The Pale Tabernacle

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"A tall tale told by zailors. They say it's a place of unearthly delights, glimpsed only by the boldest and drunkest of zee-men. They say that the beauty of the place has struck men blind. They say it's where the Fiddler's Fluke came from..."[1]

The Pale Tabernacle is a mythical island somewhere in the Unterzee.

An Old Zailors' Tale[edit | edit source]

"[...] Whose heart did not sing when she described the shore of ice-white flowers, pure as lacre never was? Whose stomach did not coil at the tales of fruits as potent as the finest wines? Whose blood did not thrill when she spoke of the beast that prowled the Tabernacle's waters, and named it as the Fiddler's Fluke?"[2]

Drunken zailors often speak of a wondrous Arcadian isle: an enchanted haven overflowing with flowers, fruits, and wine,[3] yet guarded by an aquatic beast called the Fiddler's Fluke.[4] Sober zailors, however, caution against the folly of pursuing such visions. The isle does exist, but it reveals itself only by chance, and only to those who stray too close.[5] Eyewitnesses describe a trail of quicksilver across the zee's waters,[6] and the sound of a distant fiddle that invokes the urge to dance.[7][8] The zee smells of fine wine,[9] and lily petals and red fruits drift in the water.[10]

The Moving Isle[edit | edit source]

"The shores of the Pale Tabernacle throng with lilies white, silver, blue as pale as ice. At irregular intervals, elegant trunks rise from the earth, boughs replete with wine-red fruit. The bark is mosaiced like a honeycomb, and sticky with sweet sap. Apart from the flowers and fruit, all that is here is a single chapel, its architecture organic and grand. A pale light flickers out through its windows, licking the petals of the lilies a startling white-on-white."[2]

The isle beyond these visions is covered in lilies, and fruit-bearing trees that ooze sweet sap. The only structure present is the Pale Tabernacle itself.[11] The interior of the Tabernacle is dilapidated, but a single black candle the size of a great old tree towers over its surroundings.[12] The chapel's sole caretaker is a devil called the Elegiac Sexton, who is devoted much more to the candle than the building itself.[13]

The Tabernacle's effects on zailors do not end at landfall; its visitors find themselves overcome with contentment,[14] glee[15], and once again, the urge to dance to the sound of a fiddle.[16] Like any miraculous island from myth and legend, however, lingering too long makes escape impossible.[17] Some plunge into the zee under the spell of the music,[18] while others wither away without supplies, unable to tear themselves away from their delight.[19][20]

The Sound of the Fiddle[edit | edit source]

"'This isle was not built to be a sanctuary, but a grave,' the Sexton says. 'Worry not. The grave need not be yours.'"[2]

The Pale Tabernacle is the "grave" of a Grand Devil:[21] the Fiddler.[22] When the Season of Revolutions cast down the Princes of Hell, the Fiddler fled the White City. She knew her former subjects' vengeance would find her eventually,[23] so she ventured through the Lilymire[24] and gathered the materials necessary to perform the lily-rites, a devilish ritual of death and rebirth; she hoped to alter herself enough that her enemies could no longer trace her. This ritual involves placing one's undesirable qualities into a corpse-candle, but the Fiddler instead placed everything that once defined her into her candle: her joy, her beauty, her music.[25] In time, the qualities she placed within the candle seeped outward into the Pale Tabernacle itself, giving the island its strange properties (and sick beats).[26] Of all her attendants, only the Sexton remained loyal. In return, the Fiddler entrusted them with the task of keeping the candle's flame alight, allowing her to continue an indefinite process of change.[27]

Through the lily-rites, the Fiddler descended the Great Chain of Being,[28] and she is now known to zailors as the Fiddler's Fluke (though she is not a true Fluke).[29] She has become a vast black leviathan[30] bristling with a strange assortment of appendages from multiple species, like the tentacles of an octopus and the pedipalps of a spider. She has an iridescent shell, evoking both her prior insectoid form (like that of other Grand Devils) and the shell of a crab. Her flanks are also described as being swollen and pocked with "venom-sores," though the origin and more exact nature of these apparent injuries is unclear.[31] The Fiddler roams the Unterzee in her new form, but returns to the Tabernacle occasionally, sloughing fragments of who she was to fuel the candle’s flame[32] and shifting into something stranger with each shedding.[33]

The Fiddler's island never stays in one place for long, but unlike most locations across the Unterzee, it is not because of the Treachery of Maps but instead apparently by its own will.[34] As a devil's soul is ever-shifting, so too must the isle wander.[35]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Sidebar Snippet: What is the Pale Tabernacle?, Fallen London
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London
  3. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "A Blurry-Eyed Bosun holds court at the moment, expounding – in slurred and dancing voice – on the topic of the mythical Pale Tabernacle. "A field o' meadow-flowers, fed by a river o' wine...""
  4. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "[...] Whose heart did not sing when she described the shore of ice-white flowers, pure as lacre never was? Whose stomach did not coil at the tales of fruits as potent as the finest wines? Whose blood did not thrill when she spoke of the beast that prowled the Tabernacle's waters, and named it as the Fiddler's Fluke?"
  5. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "They say one can only arrive at the Pale Tabernacle by accident, and that chasing its ghost-lights leads only to ruin. Well, they can all hang."
  6. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "A glimmer in the corner of your eye – a mercury tear. A stain the colour of Surface starlight, beckoning from far, far across the zee. Come hither. Come hither. Are you not tired?
  7. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "It sweeps in on faintest breeze, infecting your limbs – by way of your ears – with a restless and independent spirit. A song; a jig. Your foot taps in rhythm with the rest of your crew; a grin spreads across your face."
  8. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "When the distant fiddle fades, its strings loosening their hold on your mind and body, your vessel has made good progress. You flush, out of breath, exhilarated. The source of the song is nowhere to be found."
  9. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The water here is dark, like Homer's wine. Fruits bob in the rippled wake of your ship [...] The air is heady with the scent of fermentation, rich and layered and dizzyingly tempting."
  10. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "Petals mosaic the water here, like the Pillared Sea. [...] You zail in a tide of lilies."
  11. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The shores of the Pale Tabernacle throng with lilies [...] elegant trunks rise from the earth, boughs replete with wine-red fruit. The bark is [...] sticky with sweet sap. Apart from the flowers and fruit, all that is here is a single chapel [...]"
  12. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The inside of the chapel is dominated by a single towering candle, a black and waxy redwood." [Editor's note: if you've never been fortunate enough to visit a redwood forest, imagine a tree so massive that a hollow in its trunk can fit a group of tourists crowding in for a picture. This is a very, very large candle.]
  13. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The Sexton's attention is always half-on the chapel's great candle, and much of the surrounding grandeur is falling into dilapidation as a result."
  14. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "Something about this place soaks your bones in contentment. It would be so easy to spend your time here, in languorous delight."
  15. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "A laugh bubbles out of you like water from a mountain spring. You clap your hand over your mouth. Your crew laugh in response. Before long they are in stitches, rolling over the wildflowers in hysterics."
  16. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The isle is full of noises; long, tuneful notes like gently bowed strings. It seems to have no source [...]" "I don't care what it is," says your quartermaster, sweeping the bosun into hold. "I just want to dance to it."
  17. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "Now that you are here, why would you ever leave? The ground yearns to dance with you."
  18. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "Footsteps on the shore, leading into the Unterzee. Music on the wind. The steps are not regular; they bound and leap at lyrical intervals. If somebody here walked into the Fathomking's embrace, they did so jauntily, and with panache."
  19. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "But do not linger overlong. Bones fertilise these flowers. There can be, I am told, too much of a good thing."
  20. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "A ribcage half-covered in soil and roots. A single lily pushes up through bone and rotted shirt, an 'X marks the spot' for this poor unfortunate's heart. This cannot have been a member of your agent's crew – surely?"
  21. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London ""This isle was not built to be a sanctuary, but a grave," the Sexton says. "Worry not. The grave need not be yours." [...] "It commemorates a wonder. A monument to a power above us all. It is not for your kind, nor, even, really mine. [...]"
  22. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "Hell had Princes, and my Lady was the most joyous and beautiful of them all. [...] when she bowed the strings even the tersest law-lights were drawn into the jig. [...] You would have called her the Fiddler."
  23. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The Revolution changed our Royalty. [...] My Lady, she took the uprising poorly. It stamped upon her joy. It killed her laugh. But she was still who she was, and even so grief-altered, Hell would find her."
  24. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The Sexton places a hand upon the pillar of wax (their touch is so, so careful). "[...] She would be found, if she did not change. So she did. Fled through the Lilymire, collecting what she needed while pursued by the dogs of the New Democracy. Forbad me even to help.""
  25. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The lily-rites can help to guide our re-births, when we die. What we wish to keep, we keep, and what we wish to leave behind, we put into a corpse-candle. [...] She left behind all she was known for: her mirth, her beauty, her music. [...]"
  26. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "You find nothing. Isn't it wonderful? You have the place all to yourself. A private idyll, a personal heaven, and a fiddler to lead the dance..."
  27. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "[...] It leaks from the candle. Into the ground; the island. An echo of her. I find it difficult to go outside, these days. The beauty mocks me. So I keep the candle lit, as she wished, so her changes may continue."
  28. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "In the heavens, the lily was cultivated for self-perfection; so too the candles of the mire. After the Revolution, they codified this in the Accord of Marigold and Violet: only ascension was permitted. [...] But my Lady did only as she wished."
  29. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "Witness to the Fiddler's Fluke, all that remains of a once-great Prince of Hell"
  30. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "A black body under black water, white rivers of zeefoam splitting to either side."
  31. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "Tentacles, coiled and puckering. Pedipalps working like a harvest thresher. Trailing fronds like a horde of jellyfish, tangled, self-stinging, knotted along bleak flanks swollen and ruddy with venom-sores. Something exoskeletal whispers through the water - neither quite crab nor beetle, rugged and thorny and iridescent like an oil slick."
  32. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "[...] In a pale and ungloved hand they scoop something up a black and waxy substance, sloughed off by the passing monster. "New matter to burn. She has contrived to make the process self-sustaining; her change will never cease. Come. I must replenish the candle.""
  33. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London ""She has changed again; the fronds are new." Below, a pale and roving eye briefly breaks the water, then disappears like a dolphin's fin. Its passage seems to leave a black scum upon the water, although the Sexton's face lights with fierce adoration at the sight."
  34. ↑ Ask why the island moves, Fallen London "More so than other places in the Neath. Largely, once found, a place consents to be found again."
  35. ↑ The Pale Tabernacle, Fallen London "The Elegiac Sexton walks the aisles [...] "What do you know about devils' souls? [...] They are shifting, changeable things. [...] It is both a blessing and a curse. The isle moves because its nature changes. [...] I do my best to ensure the changes are only positive, of course.""
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