Altar of Storms

The Altar of Storms is a great stone formation that is by far the most prominent feature of a small island rising out of the molten sea of Askarand near the center of Ufmarkt. While clearly an object of great magical potency, the exact powers of the Altar remain unknown. Its origin is even more of an enigma; no one in Ufmarkt remembers a time when the Altar wasn't there, and it may very well date back to the veigur's (hypothetical) Preustrinal Age. Despite its being referred to as an altar, there is no evidence that the Altar of Storms is in fact associated with any god.

Description

The Altar of Storms is a great rectangular butte, 415 meters long and 280 meters wide at the top, and more than a thousand meters tall. Of this height, some 260 meters pertains to the rectihedral top of the butte, the rest to its "stem". The Altar appears to be made of streaky sandstone, though to the touch is texture is more similar to marble. The stone is usually colored in striations of red, brown, and grey, though the colors change over time and sometimes other hues appear.

Not only the color of the Altar changes, but its shape as well. Both change far too slowly to watch the alteration occur, but if one leaves the Altar and comes back after a few days it will be noticeably different. While the overall form of the Altar seems to be more or less constant, the sides of the rectihedral portion are covered in carvings—usually abstract patterns, though occasionally what appear to be rough landscapes or crude bas-reliefs of human figures or of more exotic beings. Like so much about the Altar of Storms, the significance of these carvings, if any, is unknown. On rare occasions, the carvings show scenes including cavern entrances or doorways, which include actual apertures leading into the Altar's interior; while a handful of explorers (most of them undead native to Ufmarkt) have entered these openings and returned to tell of labyrinths within full of wonders, most of the few who have ventured within never emerged. It could be that they were killed by some peril within, but it could also be that they simply failed to find their way back out in time before the carvings changed again and the exits were sealed. Whether these unfortunates were then trapped within tunnels without egress, embedded within solid stone, or somehow completely absorbed by the Altar of Storms, none can say.

The Altar of Storms is generally depicted surrounded by electrical discharges and multicolored bolts of lightning. Indeed, those familiar with the Altar only through secondhand stories generally think that this is its perpetual condition. In fact, this isn't the case; while there are times that such discharges do occur, most of the time the altar is quiescent, or only a few sparks and electrical shimmers play over its surface.

Surroundings

The base of the butte that is the Altar of Storms (or at least, that is its base; often the Altar proper is considered to comprise only the box-shaped top part) broadens at the bottom, providing a shelf that supports what passes for life in the hostile environment of Ufmarkt, in this case principally tiny things like gemweed and firecopes. Beyond that in all directions is the magmatic expanse of Askarand. No solid land exists anywhere else near the Altar, the closest being the small island of Kelmark eight hundred kilometers away.

Some intrepid settlers have formed a small community on the broadest part of the Altar's base, supplemented with some artificial jetties and platforms extending out into the lava. Sporting only a few hundred (mostly undead) inhabitants, this community, Stormside, tends to be insular and mistrustful of outsiders, and to hold the Altar of Storms in almost reverential awe. The stories of them actually sacrificing visitors to the Altar may or may not be only empty rumors.

Powers

Although it's well accepted that the Altar of Storms may have any number of powers that remain unknown, it does have a few powers that have been well established. Next to the plays of lightning that give the Altar its name, the best known of its powers is one of the reasons it's referred to as an "altar". If anything is left on the top surface of the Altar for more than about half a day, living or dead, then multicolored lightning shoots down and surrounds it, and after a few minutes the "offering" is completely consumed. (It should be noted that this is not the only time the lightning appears; it also often plays across the top of the Altar for no apparent reason, making it a dangerous place to linger even for shorter time periods.) What happens to the vanished object is unknown, whether it is obliterated, absorbed, translocated, or transformed. However, this phenomenon has been found to be useful, because other objects nearby when the lightning strikes, provided these other objects have not themselves also been left there long enough to disappear, may be empowered in various ways. While there do seem to be some patterns to the empowerment, all the details of the system have yet to be divined. Some people have used the Altar of Storms to create powerful magic weapons and other talismans, but for the most part they have not seen fit to share the details of just how they accomplished those feats, or what had to be offered up to the Altar to achieve them—though rumors run wild that in at least some of those cases the unwilling "sacrifice" of ellogous beings was involved.

Because of this odd power, the top surface of the Altar is necessarily barren, supporting nothing but bare stone. Six centuries ago, a wizard named Aerillan had an idea on how to get around this restriction by building structures enchanted so that they didn't exist on the Altar's top for more than a few hours at a stretch, too short a time period to fall victim to the Altar's power. In fact, Aerillan and his allies constructed two such structures, the Shift Towers, in the same location but at different schedules, so that just when one passed out of existence the other would appear in the same spot. Those within one of the Towers when it vanished would reappear with it when it returned, though it was also possible to leave the tower just before it vanished and enter its "twin" on its arrival. At first, Aerillan's plan worked just as intended; the Towers appeared and disappeared on schedule, and there was always one of the Shift Towers in place. After a couple hundred years, though, one of the Towers failed to reappear on schedule; thereafter, the other Tower continued to keep its times, but its counterpart only appeared erratically, briefly, and increasingly rarely. It was only a few decades before this condition spread to both towers, and soon the Shift Towers were little more than a memory. Even today, occasionally one of the Shift Towers unpredictably appears on top of the Altar, but it never lingers long before vanishing again, and whatever is inside the tower vanishes with it. The reasons for the breakdown in the Towers' enchantment remain a mystery—as is the fate of Aerillan himself, and of his companions.

Life

The Altar of Storms is too small to support much of an ecosystem. There are the tiny things that have found a foothold on its base, and there is the village of Stormside, but otherwise little grows, lives, or unlives there. Certainly nothing dwells on the top of the tower, for if it did it wouldn't be there long before it was swallowed by the lightning.

There is one particular kind of being, however, that does live in the vicinity of the Altar of Storms, and apparently nowhere else. Called ugulons, these ghostly entities are strange and ethereal even by undead standards, appearing as wispy humanoid figures in an iridescent soapy sheen of colors, tapering below the waist to nothingness. Ugulons are often seen flitting about the Altar, and seem to be more numerous when the lightning is either in progress or imminent. Although never more than a few dozen have been seen at a time, some counts have estimated that there may be hundreds of the entities in existence. Formerly, they were thought when unseen to dwell inside the Altar itself, but closer observation shows that they tend to disappear at a distance from it, suggesting that they pass to and from some pocket plane or perinde—or, as some have suggested, that they are always present but have a means of turning invisible and undetectable. While they're believed by some to be the remains of people sacrificed to the Altar, there's no evidence of this, and most scholars discount this idea. They do certainly seem to be tied to the Altar in some way, however, given that they've never been seen anywhere else.