The Dome: Beyond Il Modo

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Religious polemics have seized Baz'eel's prized satrapy in a chokehold. Priests of the Wheel, descending from the wastes like a storm of Ash, bellow day and night to decry the humble presence of the Modini in Ephia's Well. Their grievance? The Way of the Divine Dome: the faith of that floating city which once bested Baz'eel in the terrible War of Pearls. But let us now reflect on a motif that underpins the religious practices of both Dome and Wheel, forgotten by history. Specifically, the shape we give to the heavens: the Dome itself.

What is the Way of the Divine Dome?

The faith of the Dome is rooted in cosmology. According to Modini tradition, the universe is composed of a single crystalline sphere that surrounds all things and is itself the source of all creation, time, and movement. It is this sphere (or Dome) that gives form, structure, and meaning to the universe. The world is but a speck (perhaps one of many such specks) that floats suspended in the mysterious vapors of the Dome's interior. The stars above, or Illuminations, are those souls that have ascended to the firmament above. The most learned and wise of these Illuminations are beloved as guides: the Sages.

A simplified view of the Divine Dome

The modern priests of the Wheel, many of them mere imitators of the original Ashfolk faith, often denounce what they perceive as the hubris of Modini beliefs. They wail and tremble upon hearing that souls of the mortal dead may one day ascend to join the heavens as deities. But architectural history tells us a different story: that such beliefs were once commonplace across the Great Ring, championed by the priests of the Ashfolk god Izdu, known as the Magi, and that the dome was their preferred shape to honor their ancestors. Herein lie my assembled studies on the subject, which has long been ignored by the Ephian historians of the Sandstone College.

The Dome & Izdu

We know that domes in general represent the celestial vault, a camera obscura, a microcosm. The prototype of all semispherical domes, before their invention by the progresses of architecture, was the tholos, a corbel construction with a narrow opening at its zenith, also called a false vault. Such structures were first built for honoring the dead — a notion we will revisit shortly. But it will do us well to reflect that this design is not unique to Il Modo. In fact, the Ashfolk tutors of Izdu describe these monuments to us when they visit our fair Well to conduct their religious lessons. One such Izdur by the name of Ibal readily told me of a sacred tower in Baz'eel built precisely to receive and measure the light of the Moon.

This Izdur gladly shared with me his studies of this monument, which in fact bears the shape of a tholos. I have replicated his illustration below. When the moonlight descends on the wall of the domic tower's well, it creates a ladder of light by hitting the edges of the stone rows within. The extent of the light fallen within the well may then be measured in alignment with a sacred rock positioned at the center, said to be covered in Erugitic characters. Let us now remember this symbology for later on, when we discuss the Modini belief in the soul's ascent, described as scalam ad astra, or ladder to the stars. Likewise recall that sacred night of the Murid, Tesrin Hray the 3rd, called "the Illuminations," on which the great domed lighthouses in Baz'eel are lit in imitation of the stars, to celebrate the knowledge they impart to us.

But this is precisely where the association of early domes with the dead becomes especially important for the history of the Great Ring.

The Muridian Tholos of Baz'eel

The Domic Maqbara

Indeed, from observation of ruins all across the Ash, it soon becomes clear that the basic shape of the dome was initially a reproduction of ancestral cave shelters used as mausoleums for the dead. The instinctive desire to repeat this practice resulted in widespread domical mortuary traditions across the Great Ring, beginning first with simple mounds in which the dead were interred, followed soon after by the mudbrick tholos. By the end of the Age of Caliphs, these domic structures had been refined into the modern, customary shape of the maqbara, as seen in Ephia's Well and elsewhere.

The Ephian Maqbara

In the process of transforming these tombs from their original earthen materials into more permanent stone construction, the domic shape had also become associated with celestial and cosmic significance, as evident from decorations such as the glass window atop the maqbara's peak, from which the souls of the dead may rise to join the stars as deities in their own right. This cosmological thinking undoubtedly popularized the use of domes to imitate the shape of the heavens themselves, which appeared as an arched vault when tracing the paths of celestial bodies across the sky. This is further evidenced by images of stars and celestial chariots often etched onto the ceilings of domed tombs.

The Dome of Man Across the Ash

However, we also see evidence of this in the world of secular rule. Throughout the nomadic tribes of the Great Ring, the dome has long been symbolic of the tent of the ruler, and especially of the gods who dwell in the tent of the heavens. To these peoples, the tent represented perfection, eternity, and the heavens, not so differently from the great Dome of Man erected upon Il Modo to honor our Sages. From this same origin, we can trace a direct line to the minarets of the Caliphal towers in Baz'eel, the Sunken Spires to the north of Ephia, and presumably the Summer Palace itself. The heights of these domed structures once symbolized the lords of the Ash striving toward the heavens, where they might become Illuminations themselves in remembered greatness — a fact now conveniently forgotten by the votaries of the Wheel.

Such cosmic interpretations of the Dome have thusly originated and persisted well beyond Il Modo and the Sea of Pearls, perhaps even hinting at a more fundamental truth of celestial geometry and the fate of our immortal souls.

A domed minaret, common to both Ephia and Baz'eel