Notre-Dame is the cathedral of Paris on the Île de la Cité: repository, place of justice, pilgrimage goal and mouth of an underworld. For the Templars it is “the temple of Paris, but it is where the order ends”. It was struck by an attack in 1889.
| Type | Place (cathedral) |
| Location | Île de la Cité, Paris |
| Spanish entry | Notre-Dame |
Description
From outside Paris one sees the faceted glow of the cathedrals, “among them Notre Dame”. It is a stone cross: main entrance, columns, nave, altar, and “the treasury that goes downward”, with towers at the sides and “all the saints around, in the stones”. At noon “the suns come in” through the rose windows, which are open so one can pass through them. The Paris rose window “has 24 signs” in opposed pairs, matched to the platforms of the square. Three large gargoyles nest on the façade and fly in and out through the rose windows; Alexio watched them nesting.
Inside are stained glass, goldsmiths’ offerings, and red stones covered with cloths, likened to the Muslims’ sacred stone under black cloths. Petitioners leave flowers outside.
The square
The square holds two platforms with a post between them. It serves three uses:
- Pilgrimage: “the place of good and love and healing”. In 1717 there were pilgrims, flowers and platforms.
- Justice: a place of public execution, “like a public retraction where the man himself is the executioner”.
- Invocation: the revolutionary invocation is performed on the zodiacal platforms.
Entrances
Maps number the entrances. Six, on the side, was judged “the most feasible to get in undetected”; 7 is the balconies; 8 is a separate neighboring building. A side door is “strangely open”, and a little-known tunnel leads from the underground into “the treasury, the Sacrarium”. On the recorded date all portals were closed, but an opening was announced from Sigil “in a few days”.
Below
Stairs descend to an ossuary labyrinth whose compressed bones themselves form “the walls of death”. Deeper lies “the giant cathedral with draconic beings”. Popular belief holds Notre-Dame “had been a temple of Isis”. Below, “the Regulators, the devils, are all at a demonic mass”, with guardians sacrificed. Graz’zt appears there, and “the emissaries of Graz’zt” are spoken of.
The Templars have seen it in several lines of the world (“this is not the first time we see this cathedral”). Its organ was inaugurated on 2 January and had not sounded since 1600.
Attack of 1889
The attack aimed at more than a building: “there was going to be a kind of deliberation and rebirth of the world; even all the gods agreed.” With the Regulators, “the heart of Notre-Dame” was blown up by the father of Merle Bartok, who ended up “half a suicide” and remained beneath the cathedral. That year, at the end of his life, Pablo came in extremis to ask the Lady for forgiveness. In every version Paris loses its center. A temporal disturbance “the size of a city” was recorded in front of the cathedral.
Conflicting accounts
- In 1890 it stands empty, cold and gray.
- After the attack “barely a black shell remains”.
- In Uchronic Paris it is gone: “the Île de la Cité, with Notre Dame disappeared”.
- “They pull the lever… Notre-Dame explodes and that does not happen, something else happens.” Which part of the event was canceled is not fixed.
Open questions
- Whether the 1889 attack caused the disappearance in Uchronic Paris.
- What the red stones are, and whether they were the heart that was blown up.
- Who the Lady is: the patroness, the site’s power, or someone else.
- Whether the gargoyles watch or only nest; whether the rose windows are open by design or ruin.
- The draconic cathedral’s builder, the organ’s silence, entrances 1–5, and the temporal disturbance’s cause.