The Red Mass of Helix is the event in which the company that became Los Condenados (“the Condemned”) made the profaned church of Helix the center of a new cult and led the village to sacrifice in the arena.
History
The morning after the murder of the Abbot and the vicar Otar, a red-cloaked aristocrat with a goblet, Dieter, came through the bloodied church’s secret door and proposed consecrating the crime, not hiding it. The village’s former protectors agreed. The innkeeper fought back with a crossbow; he and the barmaid were stripped and forced to scrub the blood of the man who had fed them. Helix entered “a new regime”.
At midnight thirty or forty villagers were forced into the nave. Mazzahs the Magnificent and another seer saw the red-cloaked lord there in a crystal ball. Dieter’s words and magic subdued many, and the mass became a pilgrimage to the waterfalls.
The second seer escaped to Crotos Ironwall, the feudal lord’s son, and his adviser Olys Blackfell; the company’s ravens intercepted their dove to the Mote of Ayuronga, and Crotos died with his guards. Olys submitted, running the empty village behind a cover story of plague and quarantine.
The village marched toward Ardis Vala while the company went ahead to pick the fruit meant to break the light. In the arena, under the three spheres that regulate the light, Lady Deino’s legionaries lined the villagers, children included, against the walls, with the wager: will the Pope of Light come to save his flock? The killing began. The officiant saw the King Tree’s roots devour the last life; the group’s neutrality broke for good.
See also
- Pact of the Nobeliares, the debt it paid
- Pope Alejandro Sixto (Alexander VI), the target of the wager