Alfen Cylinders

A Horrid Prison

The dreams came every night for Teris. He felt the cold sting of their lances, slaughtering all in their path. He felt the young god's fear as they closed in. He heard the screams, smelled the blood drying in the dirt, and then his vision came. Teris saw the young god, weaving his fingers through a woman's hair. What manner of creatures were these?, Teris asked himself, they were not elves, nor dwarves, nor any race that walks the earth now. What could that mean? He saw the attackers, tall and beautiful with their symmetrical smiles. The smiles made his head hurt. Some were truly monsters, both inside and out, with tendrils lashing out at the defenseless people they killed. The young god turned, and tried to fight, but failed. They struck him down, and a strange green light bit into his leg and pulled him across the bloodstained earth...

Alfen Cylinders are massive abominations of metal and stone with the writing of the Alfen Ancestors fading away on their smooth surface. They rarely look like cylinders at all. They often appear as spires, violently twisting and writing up to the sky. It is unclear what they were used for, but when it comes to the Elven Empires, it couldn't have been pleasant.

Eldritch Monoliths

They are often theorized to be landmarks of some kind, used by the empire to find their way. Others believe they are a religious marker for pilgrims during those times. Regardless, the sight of one is feared by those who wander the earth today. They are difficult to look at. Most who study it for to long report migraines, deep sadness, and some have gone into a state of sheer panic just by looking at it. There is no rhyme or reason to their design, and that alone is unsettling, but their effect on others leads most to simply mark the area as off limits, and force a quarantine if possible.

Teris couldn't understand the language, but he somehow knew what these butchers said: "Purify" The young god dug at the ground, his fingers breaking as the light continued to tug him back. He fought with all his might, but his domain could not save him. No power he possessed would break him free. He turned to meet his fate without fear, but his eyes grew wide at the massive black cylinder that was to be his prison. The symbols had the same green glow, a death sentence spelled in their symmetrical text. He screamed, lashed about as the light forced every particle in his body through that of the cylinder. His movements, violent and filled with pain and terror, twisted the metal of the monolith and in turn, gave it a new shape. The spire indicated a conquest was complete. The spire was a symbol of their superiority, a successful purging of the unclean.
"Genocide." Teris gasped, looking to the same spire, now constantly battered by the ocean waves...

The Cold Hard Truth

These monoliths are not religious, the ancient alfen abandoned their gods, or at least, abandoned the lucky ones. The cylinders are a statement by the empires. They are a direct confirmation of a successful campaign of war. They mark the sight of the last death a species has experienced.

They hunted the last of its kind, killed it, and raised a monument to celebrate the fact. Within each cylinder is an imprisoned living god, and it is unclear if awakening them is wise. None have ever found a way to release them. Living gods are bound to the physical plane, and during this age, all gods were living gods.

The Implication

The empires were active for millennia, but who knows just how long. The most unsettling fact of the cylinders is how many their are. Thousands exist across the world, and some have even reported strange phenomena in recent years.

Some claim the cylinders speak to them, sometimes literally and other times with visions. These living gods want to be released, now more than ever. This is a fact that has more implications all its own.