Adoring Statues

Overview

The Adoring Statues are the faithful whom the Weeping Idol has made "perfect". The Idol is a Cast-Out, once the Keeper of the Shrine under Lux, which wearied of doubt and set out to carve the faithful into gold and marble caught in a moment of unthinking adoration. Its gaze petrifies; its golden tears gild. What is left in both cases is a worshipper who stays aware and can no longer move, speak, or think a thought of their own. Only devotion remains.

Appearance

An Adoring Statue is a person at life size, kneeling or standing with face raised and hands lifted or folded, in the pose they held when the Idol took them. Those turned by its gaze are white marble or grey granite, smooth and cold, every fold of a sleeve and strand of hair perfect, the face fixed in blissful, empty wonder. Those caught by its Tears of Gold are gleaming gold, kneeling for ever, with the drips of the golden spray still frozen on shoulders and back. On many, the cheeks bear a track of something like wax or gold, as if they too had wept.

They are utterly still and silent. Incense hangs around them long after the Idol has gone, and the air near a group of them seems full of silent prayer. They are cool even in summer sun.

Habitat and Range

They stand where the Idol has walked: along its Statue Trail, where grass has turned to jade and trees to obsidian, and in temples and shrines it visited. A city torn by doubt that asked it for perfection became a golden shrine, its people fixed in adoration, and it still stands unchanged. A priest tormented by doubt stands where it left him, turned to gold at the height of his faith.

Behaviour and Temperament

They have none. An Adoring Statue cannot act or think its own thoughts. It stays aware: it sees the pilgrims, hears the prayers, knows the seasons pass. The devotion it was fixed in is the only feeling left to it, and it is not a chosen one. Whether that awareness suffers is not known.

Abilities

An Adoring Statue has no power of its own, but the Idol's Shrine of Silence clings to it. Those who stay long among the statues feel their joints lock and their thoughts slow, and an urge to kneel and stop asking. A crowd of the newly faithful kneeling among old statues may stiffen into statues themselves.

The spell of devotion is weakened by doubt. A sincere question asked aloud among them breaks the hush, and the stone of the Idol itself cracks where a question is asked.

Life Cycle

The change happens in a look or in a spray of tears and does not reverse of its own accord. The statues do not age or weather as ordinary stone does. The stories say that if the Idol ever shed its last diamond tear, it would end, and some believe its statues would then wake.

Uses and Dangers

The statues harm no one; the danger is what they mean. Fresh statues on a road are the sign that the Idol is near. Gold statues have a darker danger: thieves cut and melt them, and the gold is said to stay cold and to tug at whoever wears it toward the kneeling pose. Communities near the Idol's trail teach their children to ask questions at the altar.

Lore and Belief

Many faiths take the statues for saints, raised by the gods into perfect devotion, and build shrines over them; pilgrims kneel among them and pray to be made the same, which sometimes happens. Others hold them to be the punished faithless, turned to stone for their doubt, which is the reverse of the truth. Folk believe jade grass is lucky; it grows only where the Idol has walked, and wise travellers turn back at the first green stone.

Thieves who come to prise the gold from a kneeling statue are the Idol's easiest harvest; one tale has a band going in at night with chisels and being found in the morning kneeling among the rest, gleaming.

Where It Appears

• The Weeping Idol
• Overview: The Cast-Outs