Communion
Communion is a process of ingesting kinfire that was developed nearly 2,000 years ago and which led to the evolution of a group of humans into dwarves.
History
Around 2,000 years before the Darkness returned, the region of Dwar Fell experienced a boom in technological advancement. The leaders of Dwar Fell began to allow the study of kinfire. After all, the Darkness hadn’t shown itself in a millennium. Kinfire, a flame of inexhaustible magical energy, was just left burning in those lighthouses when there was no longer any Darkness to keep at bay.
Through study, scholars learned that kinfire was beyond any magic they’d ever seen. Engineers began incorporating it into machines, powering wheeled wagons, heating entire wells of water, and crafting machines to take over an array of day-to-day tasks.
A human named Cadmus Godforger discovered a method of physically ingesting kinfire in a way that didn’t harm the body. Most thought that he was mad for even attempting such a thing. It's likely that he wasn’t the first to try this, but it does seem that he was the first to survive.
Development
The story of how Communion came to be has been told for over a thousand years in the well-known tale, The Legend of Cadmus Godforger. Most individuals from Dwar Fell take the details of this legend as facts, while some Scholars claim that it is exaggerated in order to proclaim the superiority of science over superstition.
The journals of Cadmus Godforger and his research on kinfire were kept in a library in Dwar Fell until the return of the Darkness. According to these journals, Godforger believed that inhaling kinfire fumes would be the safest way to imbue the body with its magic.
He housed the embers in a small, cage-like container. The bottom half of the cage held the ember, while the top half contained a funnel that released small drips of liquid upon the ember. The liquid was made of a blend of ingredients that Cadmus believed would diminish any harmful physical effects. When the drips of liquid hit the ember, a thick but odorless steam was released from the cage.
When I first inhaled the steam, I felt a burning sensation in my nostrils and down my throat. It grew so severe that I drank down an entire bowl of water in an attempt to sooth it. After one hour, my insides began to burn and I felt as if my very blood was boiling. A tingling began in my extremities and my heart nearly beat out of my chest.
By the next morning, the burning sensation had lessened, but I was devastated by exhaustion. When my body finally regained its fortitude, I rose from bed and took note of my condition. I was surprised to find that my body temperature had raised a considerable amount. My skin appeared to be resistant to most sources of heat, including bare flame, which didn’t burn or char me in the slightest. In addition, a streak of shimmering white had appeared in my hair, from the roots all the way to the tips.
-From the journals of Cadmus Godforger
It took several years for the importance of this breakthrough to become clear. Cadmus, who was already at the age of fifty-seven when he developed Communion, reached the age of seventy, and then eighty, and then 90 without his body changing in the slightest. When he finally reached the age of one hundred and still had a spring in his step, it became clear that more about him had changed than just his blood. The kinfire had lengthened his life.
At the age of 115, Cadmus fathered a child. The child, a daughter, was born with eyes that glowed with kinfire and fiery red hair. As she grew older, it became evident that her height was somewhat stunted and that she had the same kinfire-infused blood as her father. When Cadmus first saw her eyes, it is said that he shouted in astonishment. “Of course! It’s in the blood!” Thus it was discovered that the effects of Communion were passed down at birth.
Reception
Once the effects of Cadmus Godforger’s method became clear, many others underwent the process as well. Over the course of multiple generations, most of the humans in Dwar Fell had undergone Communion in the hopes of extending their lifespans. The process became a traditional ceremony for humans reaching adulthood in Dwar Fell.
In just a few hundred years, the population of Dwar Fell transformed. When outsiders encountered one of these kinfire-touched individuals, they were often surprised and afraid. Rumors spread that the humans from Dwar Fell had been taken over by evil spirits. In time, as the population of Dwar Fell spread, these individuals became known as "dwarves."
Kinfire Supply
After centuries of Communion and with no further supply of kinfire from the Luminated Alliance, Dwar Fell's kinfire dwindled. It became necessary to limit the Communion ceremony to only individuals of great importance. Eventually, the ceremony was stopped altogether. Despite this, the benefits of Communion have persisted through the many generations of dwarves in the years since then, making it clear that the change to their bloodlines is permanent and irreversible.
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