Kosalo Astrolabe
"Your Highness, Kosalo was broken before we ever left Lampuato. Before the rebellion, even - the princes shattered it, and Lampuato paid the price. We must now let the old order collapse, and find the new arrangement of Kosalo."
"No. You will find a way to sustain Kosalo. To let it collapse would be too costly - we would lose everything." - excerpt from the historical records of the Kingdom of Lahat, shortly before the construction of the Kosalo Astrolabe.
Kosalo, or divine order, is a central philosophical belief of the Mekongga people. It teaches that the wellbeing and stability of the universe depends on all things being in their correct places, and doing what they ought to. When people violate Kosalo, the Egregoric Force begins to destroy the areas where this belief system holds sway. For small violations, the imbalances are easily corrected or countered. But for major violations, correcting the balance is an extreme undertaking.
The destruction of Lampuato and conquest of Lahat was the most significant violation of Kosalo in the history of the Mekongga. It began with the excesses of the royal family of Lampuato, and led to the total collapse of the physical and spiritual ecosystem of that island. This forced the surviving Mekongga to flee. They gathered their population and launched an invasion of Lahat, conquering that island and nearly obliterating the Tau Tanah people who lived there. In the early years of the Kingdom of Lahat, there were disturbing signs that this extreme overturning of the divine order would destroy Lahat as it had Lampuato. But after the construction of the Kosalo Astrolabe, the deterioration of the island ceased.
The astrolabe serves as the center point of a vast ritual of order and organization intended to stave of the chaos caused by the fractured Kosalo. This ritual includes such diverse elements as the prison camps on Lampuato, the meticulously laid out fortresses of the Kingdom of Lahat, and the strict observances of social hierarchy within the capital city of Ratubala.
The Astrolabe itself takes up a gigantic chamber deep beneath the royal palace. It is maintained by a troop of priests, who are continuously maintaining the ritual by shifting the alignment of the instrument according to a prescribed and specific order of operations. Even small deviations in the artificially maintained Kosalo can cause chaotic effects all over Lahat, from the sudden appearance of malevolent spirits to rains of frogs or wells suddenly turning brackish. The priests themselves suffer from their exposure to the Astrolabe and the ritual magic it is a focus for. They find themselves irrationally obsessed with small, personal rituals. This obsession will increase in intensity until they are no longer able to perform their duties. For most, a long break far away from the Astrolabe will allow them to recover, but some are permanently altered by the device.
The Astrolabe is constructed of multiple metals, each layered into the structure in an order dictated by the more obscure and specific treatises on Kosalo. They are inlaid with symbols associated with the divine order of the world, and serve to amplify those aspects of the old order that can be maintained, so that the structure of Kosalo does not collapse into a new shape.
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