The Five Pearls, sometimes called the Lifeless Sisters, are the five moons that wander the skies above Tarisia. According to the oldest creation myths, they were the first children brought forth by Taris, born before even the Twin Suns illuminated the world. Their changing positions have long been associated with weather, prophecy, and the mysteries of the Discordant Paths.
Overview
It is told that Taris herself birthed the Five Pearls at the beginning of creation.
The Five Pearls
It was befitting that, upon her awakening, Taris immediately embarked on the act of creation.
Five children she bore before the suns, and five children she mourned. Their pale bodies she placed above the world, that no night should hide them from their mother.
From this comes their ancient name, the Lifeless Sisters. Whether the moons are truly the bodies of Taris’s first children is a matter better suited to priests and poets. Whatever the truth, their deaths occupy an important place in traditions surrounding the Mother Goddess: even the first children of the Life Bringer could not escape death.
The wandering Pearls have a substantial influence upon the erratic weather of Tarisia. Priests of Wrend regard them as a cosmological counterbalance to the Twin Suns and claim that their movements and conjunctions can be used to predict storms and other violent weather.
The Discordant Paths
Certain alignments of the Five Pearls have long been associated with changes in the mysterious Discordant Paths. Dormant Paths have been known to awaken beneath particular configurations of the moons, while others seemingly change their destinations or disappear altogether. How closely these phenomena are actually connected remains poorly understood.
Ancient accounts also speak of travelers using rare Moonstones to direct certain Paths toward the Five Pearls themselves. Stranger stories claim that some Paths once reached destinations far beyond the heavens.
Whatever knowledge once allowed travelers to reliably navigate these distant Paths has long since been lost.