The Kiln

Infobox

Establishment Info

Type	Stat
City	The Argent Pyre
Location	Base of Mt. Pyrstomat
Type	Temple
Wealth	Wealthy
Owner	Vizratha

A large set of marbled doors decorated in filagree of the silver flame and covered in religious symbols open into a large circular chamber. Pillars rise up to meet together at the ceiling where a large flue sits above the hearth below. Tiered seats rise up in two semi-circle’s around the large brazier. While circular guests are able to pas through to the other side where they come to a cross section. To the left is the Petition Hall and the Ember Hall, to the right are the Medical Wards. Further forward descends down a guarded staircase. Lantern’s of silver-blue light light the temple dancing light across the surfaces of the temple.

The Layout of the Kiln

The Petition Hall

Entering another circular chamber where nine different nooks lay separated by silvered beads. The center of this chamber also has a hearth with a pot above with warmed water from its embers. Each alcove has a small brazier with silver coals and a Pryer siting behind veiled by smoke. The smoke slowly drifts upward in each alcove to their own vent.

1. The Offering: Here a petitioner my offer a piece of wood soaked in oil to be burned. Once the fire is lit by the oil they offer the pryer a piece of paper with their prayer. After the prayer they may seek guidance and advice, or usually confess sins that they regret and seek forgiveness.
2. The Cleansing: After offering their prayer to the silver flame petitioners are then guided to the central hearth where they cleanse themselves with the warmed water freeing their doubts, and sins with holy waterers warmed by the silver flame.
3. Sponsorship: Outsiders cannot petition alone, so any Flametouched may agree to stand for them. That makes them answerable for the outsiders conduct within the halls. Outsiders are any who do not follow in the guidance of the flame.
4. Sorting. Most matters end at the alcove:
   • Healing: sent to the Mending.
   • Faults: the Pryer names the penance on the spot.
   • Contracts, oaths and wills: written up and sent to the Herald of Proverbs.
   • Lodging: sent to the Herald of the Threshold.
5. Climbing. Anything the Pryer can’t settle is copied twice. One copy goes to the Herald’s desk. The other is burned in the alcove brazier, “so the flame hears it first.” Heralds review petitions after Chapter each evening, and only a Herald can carry a matter to the Keeper.
6. The answer. Most petitioners get an answer in days. A few get a summons to the Keeper’s Hearth. Many hear nothing, and under Law 7 silence is an answer.

The Ember Hall

A long vaulted hall lined floor to ceiling with stone niches, each holding a lantern or a small household brazier waiting to be collected. At the far end, on a stepped dais, stands a tall silver brazier, the mother flame, burning with a steady silver light. Coils of slow-burning cord hang from hooks along the walls beside jars of cinder oil. Emberites hurry in and out carrying dark braziers wrapped in cloth, and a Pryer stands at the dais with a long silver taper.

1. The Mother Flame: Each morning, after the first feeding, the Keeper carries fire up from the Pyrarkardia and hands it to the Herald of the Hearths at the head of the stair. The Herald carries it up to light the hearth of the Kiln, and the mother flame is lit from the Kiln’s hearth. It is never lit any other way.
2. Rekindling: When a household’s flame goes dark, an Emberite carries the brazier here wrapped in cloth. The household offers a measure of oil, never coin, and a Pryer relights it from the mother flame with a silver taper before the day is out. The Ember Hall is the Herald of the Hearths’ charge, and the Pryers at the taper work under their eye.
3. Carrying Home: A rekindled flame is carried home on a length of slow-burning cord. If the cord goes out on the way, the flame was not meant to arrive, and the carrier must return and begin again.
4. The Ledger: A scribe of the Herald of the Hearths records every household that goes dark. A home that has invited the dark in more than once can expect a Pryer at its door. A home that goes dark a third time is rekindled by the Herald of the Hearths themselves, and a visit from a Herald is not soon forgotten by the neighbors.
5. First Flames and Unions: A new household’s first flame is lit here by the Herald of the Hearths’ own hand. When two households join in marriage, the Herald pours their flames together into a single brazier, and it is carried home as one.
6. Embers Abroad: Pryers sent beyond the valley take their lanterns from the mother flame, and the Everflame Lanterns the Pyre trades abroad are lit here before they are sealed.

The Medical Wards

Through the right of the cross section the air cools and smells of cinder oil and crushed fever-bark. Rows of stone cots run the length of a long, low hall, each with a small brazier burning at its head, turned low to a soft blue. Pryers move between them, passing silver flame over the sick, and the flame washes over skin without burning it. At the far end a curtained alcove sits beside a narrow stair leading down.

1. The Kneeling: Healing is freely given to any who will kneel to receive it. No coin is asked; faith is the payment. Those who will not kneel are not refused care for their wounds, but the flame is not passed over them.
2. The Burning Away: Pryers burn away fever, rot, and injury with the silver flame. What a Pryer cannot mend is brought before the Herald of the Mending.
3. The Choosing: It is the Herald of the Mending’s word alone that decides who among the dying is carried down the narrow stair to be brought before the flame itself. What the flame does with them is the flame’s to decide.
4. The Curtained Alcove: Those the flame will not mend are kept behind the curtain. The Herald of the Pyre comes for them when they pass, to wash them for the Committing.
5. Penance: Those who owe penance often pay it here, carrying water, changing linens, and pressing fever-bark beside the Emberites who serve the wards.

The Kindled Halls

The guarded stair beyond the cross section winds down into the mountain, and the air grows warmer with every turn. Two Flamebearers stand at its foot. Past them the halls open up into the working heart of the Order: the ring of steel and the crack of flame from the drilling floors, the smell of hot silver from the forge, and the low murmur of Emberites copying proverbs by lamplight. Every hall has its own silver brazier, and every brazier is tended.

Open only to the Flametouched and those escorted by them.

The Drilling Floors and Dueling Rings

Wide, sand-floored halls ringed by stone benches, their walls scorched in long streaks where Pyromancers have loosed their flames. Racks of practice weapons line the walls, and sunken rings of black stone mark where duels are fought.

1. The Tempering: Flamebearers and Pyromancers drill here daily under the Herald of the Crucible, and promising members are chosen here to duel at the Tevitas service.
2. The Rings: Rivalries are tested here first. Those settled for good are carried up to The Cinder Ampitheatre so all the town may witness them.
3. The Brand: Those who fall in a sanctioned duel receive the Mark of Tempering from the Herald of the Crucible.

The Pyromancer Workshops

Low rooms of blackened stone lined with crucibles, glass vessels and iron tongs. Silver flames burn in sealed lanterns of every shape, and scorched notes cover every table.

1. Study: Pyromancers study the flame’s nature here as much as they practice wielding it.
2. The Invocations: The long invocations of every rite are learned here word for word, for a rite misspoken must be begun again.
3. Beads of Force: The Pyre’s Beads of Force are worked here before they are sent to the forge to be finished.

The Cells and Refectory

Narrow cells cut into the rock, each with a cot, a lamp and nothing else. At their end a long hall of stone tables where the Order eats together in silence.

1. The Cells: Every Flametouched who serves within the mountain sleeps here. None owns more than what fits in a cell.
2. The Refectory: Meals are taken in silence while an Emberite reads a proverb aloud.
3. The Chapter: After the third feeding each hall gathers before its brazier. One Law or proverb is read, the day’s duties are accounted for, and faults are confessed. A fault confessed at Chapter is forgiven. A fault discovered is not.

The Archive of Proverbs

A tall, quiet hall of stone shelves holding scrolls sealed in silver tubes. Emberites copy at long desks, and a single brazier burns behind a screen so no spark can reach the pages.

1. The Proverbs: Every word the Keeper has spoken in communion is recorded here by the Herald of Proverbs and their scribes.
2. Oaths and Contracts: The wills, oaths and contracts of the town are sworn before the flame and kept here. None would dare alter what the fire has witnessed.
3. Disputes: When the faithful disagree about what a proverb means, the Herald of Proverbs settles it here.

The Forge

A cavernous hall where molten silver glows in channels cut through the floor and the heat presses against your skin. Smiths in silvered aprons work at anvils beneath vents that draw the smoke up through the mountain.

1. Relic Vessels: Each ember the Keeper kindles is housed in silver here, under the eye of the Herald of the Forge.
2. The Order’s Rings: The rings carried by trusted sky captains are made here.
3. The Treasury: The Herald of the Forge holds the keys to the Order’s treasury, and the yield of the Argent Mines is accounted for here.

The Heart

Open only to the Enkindled Ones and those they escort.

The Washing Hall

A stone channel runs down the wall from somewhere far above, carrying water from the falls into the mountain. It spills from basin to basin along the length of the hall, and each basin is warmer than the last, until the final one steams in the heat of the rock. The overflow runs out through a drain cut into the far wall. Beyond the last basin stands a silver door, and Flamebearers stand to either side of it.

1. The Washing: None enter the Heart without washing here, not even the Heralds. Washers rinse their hands, mouth and brow at each basin in turn, moving from the coldest to the warmest.
2. What is Washed Away: The water does not wash the body. It washes the one who carries it, so they come before the flame without the doubts they brought into the mountain.
3. The Overflow: The used water carries what was washed away out through the drain, down the cliff face and into the river, as the Order’s ash is.
4. The Silver Door: Flamebearers turn back any who have not washed. Past the door, none speak above a murmur.

The Gallery

A ring-shaped chamber above the Chamber of Immolation, closed off by a silver grille worked in the shape of rising flames. Through it you see the pool below, the nine braziers, and the dark mouth of the stair that descends further still. Stone benches line the walls, and the heat rising through the grille makes the air shimmer.

1. The Most Holy Rites: Heralds, high-ranking Pryers and other honored members of the Order gather here to witness the most holy rites of the Order.
2. Petitioning a Herald: A matter that climbs past the Petition Hall is heard here, by a Herald rather than a Pryer. The petitioner speaks across the grille with the flame below as witness. Only the Herald may carry it further, to the Keeper’s Hearth.
3. Witnessing the Keeper: For those given leave, this is the second way to see the Keeper besides the Tevitas service. They may watch, but never speak to her or reach her. From the gallery they may witness:
   • the Pyr loutro;
   • the Keeper setting embers into new holy symbols and relics;
   • a new Herald’s brazier being lit;
   • the Keeper descending the stair for each feeding.
4. The Grille: Nothing passes through the grille, whether a hand, a word or an offering. To reach through it is to trespass within the Heart.

The Chamber of Immolation

The chamber of immolation is a spherical room with a central stone gazebo. Under the structure is a large pool, about 15 feet in diameter, filled with a clear liquid. Its hard to tell the depth it goes but you can see the grey tiles at the bottom with a golden mosaic of a flame. The edge of the room descends down a step where people may kneel or bow in prayer. Nine silver braziers hang around the room. Each lit with a silver flame and some smaller blue flames. The room feels extremely hot… yet its not uncomfortable, in fact it is oddly comforting.

1. The Pyr loutro: Flame ritual washing within the cinder pool is a direct way to commune with the silver flame. One submerges themselves in the clear oils and the chamber is set ablaze. As you feel yourself taken in by the fire you connect to the flame.
2. The Voice of the Flame: Those who commune here say the flame spoke to them, and each describes it differently: a voice, a vision, a memory, a word. In truth the flame does not speak. It only wills. In the Chamber of Immolation that will passes through the one who bathes, and they hear it in whatever shape they imagine. This is the closest most will ever come to seeing the flame.
3. The Nine Braziers: Each of the nine silver braziers belongs to one of the nine Heralds of the Order of the Silver Flame, kept lit by that Herald’s own faith. When a Herald dies their brazier gutters low until the Keeper names a successor.
4. Above the Heart: While the Chamber of Immolation is the main chamber to commune with The Silver Flame it does not host it directly. Instead it is located directly above the Pyrarkardia Origin of the Heart of Flame.

The Pyrarkardia

A secret tunnel can be opened up from the chamber of Immolation. This can only be unlocked by the Flamekeeper who holds the flame as her own. The tunnel leads down in a circular staircase that would snake around the whole room.

The spherical room itself is rather plain. 9 claw-like pillars snake down from the ceiling giving an egg-like shape which contains a beautiful White-Silver Flame. The flame seems to just apparate from nothing yet burns ever more. It looks to be suspended over a stone crater filled with white ash. The stone feels hollow beneath your feet as you move around. And though in the presence of the flame you actually feel no heat coming from it. You feel warm but unlike the above chambers there is simply the lack of anything.