- "Hear the sound of the Sirens' song,
Ride its rolling waves,
But beware that song,
And the bliss it brings,
For you may wake as slaves." - —From an inscription on the Siren bells
The Siren Bells are large gold-and-silver bells which, when rung, can send anyone who hears its tone into a semi-comatose sleep.
History[]
Early History[]
Though unconfirmed, the 15 Siren bells were likely crafted by the Super-Ancient Beings long ago during an unknown point in Earth's history. 14 of the bells were made from gold and silver-like metals, and which had the ability to send any sentient being within a radius of 30 miles into a coma-like sleep by disrupting the flow of the endolymph fluid in their ears. The remaining Siren bell, the blue Orphean bell, was given the ability to awaken any who had been put into the siren sleep by its sister bells.
During the Ancients' planning for the Trial of the Mountains, they included a text that would be revealed at the Altar of the Cosmos upon the completion of the Trial of the Cities, in which they suggested that any who wished to become the world's emperor could use the Siren bells if they desired, but that only success in the Supreme Labyrinth would prevent the Omega Event.
Long after the Super-Ancients were gone, the knowledge of the Siren bells, among the information relevant to their trials, were left to the Four Legendary Kingdoms.
However, the Orphean bell was secretly hidden away inside one of the two obelisks that would later be called Cleopatra's Needle located in ancient Heliopolis. So few knew of this, though the ancient royal banker Priam was one of the few who learned the truth, and he had a description of the Orphean bell's hiding place inscribed on his crown.
At an unknown time, the other 14 sleep-inducing Siren bells were found/obtained by the Order of the Serene Maidens, and later stored within the crypt of Tsarevna Sophia Alekseyevna at the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow. However, the whereabouts of the blue bell became one of history's greatest mysteries, particularly once the obelisk containing the bell was relocated to New York City in the late 19th century. Despite this, the Catholic Church worked tirelessly on gathering potentials leads as to the bell's whereabouts.
During her time as a member of the Order of the Serene Maidens, Dr Tracy Smith studied the effects of the Siren bells in soundproof chambers, to see how they affected the ears, and was able to theorise how to awaken someone who was afflicted by the siren sleep before she decided to leave the Maidens.
The Two Lost Mountains[]
After he had completed the Trial of the Cities, Hardin "Sphinx" Lancaster announced that he wanted the Siren bells before moving on to the Trial of the Mountains. Cardinal Ricardo Mendoza and Chloe Carnarvon were concerned by this, with the former pointing out that they were not necessary for the trial and Chloe remarking that they were dangerous, but both relented when Sphinx insisted since they were important to his ruling plan.
After a few weeks consolidating his resources, Sphinx and his forces launched an assault on the Novodevichy Convent using their bronzemen, and had the Maidens rounded up. Sister Beatrice tried to claim that the Siren bells had not been in the convent for over 100 years, but Sphinx knew that they were in the crypt of the Tsarevna, but humoured Beatrice by offering a wager in which he would give the Maidens a quick death if the bells were not there, but would leave them to the Vandals if they were indeed there. Once Jaeger Eins blasted open the crypt, even Sphinx was breathless as he beheld the Siren bells, and after handing Beatrice to the Vandals and executing the other Maidens, Sphinx had the Siren bells removed from the crypt with a forklift.
Deciding to test one of the bells, Sphinx had one suspended beneath a Chinook drone in rope netting and raised over Moscow, and, once Sphinx and his people had donned protective headgear, the chopper rocked, causing something inside the Siren bell to clang and unleash its tone. Almost immediately, every person within its range was subjected to the siren sleep, with the few Moscow residents awake in the early morning hours to become comatose where they were, as were those still in their homes. When Lily West questioned what was happening, Sphinx gave her a brief summary and noted how the people would soon die from exposure to the cold or from thirst.
As the other Siren bells were taken away, the bell suspended beneath the Chinook drone remained in Moscow, so as to be used to trap Jack West Jr when he and his allies came looking for Lily, who was left as bait. When Stretch arrived and landed before Lily, Jaeger Zwei, unable to see who he was due to his gull wing's visor obscuring his face, assumed he was Jack and raised the Chinook with its bell back into the sky. Seeing it and realising what was about to happen, Lily quickly began writing out a warning for Jack before the bell was rung, causing her and Stretch to fall into the siren sleep. When Jager Acht reported that it was not Jack, and Zwei saw their intended target knock out his comrade, he had the Siren bell raised again, only for Aloysius Knight to read Lily's note and give Jack his helmet to save him from being knocked out too.
Alby Calvin, whose partial deafness kept him from being affected by the bell, soon began helping Jack extract their sleep-struck friends even as the bronzemen moved in, and were soon aided by Sisters Agnes and Lynda Fadel, who had also been protected from the bell's effects. As the team fled Moscow in the Black Raven, they tried to get in touch with their comrades on the Sky Warrior, and before it was destroyed assumed that Sky Monster and Pooh Bear had also been affected by the Siren bell when they had been flying over Moscow.
After arriving in Rome and retrieving the Vatican Globe from the Pope, Sphinx had another Siren bell he had brought with him rung over the Italian city, with the resulting damage causing by the people's sudden lapse into the siren sleep being far more substantial than the one in Moscow since it was the daytime.
As Jack's team began discussing their next move, Lynda helped to explain the Siren bells to them and how their only hope to awaken the people afflicted by them lay with the Orphean bell. Later, while Agnes and Zoe Kissane were investigating the Pope's office, they discovered that the Pope had deliberately withheld the Church's notes on the Orphean bell's location as a means to ensure Sphinx kept his promises, and that the Pope had also ordered Tracy Smith be found and assassinated due to her knowledge regarding the Siren bells.
As Sphinx prepared to inside the Supreme Labyrinth, he had his people transport nine of the Siren bells to major cities around the world; London, New York, Cairo, Beijing, Washington, D.C., Jerusalem, Shanghai, Mecca and Los Angeles. Before the upstart royal entered the ancient maze, he tasked Chloe Carnarvon with finding the Orphean bell as part of his plan to choose who to awaken from the siren sleep, and once he was in the Labyrinth, Jaeger Eins executed his order to have the bells rung over the cities, causing millions to fall into the siren sleep. Along with the taunt on many screens proclaiming that those people would wake as slaves, the rest of the world began to cower in fear of becoming the next sleeping city.
As the team began looking into finding the two lost iron mountains, Bertie de Montreuil suggested that he might be able to interpret the Church's notes on the Orphean bell's location since they would need it to awaken the sleeping cities, and soon set off with Iolanthe Compton-Jones and Nobody to try to find it.
Jaeger Zwei, who had been the one to set off the Siren bell in Jerusalem, was unable to leave the city before General Garthon Rastor and his forces arrived to do the Fall at the iron mountain beneath the Temple Mount. Knowing that Rastor and his men were wearing protective headphones, Zwei realised he couldn't use the bell on them nor make any move against them lest they obtain the Siren bell for themselves. However, after Rastor left and Jack appeared, Zwei gleefully rung the bell over Jerusalem again, managing to send Jack, Pooh Bear and Easton into the siren sleep. However, before he could move in and kill Jack, Zoe's team - which included the successfully awoken Lily, Stretch and Knight thanks to Tracy injecting synthetic endolymph fluid into their ears - arrived and got their friends to a space where they could hide. Unable to waste time searching for the team when they were wearing protective gear, Zwei was forced to leave Jerusalem with the Siren bell.
The One Impossible Labyrinth[]
While Sphinx was in the Labyrinth, his forces continued to ring the Siren bells across the globe, rendering several cities comatose. The royal families of the Four Kingdoms were irked that Sphinx's underlings were ringing the Siren bells over major cities worldwide without care, but rushed to get the bunkers they had been assigned to retreat to in order to avoid the same fate as those cities' citizens.
Meanwhile, Bertie's lead took his group to the Lake Albano Vault at Castel Gandolfo, where they learned of the clue on Priam's crown, but with the original having been destroyed, they instead headed to the Vault of Troy on Tenedos Island to view a statue of Priam which included his crown. Unfortunately, though Chloe had arrived there first, she misinterpreted the inscription and headed to the Cleopatra's Needle in London. After Iolanthe read the inscription and realised the obelisk they sought was in New York, she and Nobody rushed to its location in Central Park.
One of the Siren bells held by Sphinx's people ended up at the Raven Rock shelter by the time Pooh Bear and Stretch's group were forced to land there. However, after defeating the guards outside, they found the bell and rolled it into the shelter and rang it, sending the royals within to sleep.
After Nobody toppled the New York Needle with their chopper, Iolanthe retrieved the Orphean bell from inside, just as Chloe and her forces arrived. As they were pursued over the New York streets, Iolanthe started ringing the Orphean bell, which began awakening the sleep-struck citizens below. Once their pursuers were made to crash into the Brooklyn Bridge, Iolanthe and Nobody proceeded to use the blue bell the awaken the remainder of the sleepers in New York before proceeding on to Washington, ringing the bell along the way.
After the Omega Event was averted and Sphinx and his forces defeated, the team proceeded to use the Orphean bell to awaken the sleep-struck citizens in the cities affected by the Siren bells. However, for a few places such as Moscow - whose citizens had been in the siren sleep for a week - the ringing of the Orphean bell came too late, as several thousand people had already perished due to starvation and exposure to the elements.
Attributes[]
Appearance[]
Each of the 14 gold-and-silver-coloured Siren bells have been crafted out of unknown metals into the brilliantly-polished and artistically shaped nine foot tall bells. The precision of their crafting and the precision of the shaping of their curves is far beyond anything even modern man can accomplish.
Siren Sleep[]
When a single bell is rung, it sends out a tone that is both pleasant and unpleasant to any human within a 30 mile radius who hears it. This tone affects the semicircular canals within the inner ear, disrupting the flow of endolymph fluid, and causes an almost-instantaneous catatonic state wherein the afflicted fall into a deep sleep. Though they may remain semi-conscious of their surroundings, as Jack demonstrated being somewhat aware of what was happening nearby, any who hears the Siren bells being rung are rendered practically comatose, and thus unable to do anything for themselves. Any who are subjected to the siren sleep for too long will eventually die, as they may be affected by their environment (excess cold or hot temperatures) or from simple lack of being able to sustain their body with water or food.
The Siren bells do not affect animals, such a dogs, due to their semicircular canals being larger than a humans, nor will anyone who is deaf or even partially deaf be affected since the damage to their canals cannot be processed. Aside from these exceptions, anyone wearing reinforced protective noise-cancelling headphones will not be affected, as any sound processed by them is digitised, which implies that only the direct tone of the bells has any effect.
The only intended method to awaken those in the siren sleep is to use the Orphean bell, however an injection of synthetic endolymph fluid directly into the semicircular canal of both ears will also work.
After being under the siren sleep for only a couple of days, any awakened person will feel dehydrated and hungry, even if they have been given intravenous nutrition, and can also experience headaches, which Aloysius Knight described as "the hangover from Hell". It is currently unknown if there any any additional side-effects for anyone who has been in the siren sleep for more than two days.
Orphean Bell[]
Of the 15 Siren bells, the Orphean bell is unique in that it is not intended to send people into the siren sleep, but rather to awaken them from it, presumably by re-stimulating the flow of endolymph fluid in the semicircular canals. Currently little is known about the Orphean bell aside from its blue colouration, which has given it the nickname blue bell, and is smaller in size compared to the other bells.
Cities Affected by the Siren Bells[]
North America[]
- New York City
- Washington, D.C.
- Los Angeles
- Boston
- Chicago
- Dallas
- Houston
Central and South America[]
- Mexico City
- Panama City
- Rio de Janeiro
Asia[]
- Beijing
- Shanghai
- Jerusalem
- Mecca
- Hong Kong
- Taipei
- Jakarta
- Macau
- Manila
Europe[]
Africa[]
- Cairo
- Tangiers
- Lagos
- Nairobi
Trivia[]
- Matthew Reilly stated that he had based the idea of the Siren bells on the legends of the sirens of Greek mythology, from which the bells get their name.
- In Greek mythology, sirens were feminine creatures whose entrancing songs would cause sailors to shipwreck their vessels upon rocky shores.
- What became of the Siren bells (aside from the Orphean bell) following the defeat of Sphinx's forces at the end of The One Impossible Labyrinth is unknown.