Vastarian: Glass for the Beacon

The Diocese of the Adamant Spires comes to a chapel in Saint-Fauré to request the aid of the Church of the Red Athenæum for creating an astropathic beacon.

Retrofitting the Ravachol lighthouse as an astropathic beacon was a risk. If fortunate, concentrating and focusing a massive amount of psychic energy might serve as a conduit to amplify the waning Astronomican and pierce the darkness enveloping Vastarian. But it might also serve as a lightning rod for the horrors of the Immaterium, like a scintilla of blood in the water drawing in cartilaginous horrors from the stygian depths, Helicoprion and Edestus.

Vastarian: the Road to Ravachol

“I can only sit and wait, knowing that one day he will turn full around, step down from his stage, and claim me for the abyss I have always feared. Perhaps then I will discover what it was I did - what any of us did - to deserve this fate.” - Thomas Ligotti

The “Emergence of Saints” was a psychic awakening that swept over Vastarian and caused the planet to collapse into bedlam. In dreams panic spread, a euphoric terror spawned from an encroaching darkness—a presence that seeped in from the margins, dripping from the stars as if they were untethering from reality. The rise of “Saints” provided a temporary respite from the suffocating darkness that occupied the minds of everyone on Vastarian. These nascent psykers acted as luminous beacons in a fulminous storm that assaulted the inhabitants of the planet. However, as the violence escalated, the intangible blackness enveloped Vastarian with renewed vigor, haunting its people through dreams. As though it was metastasizing, that blackness began to leak from the confines of sleep, trapping inhabitants in a liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. During this psychic turmoil, the purifying radiance of the Emperor, the Astronomican, plummeted as if it were a tallow candle guttering in a tumultuous wind. In desperation, many of the Spyrehead conclaves on the planet pooled their resources and delved deeply into crumpling treatises on the nature of astropathic beacons and put into motion a fantastical gambit: fortifying the principle lighthouse in Ravachol as a psychic conduit to amplify the waning Astronomican.