---

Amat once had another name. She lived in the peaks of the southern scavenger lands, where her village harvested potatoes, coca and tobacco. In this quiet place, the slow march of history could be easily ignored. Isolated from both war and intrigue, one might imagine that the lifestyle of such simple folk was bereft of any hardship.

Yet, this was not the case. Nature can prove just as deadly a foe as men. Amat and several others were the survivors of a 100-year winter which killed all but a handful of people. Even survival was a meager blessing. Once those seven unfortunates were rescued, they began wandering, for a village of seven is little more than a meal for the wolves.

Somewhere along this journey, most who know of her nature must assume Amat encountered a demon and bartered with it for power. She never speaks of this.

Now, Amat has become something more than human. The bargain she has made with the Old Gods has given her not only practical immortality, but a variety of unusual talents. Amat has found that she can usurp intended fate in favor of her own dictates. The Yozi have trained her in the technique of granting wishes. She imprints favorable luck on those who embrace her as a god. Those who invoke her name and please her enjoy uncannily good fortune. Some even become more than human.

The Reclamation demands that these talents be put to good use. Gratitude demands that Amat attend to the wishes of those who gave her this great gift with all due diligence, even if the horrors of Malfeas and the mad nature of her masters have not escaped her attention. She is terrified by what they may yet ask of her, yet pleased that she has been given wide discretion in how to carry out her duties.

After Amat came to creation, she was shocked at the latitude her Yozi 'masters' afforded her. She returned to Malfeas but rarely, finding the demonic city uncomfortable, loud and filled with unsavory personages. Wandering the Scavenger Lands, Amat spread her Holy Land far and wide. She preaches regarding the failures of the Celestial Order and her own divine power, working miracles to prove her sincerity. In her wake, hunger is abolished by the practice of eating locusts and great Kings with supernatural skill usurp existing order. She mends broken flesh, spirit and mind, undoing Wyld mutations and restoring the infirm.

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The White Desert

Some mistake the desert as a dead place, without life. Similarly, some mistake the sands of Cecelyne as uniform and unremarkable throughout, a dimension where all topography is essentially similar. This is inaccurate. Cecelyne has expanded into many places, some amputed from Creation and given over to her in the imprisonment, others natural extensions of her being or taken from other Yozi who have sloughed off sand-infected organs or nations.

When Amat was created, the white sand of her desert came into being simultaniously, unique and distinct from the sand of Cecelyne and yet utterly similar to it as well. Devoid of the silvery glimmer that is common to the rest of Cecelyne, white sand is ice cold to the touch and compels wind to shift restlessly upon it. Some sand prefers to hover rather than lie flat upon the earth, so the white desert is cloaked in a pearlish mist that obscures the light of Ligier into a dull, hazy glow. The sand is prone to sandstorms with alarming regularity, and these sudden blizzards can reduce temperature well below even Northern extremes, flash-freezing ill equiped demons into eternal statues.

In places where Amat has past, and those who embraced her word and live as her worshipers prosper, some have developed the ability to walk the white desert and find it eerily comfortable, even welcoming.

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The City of Peace

'Efrem'

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One day, Amat had a dream of golden city, where all of her relatives and friends gathered and rejoiced. There, they were happy and removed from all suffering. There, war and hunger were distant hardships so unreal they could never come to pass. It was a city of dreams, a city of love, a city of peace.

Amat decided she would use the Yozi power to make that city real. She called that place 'Efrem'. When it was born within her mind, she shed three tears, which she captured in a tiny glass vial. That vial is suspended from her left ear, an ornament that contains the heart of Efrem, and some say that were one to take it from her they might taint the heart of the City of Peace and make it wicked and evil. None know how Amat made the bargains with Hell that were required to locate the gold city, but all can claim with authority that it was done, for Efrem exists and cannot be denied by those who hear tale of the wonders there.

Efrem is in all things majestic, for the Demon which crafted it desired to inspire awe and reverence in the mortals who beheld her architecture. Held captive within Hell for five thousand years, her desire to overwhelm Creation with her talents burned until the Infernal Exalted Amat released her from the Yozi prison. Gold is everywhere, used as inlay and paint and fabric and gilding. Some say that demon remains within the city still, conspiring always to bring new dwellings into existence or to refine older hospices, watching over the inhabitants of the city and occasionally even taking a human shape to mingle with those who inhabit her creations. The temple dedicated to this Demon, Amalion, is expansive, and is said to rival the Palace Sublime in size and architecture.

Close by to this temple is the the amphitheatre of Ten Hollow Tongues, the 'Deliberative Hall' which I'm sure he will describe in awesomely cool detail as soon as he gets around to it.

In the center of the radial pattern of the city (common to many High First Age urban designs) is the temple of Amat. This glorious ziggurat is said to be a wonder of the modern world, crafted with such ingenious inspiration that many who inhabit the city come to pass time for hours by staring at the graceful entwining arches that raise up like an exotic rose crafted of crystal, brass and gold. No building in Creation can rival the temple of Amat in size, complexity or majesty. Even the Imperial Palace, the grand city-sized home of the Dragonblooded Empress, is dwarfed by the Holy of Holies. The interior of the temple contains reputed treasures beyond imagining, with three thresholds that are each more richly adorned than the one previous, until finally one reaches the inner chamber, forged completely of solid gold and adorned with diamonds, rubies and sapphires.

Those wonders are for Amat alone, but at the threshold of the temple is the glorious Spring of Uncompromising Purity. This strange well is crafted out of clear, weightless crystal and accented with glimmering green-tinted brass, conveying the sweet waters through dozens of small pools and playful channels. The fountain is said to contain the purest waters in all Creation, from which any who live within the city of peace may drink freely. Amat has claimed that those that drink from the fountain enjoy eternal life. The waters glow gently in the night time hours and teem with essence to the sorcerously sighted. Throngs gather around the fountain night and day.

The city of peace is cloaked in a powerful illusion, an everpresent sandstorm of chill white sand that obscure it from the attention of those who would malign Amat or her followers. This Mirage of Protective Shelter is known and public, for Amat feels that it brings those who come to her a sense of peace to feel safe from the horrors of the Age of Shadows.

Food for those within the City of Peace is provided freely at the Spawning Pits, and the tender locust meat is succulent and plentiful. Currency of any sort is illegal. Amat prefers that those within her glorious home share amongst one another and compete to outdo each other with acts of compassion, and her policies and laws (a byzantine azure-hued tome almost five inches thick) prohibit outright thoughts of violence or theft.

The City of Peace claims many from throughout Creation, both innocents seeking the shelter of a glorious paradise and less savory individuals trying to take advantage of them. Amat enforces her law with mortal agencies, and these attending police forces are removed from her attention. Though they are headed by Messiah who claim godlike, superhuman prowess in any field of endeavor they are blessed in, they are populated by rank-and-file mortals who cannot be everywhere and see everything.

Therefore, the 'City of Peace' claims murderers and rapists and thieves just as any other city does. Amat despises such individuals, and her laws do not view those that flaunt them with compassion. They are cast out of the City of Peace or executed upon being discovered,

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Some Tropes...

Wide Eyed Idealist

The Ingenue

Antivillain

The Utopia Justifies the Means