The Sisters of Ash
The following is an excerpt from a torn page on the desk of Lightkeeper G. Ashford.
The Sisters of Ash
For decades, beginning around 1100 CE, a devout sisterhood operated an orphanage at the edge of the Scarlet Wood. These women displayed a cultish adherence to the beliefs of the Ascendancy, focusing their worship on the Mother and her embodiment of mercy and forgiveness. The sisters lovingly raised the young children in their orphanage as pious adherents of their faith.
As the War of Embers ignited across the land, a horde of vile men, branded as heretics by the Ascendancy, set out to sack and pillage the sisters' orphanage to enact vengeance upon the church. One night, as the sun set and darkness consumed the forest, the men descended upon the unarmed sisters and their wards.
At daybreak, the sun revealed a miracle -- the sisters and the children of their orphanage were unscathed while the band of murderers appeared silhouetted on the horizon, each impaled upon the branch of a tree and writhing in agony. Over the next ten days, the sisters bravely climbed to tend to the dying impaled men, even as their blood soaked and nourished the trees. The sisters promised the men peace if they renounced their heretical ways and embraced the church.
On the eleventh day, the men renounced their heresy and begged for baptism to earn the sisters' mercy. Pleased and proffering forgiveness, the sister ritualistically baptized the repentant killers in a holy fire, setting the trees ablaze. The ashen remains of the men, sanctified by fire, rained down upon the desecrated forest of blood-soaked trees. It was there, in the Scarlet Wood, that the Sisters of Ash were born -- their obsidian robes adorned with the charred remains of the heretics.
It is debated whether the Sisters of Ash continue to act as inquisitors on behalf of the Ascendancy or as an obscure cult that sadistically murders heretics. Some believe the orphanage still exists, hidden in the Scarlet Wood, though no reliable scoures have provided more than local folktales. A chronicler during the War of Ember wrote, "Woe unto them that have angered the Church -- for none can escape the loving embrace of the Sisters of Ash."
Written in the margins of the page: "The Sisters of Ash still exist as a sect of Pyre, and the orphanage still exists and raises children within the cult. Historians believe this 'religious order' faded away after the War of Embers, but they are very real and as fanatical and violent as ever."
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