The First Life
The world of The Source, called by its inhabitants Markul, is filled with mostly those that live The First Life.
All living things are born, live a time, and then die. For most people, this is the inescapable truth of life. If any life beyond life exists, such as an eternal afterlife, it is granted only by some distant, benevolent god, in some far flung world. But not this one.
Just as birth begets life, death snuffs it out.
The Source
Hidden in the frozen climbs of Markul’s south pole lies The Source, called also The Second Life Spring or The Waters of Eternity, by the precious few that know of it.
The Source lies within a deep network of caves, seemingly springing up from the bowels of Markul, defended by a small community of people defending it from prying eyes and the outside world.
The Source itself is a deep pool of green water. It is not known how deep the water goes, but it is believed to travel into the core of the planet. The waters, however, are not warm like geothermal waters are, but icy cold. The water has a strange viscosity that places it somewhere between water and milk. When wet, the water clings to human skin with a thin, film-like feel, and evaporates slowly. The water is said to taste something vaguely sweet, like sugar, mixed with the acrid tinge of rusted metal.
It is said that to reach The Source, before ever setting eyes on it, one must die three times: once, as an outcast of one’s society, once in the frozen wastelands to reach it, and once in challenge against the community, The Band, to finally see it.
Those that survive The Ordeal say, fittingly, that they’ve not died twice, but four times, having made the same trek to the southerly pole themselves before plunging themselves in the Waters of Eternity.
The Source holds an incredible secret for those that have survived its Ordeal.
The Second Life
Those that plunge and drown themselves in the Waters of the Eternity may yet live on in what is known to those that have survived it as The Second Life.
Once an initiate is drowned, he or she loses all signs of life. Their body is dredged up from the waters and is laid out in a special cavernous chamber for eight days.
If the body does not stir again, and it exhibits to signs of life, it is taken to a vast pit some miles away from the Waters of Eternity and thrown in. This pit, The Maw of Shal, is believed to be an opening to a sort of underworld, where spirits are trapped for eternity. No member of the community around The Source would ever travel there themselves. It is possible, the community admits, that some that would have been revived after eight days may have been cast into the Maw of Shal… but no one can be certain.
A miraculous few who are drowned survive.
Generally, while laid out to rest after the drowning, a survivor will stir to life in one to three days (few that survive will be revived in a longer time). The survivor will have died The First Death and have entered The Second Life. He or she will recall his or her former life fully and from the date of his or her drowning, cease to age, contract illness or disease, and begin to exhibit strange powers.
Dead Men & The Band
Those that enter the Second Life call themselves Dead Men (regardless of gender). They consider themselves part of one community, The Band, which, above all else, is tasked with supporting one another through the trials and changes that the Second Life can bring, and of course, defending The Source and knowledge of it from the outside world.
The community is highly selective of whom it will initiate. Very few people ever reach The Source. Of those few, most are killed by the community. Of those that survive the community’s scrutiny, most are drowned and die in the Ordeal. Those very, very few, perhaps 1 in a 1,000 that step foot in land surrounding the mystic caverns, will ever experience The Second Life.
The community has lost count of how many Dead Men there are. Dead Men, too, can die, a Second Death, which they will not survive. So some number of Dead Men have died. A best estimate can be found in something like 300 to 600 Dead Men have ever existed, and of them, perhaps 200 to 400 remain.
A Dead Man is minted perhaps once a decade. This means that the traditions of The Band stretch back some five or six millennia.
The community is not certain of their origins, of the origins of The Source itself. Many theories abound. But most tell of a story of a fated comet, come to punish humankind, that struck Markul at its south pole at the site of The Source, and kicked so much debris into the air that the entire planet experienced winter, killing many. This strain of thinkers in the community call themselves apocalyptists, and believe that their number, the Dead Men, exist as a means of continued punishment against humankinds for the sins that brought on the fated comet. Set against them is another major faction called the absolutionists, who believe that their task is to wait for the right time to travel into the world and use their powers to heal humankind of their wickedness. Both major factions see their place in the world as one of righting prior wrongs: the apocalyptists see a world falling to a new calamity that they will bring about, the absolutionists see a world being cleansed of its sins. Both know that the world must end as it is and be rebuilt… but under which vision?
Other strains, factions, and schools of thought exist, too. While united in their new immortality and a common goal of survival in the frozen wastes, The Band has deep, internal conflicts both philosophically and politically.
The Band lives in and around the caves that house the Waters of Eternity. They survive by using the recycled materials they brought with them in their First Lives, as well as the refuse of those that were killed by the community or did not survive the Ordeal.
The caves provide food: moss, blind fish and crabs that live in freshwater ponds and streams underground, and fungus. In the summer the community can grow some crops on the surface, which they store for the rest of the bitter winter year. The grasses they grow provide cereal grains and the fibers are used to make baskets, clothing, and rope.
The caves also supply two strains of metal: a normal variety—like iron, copper, and tin—and a mystical variety—which the community calls apocalyptite. This metal cannot be melted, tempered, or shaped in any way. Each piece is uniquely jagged, with extremely sharp edges that can cut through organic matter and even iron with ease. The metal carries a perfect mirrored surface that shows no signs of scrapes, dents, or scuffs. Apocalyptite is more of a nuisance than a benefit, as it cannot be worked like other metals. Pieces of naturally formed apocalyptite have been formed that naturally serve as tools or weapons. These are prized among the community and serve as tokens of status.
Wider Society
The human societies outside of the small community of Dead Men that live around The Source know nothing of it.
A few Dead Men, against the orders and pleading of The Band, have ventured into the wider world. None that have left have ever returned.
The Band fears that if the secret of The Source was ever to reach the rest of humankind, it would spell the end of them and their society. What good would their power be if it were open to all? Most certainly, many in the community reason, the powers granted by The First Death would be exploited and misused.
Both the major factions, the apocalyptists and the absolutionists, believe that the time for them to descend on those in the First Life and reshape the world has not yet come. And until that time, they must carefully guard their secret while they prepare for the making of a new world.