The Crucible

The Crucible is among the most enduring beliefs held across Chane. It is said to be the place where every soul goes after death, the first stage of the journey beyond, where the dead are judged and weighed. In the common telling it is a vast labyrinth that tests each soul who enters: the just are proven and rise to Celestis, and the unworthy are cast down to the Hells. The particulars differ between faiths and peoples; the core of the telling does not. Temples teach that the Crucible was the last work of the Aetherim, raised to measure the worth of mortals once the makers had withdrawn from the world. It is held to lie in the heavens, or beyond the sun. No one claims to have seen it and returned.

The heroes have their own reason to wonder at it. The trial they passed at the campaign's outset wore the shape of the Crucible, and the Prayer of the Crucible, which every child of the Vale is taught, stood carved at its threshold.