> [!infobox|right] > # Chthonism > ![Symbol or Glyph](https://example.com/chthonism-symbol.png) > **Also Called**: Earthbinding, Deepcalling, Stone Prayer, Hollow Sorcery > > > > > > > > >
General Information
Practiced ByLao-Shani and Kyourin geomancers, Mountainbinder tribes, hermits of the Reaches
RegionsLao-Shan, the Shatar Mountains (Reaches), Kyourin Shogunate
Spirit InteractionChanneling / Appeasement / Binding
Associated DominionsStone, Magma, Time, Fertility, Pressure, Silence, Flame, Memory, Decay, Strength
Moral PerceptionRespected in cultures where it is common; feared or misunderstood elsewhere
Typical CostPhysical strain, scarring, local blight or collapse, spiritual dissonance
> ## Overview Chthonism is an ancient, visceral tradition of magic rooted in the deep bones of the world. Its practitioners—called **Chthonists**—bind themselves to the spirits of the earth: entities of stone, magma, pressure, and time. These spirits do not soar or whisper—they slumber, coil, and grind. Through meditative rituals, bodily discipline, and geomantic attunement, Chthonists become conduits for the buried flows of spiritual energy that pulse beneath the surface. Unlike other traditions, Chthonism **awakens what lies beneath**. Its power moves slowly, but with tectonic weight—manifesting as tremors, stone-grinding, hissing vents, or zones of deadened stillness. It is a magic of silence, pressure, and patience. Though **revered in mountain cultures** like the Lao-Shani and the spirit-binding clans of the Reaches, Chthonism is **feared elsewhere** for its erosive cost: the toll it exacts on the land, and on the bodies of those who draw too deeply. Every stone moved echoes in the marrow. Every vein tapped leaves a crack. The body of the Chthonist is a mirror of the land itself. ## Origins & Philosophy ### Origin Myth / Discovery Chthonism is said to have emerged not from ambition, but from **surrender**—when early peoples knelt upon trembling ground during a quake and one among them heard the **stone whisper back**. In this moment of awe and terror, the first Chthonist did not flee, but **listened**. That act of stillness became the seed of a tradition that values silence, endurance, and deep attunement. Among the **Lao-Shani** Chthonism is traced to the sage **Deng Viro**, the _Stone Listener_. Legend holds he sat motionless before a great basalt altar for nine days, neither eating nor speaking. When he rose, his spine was fractured and his skin veined with deep earthen cracks—but he could hear the **pulse of stone beneath every step**. His teachings became the root of Lao-Shani geomancy, still practiced today by monks who chant in caves to echo the world’s memory. In the **Reaches**, Chthonism carries a more visceral tone. There, it is said the **bones of the world speak only to those who press their ear to the dirt and weep**—to those who understand sorrow and endurance as forms of knowledge. The tribes believe the land is a witness to all things, and its memory flows through every grain of dust and faultline. Chthonists, called mountainbinders, in these lands treat the mountain as ancestor and confidant. In the **Kyourin Shogunate**, where the land was corrupted by ancient wars and void-tainted blight, the tradition took a transformative form. The first of their earth-callers was **Amurokatsu the Pale**, a mendicant who wandered the ash-choked fields until he found a **weeping stone spirit**, whose cries poisoned the soil. Through meditation, sacrifice, and bloodletting, he bonded with this spirit and **channeled the rot into himself**, purifying the nearby basin and making it fertile once more. This act founded the practice of **Shugendō no Ketsuchi**—the _Blood-Earth Path_, a cornerstone of Chthonist geomancy in Kyourin, combining ascetic pain and earth-binding to restore the wounded land. Some philosophers argue that Chthonism **predates all names and rites**—that it is not a discovery, but a _remembering_. A communion with something deeper and slower than any god. The **world beneath**, they claim, has always watched. And occasionally, it stirs. ### Core Beliefs Chthonists believe that the earth is not inert matter—it is **alive, slow, vast, and dreaming**. Beneath every stone and field lie ancient spirits, not wild or tempestuous like those of flame or sky, but **deliberate and immense**, entities shaped by the passage of eons and the weight of buried memory. These spirits are not easily stirred; they do not speak in words, but in pressure, echo, and rhythm. To a Chthonist, the surface world is fleeting—**only the deep endures**. Mountains remember the lives crushed within them; caves resonate with songs from before time. The work of the Chthonist is not to shape or command this power, but to **attune**, to **offer themselves as a conduit** through which ancient flows may return to balance. Magic, in their view, is not an assertion of will, but a negotiation with a force larger and older than any individual. In the **Kyourin Shogunate**, this worldview becomes national doctrine. Amid the ravaged and blighted landscapes caused by void incursions and bloodpact warfare, Chthonism is one of the few magical arts not merely tolerated but **venerated**. Practitioners serve as spiritual engineers, laboring to **cleanse poisoned ricefields**, **reignite dormant faultline flows**, and **stabilize warped ley-lines**. Their work is not glamorous—it is **sacrifice**, often painful, and always slow. Temples known as **Blood Wells** are carved into sacred cliffs or sunken into volcanic rock. There, geomancers offer their own blood and breath to the **stone altars**—ritual conduits that awaken **buried spirits of growth, pressure, or fertility**. These sites serve as both places of worship and **geomantic relays**, forming a living network of healing throughout the Shogunate's most blighted territories. Elsewhere, such as in **Annwyn** or the **Mentralian lowlands**, Chthonism is misunderstood or feared. Its **grim silence**, its **cost in flesh and soil**, and its refusal to speak in divine absolutes make it alien to priesthoods and civic orders. But in the mountains, the Reaches, and among the earth-faithful, the Chthonist is revered as a kind of **stone-priest**—a listener and lifter of unseen burdens. ### Moral Tenets Chthonists do not follow commandments handed down from above, but cultivate an internal ethic rooted in **resonance**, **endurance**, and **reverent burden-sharing**. Their morality grows from listening—to stone, to pressure, to silence—and from bearing what others discard. To walk the Chthonic path is to carry not only power, but memory, damage, and debt. The land shapes those who serve it, and the **cost etched into flesh or soul is not shameful, but sacred**. Their guiding principles are often spoken in koan-like phrases, meant to be contemplated, not enforced: - **Stillness precedes strength**: Motion without grounding is hollow. One must root before one can rise. - **The world gives what it remembers**: All power is borrowed from the earth’s pain and patience. To draw upon it is to share its weight. - **Scars are sacred**: Wounds from chthonic rites are not injuries but seals of pact. The body becomes a living testament to the spirit's burden. - **Redirect, do not tear**: One must shape flow, not fracture it. Even pain must be honored by following its natural course. These tenets form the ethical spine of the tradition and are whispered before rites, engraved into cave shrines, and tattooed across the backs of mountainbinders and geomancers. ## Mechanics of Practice ### Rituals Chthonist rituals are slow, deliberate, and often physically taxing. Practitioners may **fast, meditate, or engage in breath-discipline** for hours or days to lower their body's energetic resistance. Ritual actions include: - **Geomantic Posing**: Chthonists assume specific stances aligned to leyline flows. - **Blood-Seeding**: A controlled cut made while meditating over stone or soil to bind one's spirit to that place. - **Echo Chanting**: Deep tonal intonations used to resonate with subterranean spirits—often performed in caves, mines, or ritual sinkpits. - **Anchor Carving**: Glyphs are etched into stone, bone, or clay to channel specific energies or “tie” a spirit to a place. - **Rearranging**: Placing special items or catalysts in the area affect to improve the "flow" of spiritual energy. Kyourin geomancers often conduct these rituals in **Blood Wells**, carved sanctuaries that pulse with redirected earth energy, while mountainbinders in the Reaches rely on open-air stone rings, marked by weathered cairns and totems. ### Initiation Chthonist initiation is **harsh and highly individual**. Apprentices must first endure a trial known as the **Stillness**, in which they must remain motionless in communion with the land for a full cycle of the moon—often with little food, exposed to the elements. Only those who receive a “sign” from the stone (a tremor, a voice, a vision, or a bodily scar) are permitted to begin deeper training. In the Kyourin Shogunate, geomantic candidates are taken to cursed or fallow lands and tasked with **reviving a single flower or crop sprig** using only Chthonism. Those who succeed are marked with a **Vein-Tattoo**, drawn in mineral ink, that maps the leyline they first awakened. ### Spirit Interaction Chthonists rarely **see** their spirits—they **feel** them. The spirits of the deep are slow, massive, and symbolic. Rather than negotiating, Chthonists offer **resonance and service**. A practitioner becomes a **conduit**, redirecting natural flows and forging **temporary harmony** between the spiritual and physical below. Types of spirits they may engage: - **Bedrock Ancients** – long-slumbering spirits of stone strata, invoked for permanence or protection. - **Ash Veinlings** – fast-moving, volatile spirits in volcanic regions, coaxed for destructive power or cleansing fire. - **Fossil Whisperers** – slow and mournful spirits tied to remnants of ancient life, sometimes granting memory or ancestral insight. ### Costs & Limits Chthonism always takes its due—from the land and the practitioner: - **Body Strain**: Prolonged use can lead to mineral calcification in the joints, skin cracking, bleeding from the nose or nails, or internal bruising. - **Spiritual Anchoring**: Many Chthonists become bonded to their land—**geographically limited** in strength. - **Environmental Drain**: Fertility may be leeched from one area to empower another. In Kyourin, this has left entire villages fallow to save a single rice valley. - **Emotional Bleed**: Prolonged contact with subterranean spirits can induce depressive or withdrawn behavior, as their slow, immense nature seeps into the soul. In Kyourin lands, entire fields have withered so that their neighbors might bloom, and geomancers often wear masks to **conceal the scars and deformations** earned from their service. ## Style & Manifestation Chthonism is a magic of **density, slowness, and rooted force**—its effects rarely flashy, but always profound. Where others conjure storms or flame, Chthonists **reshape the battlefield beneath their feet**, alter landscapes, and call forth the crushing inevitability of earth. > [!annotation]- Sacred Tools, Sites & Phenomena > **Leyveins** > Subterranean spiritual arteries of geomantic energy. Leyveins can be tapped for tremendous power, but doing so destabilizes the region, causing sinkholes, droughts, or wild spirit eruptions. Known to run deepest beneath the Kyourin Shogunate and the Ironspine Range. > > **The Hollow Teeth** > A sacred cave system beneath the Reaches said to contain spirits of ancient mountains long crumbled. Chthonists meditate in its echoing chambers to commune with the silence of stone. > > **Earthspikes** > Ritual tools carved from stone struck by subterranean lightning. Used to anchor spells, pierce cursed soil, or pin hostile spirits to the land. Often worn in bundles by seasoned practitioners. > > **Flesh-Drills** > Small, coiled augurs tattooed or embedded into the skin—often metal or stone—that act as pain-foci. When turned or twisted, they deepen the caster’s bond to the Vein, increasing potency but hastening spiritual erosion. > > **Breathstone Altars** > Slabs of porous rock found in old mines or tombs, used in rites of offering. Their deep pores absorb breath, heat, and whispers—slowly "tasting" the offerings before returning a whisper of blessing or doom. > > **Cradle Faults** > Natural or spirit-bored chasms from which new geomantic energies bloom. Dangerous but fertile, they’re often fought over by rival tribes or geomancer lineages. Some believe gods once slept in these wounds. ### Common Manifestations - **Stoneflow**: The terrain ripples or buckles, reshaping hills, flattening land, or tearing fissures through enemy lines. The movement is slow—but once begun, it cannot be easily stopped. - **Rooted Flesh**: The caster’s body becomes heavy and unyielding, fused with stone or soil. While immobile, they gain immense resilience and can channel raw geomantic power. - **Veinburn**: Rerouting leyline energy through the body causes glowing cracks in skin or tattoos. In combat, this fuels devastating pulses of force, quakes, or localized disintegration. - **Echo Pulse**: A vibration channeled through rock can shatter obstacles, deafen enemies, or expose hidden spaces. Skilled users can “hear” lies or emotions through the reflected tremors. - **Gravemarking**: Alters local gravity by invoking dense earth spirits—used to pin foes, crush light structures, or protect from airborne assaults. ### **Cultural Variations** - **Lao-Shani Geomancers** favor **graceful ritual dances** and spiral patterns etched in sand or rock. Their spells manifest as **flowing ripples, radiant warmth**, and harmonic resonance. The philosophy is one of **cooperation with the land**, never dominance. - **Reacher Stonebinders** work through **pain and endurance**—wounding themselves to awaken sleeping veins. Their magic appears more brutal: **fracturing rocks, causing collapses**, or pulling petrified bone from cliffsides to hurl as weapons. They bear scars as **proof of mastery**. - **Kyourin Fertilists** focus on **renewal through redirection**. They siphon geomantic force from blighted or cursed zones and redirect it to nourish crops or sacred groves. Their style includes **black-ink tattoos, spade-staves**, and **ritual composting** of bone and ash. ## Notable Practitioners of Chthonism - **Shugo Iramen, the Root-Tyrant of Kyourin** Once a humble soil-tender, Iramen bound the spirit of a buried volcanic vein and reshaped an entire valley into fertile rice terraces. Now entombed beneath his garden-palace, his body still pulses with warmth, sustaining the land in undeath. - **Orren the Hollowchild** A mute caveborn prophet from the Reaches whose body is riddled with mineral growths. He walks barefoot across salt flats and shattered stone, drawing fissures in his wake. Rumored to house a spirit too large for his frame, one that dreams in seismic pulses. - **Vaelsha of the Deep Choir** A Lao-Shani geomancer who tuned her voice to the resonance of a sleeping mountain spirit. Her chants could collapse fortresses or soothe tremors. Disappeared while attempting to “sing down” a skyborn fortress during the Cloud War. - **Sister Nevenya, Bloodroot of the Silent Order** A wandering nun of the Kyourin frontier who plants thorns soaked in her own marrow into desecrated earth to purify it. Said to whisper to buried bones and dig graves before death arrives. - **Erdain Thornvault** Former Dustbinder turned outlaw philosopher who carved subterranean sanctuaries beneath the Golden Coast to reroute tectonic fury away from cities. Accused of triggering the Sunfall Quake in Velthane when a spirit pact went awry. ## In-World Examples of Use Chthonism manifests differently depending on regional needs and the temperament of the practitioner. While its rituals are slow and meditative, their outcomes can shape entire landscapes or devastate unprepared enemies. ### Everyday & Communal Use - Soil-Binding Circles: In rural Kyourin provinces, chthonists draw ritual sigils around depleted farmland to redirect dormant fertility from distant ley-lines. The ground pulses faintly afterward, and crops grow with renewed strength—though distant places may wither. - Hot Spring Tuning: In Lao-Shani villages, geomancers align spiritual flows to keep sacred hot springs bubbling with healing minerals and warmth through harsh winters. Locals believe each spring has a “resting ancestor spirit” whom the geomancer soothes. - Gravestone Whispers: In mountain villages of the Reaches, elders sometimes consult earthspeakers who press their ears to the ground beside family tombs to receive brief, rattled visions from ancestral spirits. ### Martial Use Martial use of this tradition is difficult rare. As chthonic rituals take days or sometimes weeks to come to full power, they are usually applied defensively to strengthen fortifications or prepare sieges. - **Petrification Surge**: Reaches-bound chthonists can cause a cascade of mineralization that stiffens the joints of attackers, briefly turning limbs to stone—often at the cost of severe nosebleeds or joint fractures to the caster. - **Buried Spear Arrays**: Military engineers in kyourin have developed siege rituals using buried iron points empowered through Chthonism; they erupt upward when geomantic chants are completed, impaling siege lines. ### Political & Ritual Use - **Womb-Temples of Kyourin**: Chthonist priestesses sit atop blighted valleys in spiraled stone sanctuaries where they channel restorative pulses into poisoned earth over months or years. Entire harvest zones have been reclaimed, though many chthonists die in the process. - **Oath-Binding Ceremonies**: Among certain Reaches tribes, oaths are sworn while holding “deepstones”—fossils or crystals seeded with slumbering spirits. If the oath is broken, the spirit is said to curse the betrayer with illness or madness. ### **Forbidden / Dangerous Use** - **Spine-Tunnels**: Some outlaw geomancers dig into the world’s marrow, creating tunnels lined with rune-bone that allow instant transport—but leave behind collapsing faultlines or awaken cavernborn horrors. - **Blight-Harvesting**: Desperate chthonists in plague-touched zones have learned to pull the rot from the land into themselves, becoming twisted “Blightbearers” who must flee or be slain. Some serve as walking quarantines—others, as cursed weapons. - **The Stone Call**: A death rite whispered of in the Reaches, where an aged chthonist lets the mountain claim them whole, vanishing into stone with their soul echoing in the caverns forever. Sometimes, they whisper back. ## Myths, Taboos & Spirit Pacts ### Famous Pacts - **The Pact of the Hollow Root**: A tale from Lao-Shan tells of **High Geomancer Mi Zhen**, who bargained with the Slumbering Coil—a spirit of ancient tectonic sleep—to reroute a mountain’s heart. Her body turned to bark-vein stone, but the land beneath three valleys bloomed for centuries. - **The Threefold Stillness**: Kyourin lore speaks of a chthonist monk who struck a bargain with three silent cave-spirits. In exchange for his voice, breath, and shadow, they stilled an entire region’s tremors for a generation, allowing fertile terraces to be carved deep into the hills. - **Oros of the Deep Eye**: In the Reaches, legends tell of a spirit-bound pact with an ancient ore-mind called _Oros_, who gifted its bearer visions of underground veins and buried ruins—but eventually turned the chthonist’s eyes to stone. ### Cursed Techniques - **The Pulse-Rend Ritual**: A forbidden chthonist rite that severs ley-line flows to starve regions of life-giving spirit-currents. Originally used during territorial wars in Lao-Shan, its performance today is considered an act of spiritual ecocide. - **Flesh-Welding**: Rare chthonist extremists attempt to fuse their own flesh with sacred stone or ore to "anchor" themselves permanently to geomantic flows. Most die or become maddened geomantic nodes, trapped in half-living ore-shells. - **The Cradle Reversal**: A ritual reversal of birth intended to “return” a dying chthonist to the earth. Improper use—especially without ancestral permission—can birth mineral-wights or echo-beasts from the underworld beneath. ### Spirit Conflicts & Taboos - **The Breach at Marrowdeep**: A Kyourin mining expedition accidentally struck a sealed spirit-crypt beneath the Ashen Mountains. What emerged—echoing “blood-geodes” and soul-eating cave fog. - **Taboo of the Second Mouth**: It is said that speaking aloud in the deepest parts of the world invites a “second mouth” to form on the body, through which the spirit of the deep may whisper—and eventually devour the soul. Silent work in sacred places is a core tenet. - **Grief of the Tumbled Shrine**: Among Lao-Shani geomancers, destroying a sacred cave or shrine dedicated to a mountain spirit is not merely blasphemous—it is believed to cause the spirit's grief to seep into the local water, turning it bitter and black for generations.