THE WALL OF SHROUDS

 

 In all their funeral ceremonies the Watchers always wore their best robes, and always red.  With the death of Lord Baal’yick the era of the last-elves of Middle-earth had finally ended.  The children of the Watchers and their mixed race Nephilim grandchildren carried on, albeit as now mortal as men.  

   The offspring of the Watchers continued their rituals and invented more; they in turn wore dark blue robes as a memorial to those ancient fathers.

   Three weeks after the passing of the last Watcher, Brath Boarland the Smith fashioned from beaten brass the likeness of the Watchers.  He depicted them shrouded and bound with cords in their burial robes as they were upon their funeral pyres.  With great ceremonial pomp the circumstance of the installation of those panels was most momentous.  Lining the inner walls of the Great Hall, the shrouded figures covered up the intricate dwarven designs.  Lamps had to be brought into that darkened chamber for the mithrel silver and gold inlaid walls no longer brightened on their own.

   A year and a day after the shrouded figures lined the walls of the Great Halls, a solemn ceremony saw the Watcher’s Urn carried with two poles up to the tower heights of Varlendur’s many steps.  Within that tower’s fifth floor the Urn resided as a mystery, for few thereafter beheld its detailed wonder.  In time rituals and songs about it were devised, and only the elite came to see it.


WATCHER'S BOOK


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