Gardens 0711 — Monastery of Dying Fire

At the top of the inverted mountain cavern, above the reach of the snow, sits an old fire-damaged monastery. Much of it has collapsed and crumbled, and the effects of monastic life can be seen buried in the rubble — small brass incense holders, scraps of white robes charred by fire, illegible scrolls. Smoke and heat rise from below — dig down just two feet and you can find a bed of coals still burning. These coals remain hot under conditions that would extinguish a mundane fire – water, lack of air, and time do not reduce them.

Adepts of the Flame, those assassins of the fire cult fully given over to the nightmare formed by the order’s destruction in the kingdoms of law, know the location of this monastery and occasionally come to it to die. For every day spent here, there is a 1-in-4 chance of an Adept of the Flame arriving to shed their robes, bury themself in the rubble, and become part of the bed of coals. The Adepts react badly to intruders in their sacred place and will seek to drive any being not of their own order out with frantic violence.

The still mortal members of the fire cult, and their distant schism the Stokers of the Hearth-Firmament, would both consider this place and the coals from it deeply sacred and worthy of pilgrimage and restoration. The Adepts are too far gone to communicate directly with their mortal brethren, and the hospitable Stokers are largely unaware that their more murderous counterparts still walk the world.

From the last still-standing doorway to the monastery, the lights of the city below blink and flash through the snow.