the Prism Wardens

The Prism Wardens

“To know yourself is to witness your end. Only then may you begin.”
— Prism-Keeper Halessis, Voice of the Third Refraction

Overview

The Prism Wardens are a cloistered order of mystics, soul-reflectionists, and metaphysical archivists who serve as guardians of the Veil Prism—a luminous, otherworldly relic said to reflect one’s First Death, the metaphysical moment when the soul first left its origin plane and entered the Cycle of Aeternum. To the Wardens, this moment is the truest self: raw, unburdened, and unfinished.

Unlike the Chorus or Submerged Order, the Prism Wardens do not harvest or soothe memory. They interpret it, using light, fracture, and resonance to divine purpose, flaw, and potential. Each Warden undergoes a ritual known as the Veil Gaze, during which their soul is laid bare through the Prism’s light—an ordeal few survive sane.

They reside in crystalline sanctuaries throughout Karmir’s, near glowing mountaintops believed to mirror the spectral waves of the Prism’s light.

Core Tenets

  1. Truth is fracture. Wholeness is illusion.

  2. What you fear to see is what binds you.

  3. Reflections do not lie, but they do withhold.

  4. First Death is the only birth.

  5. The Prism does not choose. It reveals.

Roles within the Order

  • Refractionists – Initiates who study how light reveals soul flaws, known for their introspective rituals and meditation through mirrored glyphs.

  • Veil-Binders – Mystic scholars tasked with recording soul reflections as sacred geometry, storing them in Codices of Shardlight.

  • Gazewardens – Warriors of stillness who defend Prism Sites with light-infused weaponry and deep soul attunement.

  • Archivists of the First – Elders who interpret and guard the Veil Prism’s core records, forbidden from speaking except in metaphors.

Structure & Hierarchy

The Prism Wardens do not use ranks in a traditional sense. Each member’s spiritual clarity determines their authority. Leadership is held by the Refraction Trine—three seers who have each survived multiple gazes into their First Death and can channel its echoes through crystal.

The order values stillness, restraint, and illumination over action. Movement without reflection is seen as blindness.

Associated Classes

  • Wyrdchanter – Prism Voice initiates who sing in fractal tones, revealing hidden flaws in souls and constructs alike.

  • Chorusbound – Those who walk with fractured memories, drawing strength from contradiction and spiritual tension.

  • Prism Warden – The namesake class, using crystalline lenses to bend light and soul essence for defense, scrying, or healing.

  • Eidomancer – Rare scholars who reconstruct soul reflections into spectral avatars that fight or speak for the caster.

Important Locations

  • The Veil Prism – A floating relic of unknown origin that refracts soul-light in ever-changing spectrums. Said to shift shape depending on the viewer’s soul alignment.

  • The Crystal Ascents – Glowing cliffs carved with reflection-runes, used in daily pilgrimages by Wardens seeking alignment.

  • The Fracture Temple – A prism-forged hall where Veil Gazes are held. The mirrored floor has never reflected the same soul twice.

  • The Labyrinth of Echoes – A subterranean maze made entirely of living crystal. Entry is permitted only to those near spiritual collapse.

Relations to Other Factions

  • Allied with:

    • The Cyclekeepers (shared reverence for spiritual process)

    • The Whispered Path (shared use of metaphor, silence, and inner truth)

  • Conflicted with:

    • The Ashbinders’ Guild, who see reflection as a waste of potential and believe purpose should be shaped, not revealed

    • The Submerged Order, whose obsession with sealing away pain seems blasphemous to the Prism’s ideal of exposure

Secrets and Rumors

  • It is whispered the Veil Prism is not a relic but a crystallized god, shattered in the First Death and now dreaming through light.

  • Some say the Prism can show true immortality, not in body—but in returning to the moment before the First Death, thus escaping the Cycle.

  • There are secret rites that allow a Prism Warden to steal another’s reflection and bind it into a crystal weapon—creating “soul-bled” blades.