Exile of the Firewalkers
A Pachuco banishment ritual
Before the fall of Or-Ad and Ur-Zun,
Before the last of the Race Father tribes,
Came the Mind Fire: bad omen, Thunder's gift.
Divine sight, transforming fire, sacred power:
The irresistible curse of Thunder. There at the dawning age of a new world, Renewed under the invincible sun, The last sons of the old world were dying. Who dares hold heaven's fire, eternal flame? What hand would wield the thunder of the gods, And burn for a touch of immortality?
"The Exile of the Firewalkers" is a ritual performed in Pachuco lands to banish the pestilence of the "Mind Fire," an ancient disease associated with the destruction of the Fallen Empires of the Deep Zone. The last of the Precursor tribes had attained incredible mental abilities, but their power came at a price, and the madness unleashed by their divine ambition ended the civilization of the Race Fathers forever. When a Pachucese child is born bearing the inspiration of the fire, he or she must be banished before adulthood when the Mind Fire runs the full course of its destructive virulence and spreads its frenzy to others. The Exile of the Firewalkers is intended to cleanse the people of the Mind Fire curse and send the suffering exile back to the source of the fire.
History
Ever since the decline and fall of Or-Ad and Ur-Zen, myths have spread regarding how and why those Fallen Empires suddenly collapsed and vanished from history. Most of the surviving stories speak of a virulent pestilence that rapidly decimated their populations and left them unable to sustain their industry and infrastructure. Survivors of the plague who escaped from the ancient homelands of the Race Fathers spoke of the ravages of the disease, its symptoms, and its astonishing rate of mortality.
Other stories tell of the strange provenance of the sickness, which began as a miraculous leap forward in human development. Suddenly, without any explanation, nearly an entire generation of children started being born with incredible psionic talents: precognition, psychokinesis, and more. The people hailed this sudden species shift as a gift from the gods. They called it "a fire of the mind" kindled by the inspiring lightning bolt of the Thunderbird, chief servant of the sacred sun.
The wonders of "Mind Fire" were short-lived, however, as the peoples of Or-Ad and Ur-Zen came to realize, much to their collective horror, that the children born with these gifts were doomed to live brief lives cut short by a mysterious condition. All those born with the Mind Fire would inevitably suffer a debilitating madness which onset around the age of nineteen. The madness emerged as a relentless mania, causing savage violence and wanton disregard for reason or self-restraint. This destructive insanity eventually gave over to a crippling torpor of dementia and finally (and fatally) cessation of even the most basic mental functions.
The scattered survivors of the Fallen Empires fled east from the madness and death that had consumed their homelands. They assimilated among the Pachucese, the Texidians, the Laradans, and the numerous Skylander tribes beyond the Silent Sea. Fearing to be cast out, they suppressed all cultural traces of their original homelands and adopted the language and habits of their new adoptive homes.
The Precursor legacy of the Fallen Empires was slowly forgotten. In their living memories the ensuing generations of survivors forgot the terror of the pestilence, but in their blood they preserved the legacy of Mind Fire. The survivors who fled during the Mind Fire diaspora could not know that their descendants would carry the Mind Fire with them to be kindled anew in sundry lands. This was the future they feared and they prayed it would never come to pass.
But it did. Hundreds of years after the destruction of Or-Ad and Ur-Zen the genetic markers of the Mind Fire emerged yet again. Among the Pachucese, well aware of the role Mind Fire played in the destruction of the Fallen Empires, psionic genius remains a rare trait but has become increasingly more common within the last four generations.
Those afflicted with Mind Fire are not shunned in childhood. Rather, they are doted upon and even encouraged to foster their supernatural talents. The Pachucese call their psionically gifted children "Firewalkers," so named for the unusual shared dream common to all wild psionic talents in the Forbidden Zone. They dream of a golden city in the jungle and feel an urgent compulsion to seek it out. As adulthood approaches, the young Firewalkers feel the longing for the dream city grow ever more compelling. The Pachucese believe this intensifying of the dream signals the onset of Mind Fire madness and the virulent end stages of the Mind Fire condition.
Fearful to suffer the same fate as the Fallen Empires lest Mind Fire inflict the same doom upon Pachuco as well, the Pachuco Clan Leaders determined that the Firewalkers had to be cast out, sent west into the Deep Zone. The elders reasoned that if the Mind Fire had been first lit in the west then it must return and burn there as well. Thus began the Exile of the Firewalkers.
Execution
The Exile of the Firewalkers ritual is an annual tradition that occurs during the winter solstice. Every summer the Clan Leaders gather to decide which Firewalkers have become so inflamed by the Mind Fire that they must be cast out, never to return. When the list of exiles has been decided, those young men and women are feasted and celebrated for the rest of the year until the arrival of the solstice when the banishing rite is held.
The ceremony takes place before dawn within the Pachuco City Solar Temple and is somewhat akin to a funeral rite. The families of the exiles gather in dark clothes of mourning and bring tokens for the future journey of their kin as though he or she was crossing over into the afterlife. They bring guardian poppets and jars of oil and spices. The exiles are dressed in white shrouds and made to lie upon flowered funereal chaises. They are then carried in while the assembly sings songs in praise of the sun god. Their bodies are brought before the altar where the priests anoint them with oil and bless them for the coming journey.
At the end of the ceremony, effigies of the exiles (usually portraits) are raised above the assembly for veneration. The crowd begins to call out spontaneously in praise of their kin. While all eyes are upon the rising effigies, the exiles are led behind the altar to leave the building. Then the flower-laden sedan chaises are heaped into a pyre and set ablaze, symbolizing the sacred fire which will now consume the exile: mind, body, and soul.
Components and tools
From the ceremonial flames, a prepared icon is lit on fire and raised. It is a wood and straw fetish totem depicting the Thunderbird, servant of the sun. It is lit on fire to represent the Thunderbird's divine lightning as well as the symbolic pharmakon of Mind Fire. The totem is brought out into the streets at the moment of dawn. This climax of the ritual, occurring at the precise moment of the sun's return after the longest night of the year, signifies the myth of the Thunderbird, who came to earth wielding lightning to pierce the clouds of the Long Winter and bring back the sun. While the people cheer and celebrate the sun god, the totem is led westward out of the city and back towards its home where the sun sets in the Deep Zone. The exiles, now garbed in black, their faces shrouded in hoods, follow anonymously. No one acknowledges them. The ritual is concluded. The exiles are now dead to the world of living men and women and await rebirth in the land of the Thunderbird.
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