The Lord of Light

There are many names with he’s noticed to his followers, but the most used is R'hllor.

The cult, principally diffused and venerated in the Free Cities, but it’s known even in some regions of the Seven Kingdoms, it celebrates fire as a creature child of the Lord of Light. The Red Priests, devotees of the faith, so called for the fact that they wear only crimson vests, light great fires every day at dusk, to thank R’hllor of the daytime already over and to pray for the arriving of the sun the next morning to defeat the imminent darkness. In their prays they recite frequently “the night is dark and full of terrors”.

There are many powers given to Red Priests. They believe that R’hllor gives them faculty to see in flames past, future or something of the present that however are faraway. Long years of training are necessary to control these faculties and to discern in flames forms of present from forms of past.

There is the use to pray before a duel or a trial, trusting the issue to the will of the Lord of Light.

When an adherent is about to die, the Red Priest has duty of conceding the Last Kiss, the symbolic kiss of the god for the ones who are about to begin the journey. Filling their month with fire, Red Priests blow flames in the body of the dyeing, down in the throat into lungs, directly to heart, and to the soul.

Sometimes, for intercession of R’hllor, the dyeing body responds to flames returning to a new life. 

A chosen one can return to life many times if this is the will of the god, but every time the process becomes more difficult.

Red Priests besides believe that R’hllor gives them the power of seeing through lies, so they can fight servants of the great Other.

The believers of the cult, in fact, recognize the existence of only two deities. Opposed to the god of light, committed in an eternal battle that began in the same moment that the time started, there’s the god of darkness, Soul of Ice, lord of Night and Terror. The great Other whose name is not spoken, and whom the Others are considered sons.

Differently shadows, considered serve of light and children of fire and on the other hand instruments of R’hllor, obscurity, darkness, are the evil that are set to hit the world.

In the ancient books of Asshai is written that the day will come, after a long summer, when stars will bleed and the cold breath of darkness will descend to threaten all over the world. In that terrible time, a warrior will draw from fire a flaming sword. This sword will be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and the one who will take up it will be Azor Ahai, favorite of R’hllor, Warrior of Light, Son of Fire, reborn. And in front of it darkness will run away.

The legend of Azor Ahai dates back to the time when the world was enfolded in deep darkness. To stand against darkness, Azor Ahai decided to forge an exceptional sword, as never have been existed before. So, for thirty days and thirty nights, he created from holy fires a prodigious blade, but, when immersed in water to be temperate, it broken in thousand fragments. He decided to try again, and he worked a new blade for fifty day and fifty nights, and to temperate it he decided to immerse it in the heart of a beast. But even this time the blade got broken. With such pain, this time Azor Ahai understood what he had to do.

For one hundred killing days and nights he worked in his forge, and when the fire made the blade at the top of incandescence, the hero called his wife, Nissa Nissa, and thrust the blade in her chest. Her soul, her strength and her brave pervaded the blade, penetrating into steel.

They narrate that the scream of agony and ecstasy of the woman created a crack on the face of the moon.

Red Priests believe firmly that when a red star, prophet of the hero, will bleed and darkness will be thicker, Azor Ahai will born again from smoke and from salt reliving dragons from stone. 

He will fight against the great Other, and if he will fall, the world will fall with him.