Crypt of the Windrider
Aspect: Abyssal (formerly Air) Rating: ••••• Hearthstone: ?
The Crypt of the Windrider is a powerful manse located close to the Silver River in the Northeastern Threshold. By tradition, the Linowan Nation is considered to reach its Southern end along the River just before arriving at the Crypt.
Once, the site was home to a vast metropolis, ruled by the Solar Exalt Lustrous Crystal Sun, known today only as the Windrider, of the Twilight-caste. The Windrider was famed for development of sorcery and artifice, including skyship technologies, and was a close ally of the god Vanileth, the pair entertaining each other often in their respective domains. The Warbird model of attack skyship, the warstrider Void of Thought on Soaring Wings and the vast floating city of Sal-Maneth were amongst his works. But as centuries wore on, the Windrider suffered increasing bouts of megalomania and obsession with his ‘purview’... other Exalts engaged in the field of artificial flight were thought to be plotting to steal all he had created. The Windrider demanded his Dragonblooded and his subjects devote themselves increasingly to building his advanced machines while he turned to studying arcane sorceries and the mysteries of the Shinma in order to surpass his already wondrous accomplishments. Demonic and construct servants roamed the streets to enforce his oft-inexplicable will.
At the center of his city, the Windrider raised a massive temple-manse in his own name, and directed his subjects to worship him exclusively. The edifice was powerful, built of sleek storm-grey stone and crystal, with minarets rising high into the sky. When the Usurpation came, the temple became a tomb as the Dragonblooded slew their Solar master. The cost of the victory was high indeed, for Lustrous Crystal Sun responded to betrayal by ending all life in his dominion, brick becoming smoke and flesh changed to mist in a single terrible moment, as dragon lines shifted and manses burst their seams. Simultaneously across Creation, a great wave of failures sent skyships and floating edifices hurtling to the ground as levitation sorceries and artifice tied by the Windrider to his own life ceased to function… both Solar loyalist and Usurpers found themselves afflicted without discrimination.
The whole of the Windrider’s vast metropolis was transformed into a Shadowland, the only buildings to survive the Temple of the Windrider, now renamed his Crypt, and the Factory-Cathedral of the Constructed Wing in Flight Above Creation, a major industrial manufactory. Over the course of the Shogunate, the Dragonblooded worked to shrink its borders. The Sidereal Exalted, concerned over loss of ability to maintain the surviving skyfleets of Creation, transported the Cathedral and joined it with the increasingly derelict Serene Breath Aviary to form the Aviary of Deheleshen. Around the temple itself they placed powerful sorcerous wards to prevent anything from penetrating within... or escaping from its walls.
In the present age, nearly all of the area’s history has been lost… hopeful scavengers find it devoid of valuables, and its name has been forgotten. The region is known only as the Crypt of the Windrider, some speaking that the Windrider was a terrible demon, others that it was a vile Anathema. Both the living and the dead stay clear of the place, for it has nothing to offer and exudes a crushing sense of foreboding.
Yet, the Crypt of the Windrider towers on the eastern bank of the Silver River, and those who pass through its waters at night see strange eldritch lights from within, and hear moaning howls as the wind blows between its towers. Those who dare venture close can sometimes hear whispered prayers echoing from within the Crypt at certain times of day.
