The Chandler
"You lead the Dauntless Knight through the Lamentation of Violets, where the pilgrim road is strewn with unreal blossoms. You pass the shattered palace, frozen in the last moments of a Saint's demise: an eternity caged in a moment. She follows you along the rose-strewn trenches of the battlefields, where mortars and edicts committed sacrilege against the earth. You return to the old chapel of bone – once mighty, brought low."[1]
The Chandler is a Saint of Hell worshipped by the Brazen Brigade, the palace guard of the Grand Devils. The Brigade's ruined chapel[2] is both his corpse and his tomb; it is constructed from his hollowed-out bones and contains his Parabolan prison.[3]
The Brigade are trying to spread the Chandler’s word through London, disguising his nature as that of a true saint of the Church, martyred on the walls of Hell for his devotion.[4] There is a grain of truth to that story of sainthood. The Chandler was killed for love - love for his old master, a Judgement. His prison allows him to see his love through the glass, but never talk to or return to it.[5]
The monarchists at the Brimstone Convention of Mount Palmerston have an alliance with the Chandler, though they are not aware that any of the other Grand Devils are alive or reachable.[6]
The Past[edit | edit source]
"On the edge of Hell there is a fierce gleaming. It moves in the west, far beyond the bounds of the white city. It is like a forest fire roving through the woods, ghastly and pale. When the lights of Hell are dimmed, some young devils head to it. They travel in stealth, to shelter in that great radiance beyond Hell. Those that return carry that livid radiance with them like a beacon. Hell sends its cannon and its edicts against the radiance. In every sortie, the royal regiments of Hell are annihilated. The light burns on, defiant."[7]
Before it was slain in Hell's revolution, the Chandler lived far beyond the city's western walls, appearing only as a bright light in the distance. Young devils would travel to it in secret to bask in its brilliant glow, and would return carrying an aspect of its radiance - perhaps literally enlightened. Hell regularly attempted to destroy the Chandler with weapons and edicts, but its armies were always brutally defeated.[8]
References[edit | edit source]
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