Ring of Light
Every beacon is a promise
Of harbor and of home
That we’ll come back to join
The ones we left alone.
The Ring of Light is a network of lighthouses built and maintained by the Order of the Lightkeepers. It consists of nearly six thousand lighthouses placed at intervals around the Great Ring, and allows mariners to navigate the ring with ease. Each of the lighthouses is inhabited by its own god, created from the beliefs and desires of the keepers via the Egregoric Force. The lighthouses are considered utterly sacrosanct by the sailors of the Great Ring; in the rare cases where a king or general has ordered their navy to attack a lighthouse, mutinies and uprisings have resulted.
History
The Fáros Óneiro was the first lighthouse in the Ring of Light, and is the place where the Order of the Lightkeepers were founded. At first, the lighthouse was simply a building - a grand one to be sure, but not the icon it would later become. But when a Dreamwalker used the lighthouse's echo as a focus to find their way home, stories began to circulate about the lighthouse's role in The Dream. This eventually triggered the awakening of the lighthouse's god who took the name of Fáros Óneiro, the Dreaming Lighthouse. The tenders of the lighthouse became the priests of the newborn god, and found beauty and purpose in the transition. It was the Fáros Óneiro itself which first dreamt of the Ring of Light, and it shared the vision of the larger network with its priesthood. At the behest of their god, the Lightkeepers began to construct the Ring of Light, with the goal of creating an unbroken network that could be followed around the entire Great Ring.
The construction of the Ring of Light was greatly accelerated when Lindos was conquered by Hundaru of Telmun and became a part of the Telmunic Empire. Hundaru saw the value in the network of lighthouses they were building, and placed the substantial resources of the Telmunic Empire at the disposal of the Order. While the Empire lost most of its territory in the centuries after Hundaru's assassination, it still enabled the construction of nearly a quarter of the lighthouses in the current Ring of Light, with lighthouses spanning the southern arch of the Great Ring from the Kaphtor Islands to the city of Kendari on Lahat. The lighthouse on Menâme was dedicated to Hundaru in gratitude, and the conqueror's Eidolon underwent Apotheosis to become the god of this tower.
As the Telmunic Empire collapsed, construction of the Ring slowed, but did not cease altogether. The Lightkeepers were well established at this point, and were able to find supporters of the project on many of the islands. As the ring grew, the sailors and merchants of the islands began to see the sites as sacred ground, and sought the favor of the newborn gods. Today, the Ring of Light represents the largest pantheon within the Great Ring, with each tower housing their own local deity and priesthood.
The Lighthouse Gods
While the purpose of the lighthouses is to help ships find their way, the gods that have arisen are creatures of The Dream, the realm of ideas and metaphors. When they arise, they usually expand the remit of their tower beyond the ideas of literal navigation into ideas that are symbolically connected. Thus, the god of the Fáros Óneiro seeks to guide those lost in the Dream, while Mother Solace of the Solennefrieden Lighthouse aids those who have become lost in their own minds. The gods of the Ring of Light explore the concepts of navigation, safety, guidance, and home in a myriad of ways, and have expanded the responsibilities of the Order of the Lightkeepers far beyond the original purpose. Here are some of the best known of the lighthouses, and how they approach these ideas.
- Fáros Óneiro: The oldest lighthouse in the ring, it seeks to bring the lost dreamer back to the world.
- Tamashii no Akari: This lighthouse guides the spirits of the dead to their proper afterlife.
- Usran Lighthouse: This lighthouse seeks to reunite objects with their homes, especially the bodies of those lost at sea.
Lighthouse Signaling
Throughout large sections of the Great Ring, the lighthouses of the Ring of Light are close enough that they can signal to each other with their beacons. The Order of the Lightkeepers uses this to transmit messages rapidly over long distances. You can read more about this communiction system here.
This article was originally written for Spooktober 2024. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
This article was originally written for Spooktober 2023. You can find all of my Spooktober Articles at Spooktober Central.
Of course with all the epic lighthouses there'd be a pattern to them.
Yep! I have fun trying to come up with new themes for the various lighthouses to represent. The Lighthouse of the Lost will be coming soon, for those whose homes no longer exist, and the Misfit's Lighthouse for those whose birth homes are not their true homes. (names subject to change).