The Sentinelas (Sentinels) are the only recorded alternative to the blood rule of the twelve zodiacal platforms of Antiterra: if a platform’s two guardians united voluntarily and ceded their double condition to one being, that Sentinel would actively govern the platform. With twelve Sentinels at the twelve helms, Antiterra could sail “like a ship” away from the Band of Dissolution.
| Type | Concept (cosmology) |
| Author of the plan | Graz’zt |
| Date | c. 1901 A.D.A. |
| Spanish entry | Sentinelas |
Description
Each platform is guarded by two guardians cursed by duality. Under the Dual Corruption, whoever kills a guardian takes the platform and inherits the corruption, and if the two destroy each other the platform falls with all its inhabitants; so the Guardians hate but do not kill each other. This is the board of the Game of Shadows. A Sentinel occupies the platform by union, not blood.
The plate shows eleven platforms in a ring, each with two armored guardians chained back to back facing opposite ways, and a twelfth below with a single crowned figure at the helm, the only one leaving a wake. Under the ring, dissolution waits.
The Sentinel Plan
Around 1901 A.D.A. in Ethiopia, the diminished Graz’zt formulated the plan around the twelve children Maleika bore him (her daughters by Lucifer are a separate count), destined for the twelve platforms as the seed of the Sentinels: a usurpation of the platforms without murder. The Lighthouse of Alexandria, with its “twelve balandos”, would be the mechanism of conversion. Maleika saw it also as the surrender of her children.
The plan required all twenty-four guardians to cooperate at once, which its author admitted was impossible. Graz’zt tried to force the seed and sacrifice the children to reactivate the force; Maleika reacted; the shadows of the Yalemari came through the walls, one behind each child; and Elaina, agent of Erebus, abducted the twelve and handed them to the Yalemari.
Open questions
- The plan remains open. Maleika proposed waiting until the exodus agreed at the Carnival of Venice, the Rapture, empties Antiterra toward Lucifer’s refuge world, and only then, with the Guardians alone and weakened, attempting it. No one has yet achieved it.