The six Pillars are bizarre uncut diamonds the size of a brick, created by a race of super-ancient people.
History[]
Early History[]
Though unconfirmed, the Pillars were most likely constructed by the super-ancient beings, since they included them in their second trial.
At a currently unknown point in Earth's history, the Super-Ancient Beings discovered the Dark Sun and set about constructing a machine that would repel it before it came too close to the planet. During their endeavors, they managed to reshape six diamonds into the Pillars, doing so in a technological process that would appear to modern humans that they had been shaped this way naturally. The Super-Ancients also constructed two tools, later known as the the Philosopher's Stone and the Basin of Rameses II, which would work in unison with the Firestone of the Golden Capstone to cleanse the Pillars before they were to be set into their corresponding Vertex of the Machine. Furthermore, the first five Pillars were designed to be placed into their corresponding Vertex during a Titanic Rising event, while the sixth would need to be laid at the moment the Dark Sun's full radiation was upon the Earth.
Though they were able to prevent the Dark Star from approaching in their time, the Super-Ancient Beings knew that even after they were gone from the Earth, there may yet be intelligent life, and so left the Pillars and Sacred Stones so that human kind could use them to aid their attempts to rebuild the Machine. They were also able to manipulate the Pillars' molecular structure so that when they were placed into their Vertex, give whoever possessed it would gain a reward; Knowledge, Heat, Sight, Life, Death and Power.
Eventually, all of the Pillars came to be kept in Egypt under the Pharaoh Khufu's keep (himself a King of one of the Four Legendary Kingdoms). Ultimately, however, the priest Thuthmosis stole the Pillars and the Sacred Stones and took them with him as he fled Egypt, unwittingly putting the Earth at greater risk of being destroyed by the Dark Sun.
Thuthmosis, taking one the name Moses, would keep the Pillars within his familial line until they ended up with Jesus Christ. Apparently unaware of their importance, Jesus would end up scattering the Pillars and putting the Earth's future in greater jeopardy.
He gave two of the Pillars, the Fourth and Fifth, to the families who would eventually become the Great Houses of Europe and the remaining four Pillars to his brother James. James would hide the Second Pillar in the Temple of Solomon, and kept the First and Third Pillars at the fortress in Van. After his crucifixion, Jesus's body was taken by his brother James and entombed in an ancient salt mine, where the salt crystals would preserve his body, and the Sixth Pillar was buried with him, while a lookalike copy of the Pillar was left in another chamber to fool any thieves who might come to steal the real one.
Before The Six Sacred Stones[]
In the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan and his army invaded Van, and he took possession of the First and Third Pillars. Genghis would give the First Pillar to a Bedouin tribe as a gift of thanks for aiding him, a tribe which would soon become the Royal House of Saud. The Third Pillar was given to the Shogun of Japan, who after discovering the entrance to the Third Vertex in Hokkaido, had an elaborate trap built within the maze to contain the Pillar until someone worthy came to place it.
Around the same period, Templars stole the Second Pillar from the Temple of Solomon, and under unknown circumstances it soon ended up with the Neetha tribe.
By the second World War, the Americans suspected that the Third Pillar was still being held by the Japanese Imperial family, and after Japan's defeat they searched fiercely for where they believed Hirihito may have hidden it, but had no success.
Over the centuries, the Fourth Pillar remained with the British Royals, while the Fifth was shared between the Royal families of Russian and Denmark. By the present day, the Fifth Pillar was held by the King of the Kingdom of Land, Vladimir "Carnivore" Romanov.
Towards the end of 2007, various parties were preparing to restore the Machine, and began making their own preparations to obtain the Pillars so that they could obtain the rewards for themselves.
The Six Sacred Stones[]
On December 1st 2007, Max "Wizard" Epper and Yobu "Tank" Tanaka entered a chamber beneath Witch Mountain, where they discovered a carving that noted that the First Pillar had to be set in place 100 days before the Dark Star's return, which was a little over a week from then. Realising that they were about to be accosted by Mao Gongli and his men, Wizard decided to send his notes on the Machine, Pillars and Dark Star to Jack West Jr.
After looking over Wizard's notes, Jack called together a new meeting of small nations to detail what the Canadian had discovered about the Dark Star, and iterate the necessity of finding the Pillars to restore the Machine. When he asked everyone to share what they knew regarding the Machine and its components, Vulture admitted that his family possessed a Pillar.
After rescuing Wizard and Tank and retrieving the Philosopher's Stone, Jack requested that Vulture arrange for his Pillar to be sent to Mortimer Island where they would cleanse it. In addition, he asked that Astro contact Paul Robertson to use his connections to get the British Royal family to send a representative to the naval base with their Pillar, as well as one that Jack suspected the Americans possessed.
Upon arriving at Mortimer Island, Jack was surprised to learn that the Americans did not in fact possess a Pillar, but fortunately Vulture's Pillar had arrived, and soon after Iolanthe Compton-Jones arrived with the British Royal family's Pillar. Soon, and noting the numerals on the Pillars that indicated which ones they were, Wizard and the Adamson twins used the Philosopher's Stone to cleanse the two Pillars, the process giving them a lustrous sheen and solidifying the Helium-3 voids into a strange silver material.
With only a day until the first Pillar had to be set, the team headed out to the First Vertex, discovered to be somewhere beneath Lake Nasser near Abu Simbel. During a discussion taking place during the journey, Iolanthe suggested she knew the locations of some of the other Pillars, and later affirmed to Jack that the third Pillar was believed to be held by the Japanese Royal family. Being that the second Pillar needed to be set a week after the first, Jack asked the Royal if she knew of its location, and Iolanthe informed him that she believed the Neetha tribe had it.
After discovering the doorway into the Vertex hidden beneath the lake's surface, the Pillar opened the entrance when placed into the Machine symbol's carving. As Jack, Wizard and Zoe Kissane made their way down, the Pillar they held deactivated the traps that prepared to activate. When the time for the Titanic Rising approached, Jack used the Pillar to activate a bridge to the inverted pyramid's summit, and when the time came, placed the Pillar on its tip. After the Vertex fired its laser through the Pillar into the abyss, the pyramid's clamping mechanism released the Pillar, and Jack saw that a triangular piece had been removed from the Pillar's end and left on the pyramid.
Iolanthe then betrayed the team and attempted to leave Abu Simbel with the Pillar, Wizard and Lily, but a quartet of suicide bombers from the Japanese Blood Brotherhood scuppered her plans as they attempted to destroy the Pillar and Firestone. Taking advantage, Wizard began fleeing with Lily and the Pillar, and after a long chase some of Jack's team managed to get away on the Halicarnassus with the first Pillar, intending to next find the Neetha tribe and the second Pillar.
Vulture, in fact aligned with Wolf and the CIEF and Mao, was annoyed that Wolf's forces had failed to secure his Pillar, as they had bargained to allow Vulture to keep the first Pillar and its reward of Knowledge while Wolf and Mao would share the second's reward of Heat. After reminding Vulture of the exact nature of their bargain, Wolf had the Saudi pay off several African governments to locate Wizard's team to retrieve the Pillar and find the Neetha and claim their Pillar too.
As Wizard's team began their search for the Neetha, Alby Calvin and Lily began looking over the Thoth writing that had appeared on the first Pillar's flanks, uncovering some of the knowledge its rewards offered.
When they were captured by the Neetha tribe, Wizard noted the second Pillar as it stood on a pedestal out on the village's lake. When Yanis the warlock discovered they possessed the first Pillar and the cleansing stones, he took the artefacts and secured them away, and then proceeded to cleanse the tribe's Pillar with the Philosopher's Stone and Firestone.
When Wolf, the CIEF and their hired Congolese soldiers invaded the village, Zoe and Alby attempted to flee with the two Pillars and Sacred Stones, however Alby was forced to choose to save Zoe over securing the Pillars, and ended up captured. In the aftermath, Wolf was pleased to have recovered the Pillars and cleansing stones.
After making their way to the Second Vertex beneath Table Mountain, Wolf and the CIEF took the second Pillar with them in preparation of laying it. After sending Switchblade and Broadsword to the pyramid's peak, Wolf was shocked as Switchblade killed his partner and prepared to drop the second Pillar into the abyss to keep the Machine from being restored. Fortunately, at the moment he let go of the Pillar, Jack swung in on a Maghook and grabbed it, placing it on the pyramid. After Switchblade and Jack fell into the abyss, Wolf sent Rapier to retrieve the Pillar, and soon the CIEF departed with it.
The Five Greatest Warriors[]
After exiting the Table Mountain Vertex, Wolf and Rapier met with their allies, and presented the first Pillar to Vulture and Scimitar to fulfill their side of their agreement. With a few months until the third Pillar had to be placed, Wolf determined that their priority would be researching the locations of the remaining Pillars and Vertices. After affirming that she still held the fourth Pillar, Iolanthe confirmed the suspicions that the Third was held by the Japanese.
Meanwhile, heeding Diane Cassidy's suggestions that they look into the Five Greatest Warriors to determine where the remaining Pillars had ended up, Jack's team began a long period of research and uncovered much of the history of most of the Pillars and how most had ended up where they were. Crucially, Julius and Lachlan determined that the third Pillar was hidden within its corresponding Vertex, and that Jesus had been entombed with the final Pillar.
Wolf's lead researcher, Felix Bonaventura, evidently discovered the truth about the third Pillar as well, as a couple of days before the third Pillar's due placement the CIEF prepared an invasion force to enter the Hokkaido Vertex, taking the Philosopher's Stone and Firestone with them. Agreeing to a temporary truce with Jack, Lily and Zoe, the group made their way through the third Vertex and soon came across the trap guarding the third Pillar. Despite interference from the Japanese forces inside the Vertex, the Pillar was obtained and cleansed.
Upon arriving at the inverted pyramid, Wolf and Jack used a pair of canoes to head out to the pyramid's peak, while their allies secured them with anchor lines. As they placed the Pillar and prepared to retrieve it, both Jack and his father had a vision of who they assumed to be the former falling to his death in another Vertex. After Wolf took the Pillar and departed, Jack confided to Lily, Zoe and Astro Wizard's suspicion that the third Pillar's reward, Sight, was to see the death of whomever had their blood upon the Pillar.
As they were leaving the Vertex, however, Wolf, Rapier and Yanis were captured by Carnivore's men, along with the third Pillar. Once he obtained the cleansing stones, Carnivore used them to cleanse his fifth Pillar before sending the Firestone to Iolanthe in Britain so that she could use it and the Basin to give her fourth Pillar its second cleansing.
Once Carnivore had gathered most of the people involved in the Machine's restoration in his base, he asserted that they would be working for him and provide him with the remaining Pillars once they had been set, as well as give him the first two that had already been laid. Giving Jack, Lily and Sky Monster his Pillar, Carnivore sent them to the Fifth Vertex at Diego Garcia, where they would rendezvous with Iolanthe and the Basin and Firestone to give it its second cleansing before placing the Pillar. At the same time, Carnivore tasked Vulture, Scimitar and Mao with finding the Sixth Pillar from Jesus's tomb and giving it to him.
As Pooh Bear, Stretch and the twins were coerced to go to the Fourth Vertex beneath Lundy Island to place it on Carnivore's behalf, Iolanthe met with Jack's group at Diego Garcia to fulfill their role. Both teams made their way through their respective Vertex and managed to place the fourth and fifth Pillars simultaneously.
Needing to get the final Pillar before Scimitar, Vulture and Mao, Jack decided to try and retrieve the Pillar first. After plotting out James's journey on an old map, he determined the location of Jesus's tomb, and soon Jack, Lily and Iolanthe found it within an abandoned Roman salt mine in the Dead Sea. Venturing inside, they spied Vulture's group leaving with the false Pillar. Jack entered the real tomb containing Jesus's body and took the final Pillar before resealing the tomb. Unfortunately, Vulture and Scimitar had allowed Mao to leave with the false Pillar, and held Jack and the others at crossbow-point and demanded the real Pillar. Luckily Pooh Bear and Stretch arrived, and the former managed to defeat the pair.
While they were inside the mine, however, Carnivore and his forces arrived at the Halicarnassus after being led there by Cieran Kincaid, and took from it the fourth and fifth Pillars and put them with the rest aboard his Tupolev. When Jack's team emerged from the mine, Carnivore took the sixth Pillar and Lily, leaving Cieran to execute Jack and his people. While Jack managed to kill Cieran, Carnivore and his people escaped with the six Pillars in their possession and headed for the final Vertex on Easter Island.
Rendezvousing with Mao on the China, Wolf quickly saw that the Pillar he had was a fake, and made plans to take the real one from Carnivore inside the Vertex. Within the Vertex, Carnivore laid out the first five Pillars with the Sacred Stones on an altar while awaiting the moment to place the sixth. However, Jack's unorthodox entry into the Vertex in the Halicarnassus gave him to opportunity to take down Carnivore and his men, taking the final Pillar and setting it upon the pyramid's peak.
After the Machine repelled the Dark Star, Jack saw that Lily had become infused with the reward of the final Pillar; Power. After she used it to kill Cassidy, Mao and his men, Jack managed to snap her out of her trance, and Lily dropped the Pillar and fell unconscious. Wolf, seeing a final opportunity to claim the Pillar, encouraged Jack to pick it up and feel its power, and made a run at it as Jack refused. Believing no one should have that power, Jack pushed the Pillar towards the end of the balcony, and despite Wolf's attempt to grab it, the sixth Pillar slid off and fell into the abyss.
With the mission over, Jack secured the other five Pillars and left the Vertex. Hiding them away, Jack informed his superiors within the Coalition of Minnows of the outcome, but when he was asked about the Pillars, Jack lied and claimed that they had all fallen into the abyss. After he was gifted with a new farm, Jack hid the five Pillars in an old salt mine on the property and sealed them away, knowing that despite the potential their rewards held, it was far better that no one used the Pillars at all.
The One Impossible Labyrinth[]
Years later, after averting the Omega Event, Jack returned to Easter Island and ventured down into the chasm beneath the Sixth Vertex to recover the Sixth Pillar, as he had decided that all of the Pillars and the knowledge etched into them were necessary for when the trials and Omega event next occurred in the future.
Purpose[]
The six Pillars are intended to be placed at the massive underground Temple-Shrines, the Vertices, each connecting to a corner of the Machine during a Titanic Rising. When each Pillar is set, a triangular shape is removed with the bottom end of the Pillar, creating the tip of the inverted pyramid and thus readying the Machine, and writings in the Word of Thoth appear on each of the Pillar's four sides to display its rewards.
Each Pillar must be cleansed by the Philosopher's Stone and the Firestone before it can be placed, and the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Pillars require a second cleansing in the Basin of Rameses II due to the closer proximity of the Dark Star.
They initially appear as cloudy, with an anomalous void in the center containing a liquid form of Helium, H-3. Upon being cleansed the Pillars are translucent like glass, with the Helium void becoming silver in appearance.
In addition to their use within the inverted pyramids, the first and fifth Pillars have been noted to be able to disable some of the traps of their respective Vertex through an unknown mechanism.
Pillars and their Rewards[]
The First Pillar - Knowledge[]
The First Pillar was kept by the House of Saud. After leaving the possession of Jesus Christ, it was left at a fortress in Van for years by before Genghis Khan raided it and took the two Pillars there. He gave the First Pillar to a Bedouin tribe as a gift of thanks for aiding him, a tribe which became the Royal House of Saud.
Its reward is 'Knowledge', which appears as formula and text on the sides of the Pillar, in the Word of Thoth. As Alby and Lily discovered, the secrets given by the pillar (one on each of the four sides) include; instructions for an ultra-strong yet ultralight form of carbon-fiber; a diagram of the star Sirius and its two companion stars, Sirius B and Sirius C, which is a zero-point field; and an explanation of the Universal Expansion Problem. The fourth piece of knowledge was never revealed.
The First Pillar was placed on the 10th of December 2007, at the first Vertex beneath Lake Nasser near Abu Simbel, and is currently kept in an abandoned mine at Jack's farm.
The Second Pillar - Heat[]
The Second Pillar was kept by the Neetha tribe. After leaving the possession of Jesus Christ, James (Jesus's brother) hid one of the Pillars in the Temple of Solomon, until the Pillar was taken to Africa by the Templars and somehow ended up with the Neetha.
Its reward is simply described as 'Heat', which Wolf's chief researcher, Felix Bonaventura, believed was the secret of perpetual motion, or limitless energy.
The Second Pillar was placed on the 17th of December 2007, at the second Vertex beneath Table Mountain near Cape Town, and is currently kept in an abandoned mine at Jack's farm.
The Third Pillar - Sight[]
The Third Pillar was hidden within a trap system, which was in turn within the Third Vertex. After leaving the possession of Jesus Christ, it was left at a fortress in Van for years by before Genghis Khan raided it and took the two Pillars there.
The Pillar's reward is 'Sight'. This was theorised by Wizard to be the ability to see one's own death, due to rumours of a holder's blood being on a pillar and seeing their demise. After being placed at the Third Vertex, Jack and Wolf were given a vision one of them falling into an abyss beneath another Vertex, and was believed to be Jack's death since it was apparently his blood on the Pillar. However at the sixth Vertex it was revealed to actually be Wolf's death, and that it was his blood that had been on the Pillar.
The Third Pillar was placed on the 11th of March 2008, at the third Vertex beneath a Hokkaido cliff-side, and is currently kept in an abandoned mine at Jack's farm.
The Fourth Pillar - Life[]
The Fourth Pillar is was kept by the British Royal Family. After leaving the possession of Jesus Christ, the Pillar was passed on to one of the families who would become the House of Saxe-Coburg.
Its reward is 'Life', which has not been revealed. This could be the ability to bring people back from the dead, and Wizard and Jack theorise that it could work in conjunction with the Fifth Pillar's reward; 'Death'.
The Fourth and Fifth Pillars were placed simultaneously on the 18th of March 2008, at the fourth Vertex beneath Lundy Island, and is currently kept in an abandoned mine at Jack's farm.
The Fifth Pillar - Death[]
The Fifth Pillar was kept jointly by the Royal families of Russia and Denmark, and was held by Carnivore. After leaving the possession of Jesus Christ, the Pillar was passed on to one of the families who would become the Houses of Romanov and Oldenberg.
Its reward is 'Death', which has not being revealed. Some believe this to be a weapon, dealing death to the enemies of the one who holds it, and Wizard and Jack theorise that it could work in conjunction with the Fourth Pillar's reward; 'Life'.
The Fourth and Fifth Pillars were placed simultaneously on the 18th of March 2008, at the fifth Vertex beneath Diego Garcia, and is currently kept in an abandoned mine at Jack's farm.
The Sixth Pillar - Power[]
The Sixth Pillar was hidden within the tomb of Jesus Christ. This was the only Pillar to never leave Jesus's possession, and upon his real death was left with him in his tomb in the middle of the Dead Sea in Israel. The tomb contained a false sixth Pillar to fool any thieves.
Its reward is 'Power', which grants whoever holds it whatever they wish - be it world domination, the death of an enemy or the destruction of cities on their whim. Lily was accidentally granted this power when she placed the final Pillar at its Vertex, and it overpowered her will, making her kill several people before Jack managed to get her to stop.
The Sixth Pillar was placed on the 20th of March 2008, at the Sixth Vertex beneath Easter Island, however, Jack knocked it into the abyss soon afterwards, believing no one should have its power, and so it was presumably destroyed.
Years later following the Omega Event, Jack would retrieve the Sixth Pillar and presumably began keeping it with the other Pillars in an abandoned mine at Jack's farm.
Trivia[]
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