Gilding

Overview

Gilding is the gold sickness of the shrines. A spray of the Weeping Idol's tears strikes a worshipper, and the gold spreads from where it landed until the whole body kneels in gold, the face fixed in bliss. The Idol's gaze does the same work in white stone, and the peoples do not always tell the two apart. Its victims are not dead; they stay aware and cannot move or think for themselves.

Cause

Both forms come from the Weeping Idol, a Cast-Out of Lux that wearied of doubt. Its Tears of Gold harden on contact, and the flesh beneath begins to turn. Its gaze hardens skin and stiffens blood. In both, wonder is stilled into rote devotion. The finished victims are the Adoring Statues.

The Golden Touch of the Gilded Cage, which turns that plane's gravest violators to gold, is a law of the plane and not this affliction.

Who It Strikes

The Idol goes to the doubting and the faltering, so the sufferers are mostly people of faith: pilgrims, priests, temple servants, and townsfolk at a festival. Any people can be gilded. Those who are content to be unsure are least at risk, and a child who keeps asking why is hard to take.

Signs and Course

• The fleck. Where a tear struck, a coin-sized patch of gold sits on the skin, warm at first, then cold. It does not wash or scrape off.
• The spreading. Over hours or days the gold creeps outward in a smooth edge. The joints nearest it stiffen, and the sufferer finds kneeling easy and standing hard.
• The quieting. Doubt drains out.
• The kneeling. The gold closes over the face, and the body settles into the pose of worship.

Contagion

The gold does not pass in breath or water. It spreads from the struck spot across one body, and a careless hand laid on a fresh patch can come away flecked. Those who linger among the statues of a shrine feel their own joints lock and their thoughts slow, and a crowd kneeling there can stiffen into gold or stone together.

Treatment and Its Limits

The cure has to come from the sufferer's own mind. A sincere question asked aloud, especially one the asker cannot answer, cracks the spreading gold, and kin then lift the cracked flakes away. The skin beneath is raw, like a scald, and is dressed with ordinary salves. Admitting that one's faith may be flawed does more than any prayer. Against the gaze, the advice is to look away and not to kneel.

Spells that enforce belief, quiet doubt, or turn flesh to stone turn under the Idol's influence; spells that keep the mind free hold. No working has ever unmade a finished statue, and gold cut from one stays cold.

Mortality

The fully gilded never return, and none has been known to die. Whether their awareness suffers is not known. Those who cracked the gold in time keep cold, faintly gold patches of skin and a knee that does not bend well, and many of them never kneel again.

Lore and Belief

Many faiths take the gilded for saints raised into perfect devotion and build shrines over them, and pilgrims pray to be made the same. Others call gilding the punishment of the faithless, which is the reverse of the truth. Folk say gold that comes from a statue drags its wearer to their knees.

In the Medieval Era

Gilding is rare and found in sacred places, which makes it a matter for priests more than healers. Where the Idol's trail is known, temple teachers have the children ask questions at the altar, and pilgrims are warned not to kneel among old statues. A folk healer called to a gilded patch can only dress the cracked skin and keep the sufferer asking.

Where It Appears

• The Weeping Idol (the Gaze of Petrification, the Tears of Gold, the Shrine of Silence)
• Adoring Statues
• The Gilded Cage (the Golden Touch, a different thing)
• the Writers' Guide chapter What Waits Outside