification was a rout. A number of the petty kingdoms southwest of Ebensberg were followers of a religion led by a High Ecclesiarch; upon news of the defeat of the coalition forces at the start of the war, the High Ecclesiarch declared the King of Nasse a demon in human form, and temporarily united the kingdoms that followed his faith into a rump army. Knowing that the Nasse forces had to force the pass to prevent their battle fronts from having an enemy force between them, the High Ecclesiarch fortified the Pine Hills and awaited the attack, backed by twenty thousand of his followers, the noble houses of his kingdoms among them.
Unfortunately, the Ecclesiarch was no military commander, and when Nasse's skirmish lines began to scout and harass his defensive line, his army began to break, and he was unable to rally them to the fight. Thus, when the King of Nasse arrived, he found the Ecclesiarch fighting several of the nobility of the petty kingdoms to try to prevent them from leaving his encampment. Though the High Ecclesiarch himself was defiant, and several of his most fervent followers attacked the Nasse soldiers in a haphazard way, the majority of the army surrendered without a fight.
The King of Nasse was eager to move on, and gave the local nobles and their retinues permission to leave, if all present would surrender the holy objects of the High Ecclesiarch's faith. This they did in great number - stacks of books, tapestries, and scrolls depicting a kingdom-upon-heaven among other religious stories. As for the High Ecclesiarch and his imprisoned fanatics, he forced them to disassemble the wooden palisades into single poles planted all around the encampment, and nailed the religious writings to the poles. Despite the High Ecclesiarch cursing the King of Nasse to a 'life of eternal hunger and torment' and his threats to annihilate the Nasse First Army Group in holy lightning, the King of Nasse proceeded to burn the writings in their entirety. Most of the truly faithful leapt into the flames rather than live without their faith, but the High Ecclesiarch himself was not one of them. After the fire, the High Ecclesiarch found himself bereft of his religious mantle and political power, as the local nobility had turned decisively against him.
The battle itself is merely a footnote in the history of Unification and the religion of the Ecclesiarch was rather quickly forgotten, but the descendants of those who witnessed the burning avoid the area, as local folklore has twisted the blasphemous burning of holy writings, the self-immolation of the devout, and the High Ecclesiarch's curse into a generalized superstition about the still-standing poles of the Pyre.

Tourism

As locals avoid the area, the only tourists are researchers and the occasional adventure-seeker well versed in their esoteric histories.

Location under

Saibh

Owning Organization

Principality of Etoile