the Altarbound

The Altarbound

“No word dies. No dream fades. They wait, etched in stillness.”
— Dream-Keeper Vellathei, standing at the base of the 300th Harmonic Cairn

Overview

The Altarbound are solemn, contemplative keepers of final truths—a sect of spiritual archivists, memory harvesters, and statue-tenders who dedicate their lives to preserving the last whispers of the dying and the echoes of final dreams. They believe that every soul leaves behind a final harmonic resonance at death, often unheard, often misunderstood—but never lost.

Their sacred task is to record these echoes within the Harmonic Cairns, massive crystalline obelisks constructed high within the peaks of Eldranly’s and other resonance-charged regions. These cairns sing, almost imperceptibly, with the stored voices of the past. Those trained to hear can interpret prophecy, ancestral wisdom, or even long-lost love songs within their refracted tones.

Altarbound believe that truths too large for the living are delivered in the final exhalation. To preserve those dying utterances is to preserve the spiritual future of Aeternum.

Core Tenets

  1. The last breath is the soul’s purest song.

  2. Dreams belong to those not yet born.

  3. Silence is a record, not an absence.

  4. To forget a final word is to erase a world.

  5. Stone remembers what the flesh fails.

Roles within the Order

  • Dream-Keepers – Listeners trained to enter the dreams of the dying and extract their final vision.

  • Cairnwrights – Crystal engineers who shape Harmonic Cairns and tune their frequency to specific soul echoes.

  • Statue-Wardens – Silent monks who tend to the scattered statues of Eldranly’s, believed to store ancestral sorrow and memory.

  • Wordcallers – Transcribers of last words, who ink them in memory-bark scrolls or carve them into echo-slabs.

  • Shardbearers – Wanderers who carry fragments of unspoken last thoughts, acting as vessels of grief for those who could not voice it.

  • Vigilants of the Peak – High-order sentinels who watch over ancient cairns and ensure no echo is corrupted by outside magic.

Structure & Influence

The Altarbound do not maintain cities or central temples. Their influence flows like glacial silence, seeded across Aeternum in the form of isolated shrines, lone watchers, and ever-growing cairns. Their primary gathering site is The Singing Summit, atop Eldranly’s highest peak, where the winds carry the overlapping songs of a thousand deaths.

They are often summoned by noble houses and warrior orders to witness death rites and encode legacy into crystalline form. However, some fear them, believing that to speak near an Altarbound is to have your final words stolen prematurely.

Associated Classes

  • Eidomancer – Interpreters of memory resonance stored in crystal and song.

  • Inkbond – Wordcallers who transfer soul-etched phrases into inked permanence.

  • Chorusbound – Carriers of sorrow-songs, linking the present to ancestral echoes.

  • Fragmentalist – Memory sculptors who assist in attuning cairns to specific dream types.

  • Soulmidwife – Sometimes called upon for double rites, guiding both body and memory into rest.

Important Locations

  • The Singing Summit – Central peak of Eldranly’s where the oldest Harmonic Cairns resonate with layers of ancient death-songs.

  • The Thousand Watchers – A ridgeline of statues, each carved from griefstone and said to whisper only when no one is watching.

  • Lastlight Hollow – A deep crevasse where forbidden final dreams are sealed—too dangerous to be sung aloud.

  • The Breathing Cairn – A semi-living shrine that exhales warmth and grief into the cold of night. Thought to be connected to a soul that has never stopped dying.

  • Vowpoint – A lone outpost where lovers, oathsworn knights, and fading prophets go to have their final words inscribed.

Relations to Other Factions

  • Allied with:

    • The Skyward Chorus, with whom they share harmonic philosophy and resonance theory.

    • The Cyclekeepers, as both orders believe in the preservation of spiritual memory through transition.

    • The Whispered Path, whose meditations are often used to help interpret death-dreams.

  • Tense with:

    • The Ledger Guild, whose transactional view of memory insults the sacredness of last words.

    • The Ashbinders’ Guild, who destroy grief by forging it instead of listening to its last breath.

    • The Mire Echoes, whose obsession with memory decay clashes with the Altarbound’s sacred preservation.

Secrets and Rumors

  • Some say the statues of Eldranly’s contain not echoes, but entire trapped souls, slowly crystallizing into god-memories.

  • A rogue Dream-Keeper named Ulvarn the Pale once carved a Cairn of Pure Silence—those who approach it come back without names.

  • There are whispers of a forbidden cairn known as The Lament Core, which contains the last dream of the first being to ever die in Aeternum.

  • A secret order of Resonant Assassins may exist within the Altarbound—those who extract final words prematurely for strategic use.