From: Anders Sandberg <nv91-asa@nada.kth.se>

The Dodecahedron

There are some acts of magick which are so great that they
are remembered even if their purposes were pure hubris. The
Dodecahedron is the result of one such act, which even the
Oracles of Spirit do not truly understand. 

In ancient times, it is told, lived a group of immensely
powerful mages in the Mediterranean. They are known today
only as The Twelve, and almost nothing is known about them.
Various authors have claimed that this or that wise man was a
member, but actually nobody knows who they were (not even the
Cultist known as Peeping Tom, who otherwise has spent a great
deal of time watching the lives of the Masters). They
regularly gathered together in a secret temple in a cypress
grove, where they contemplated the profound secrets of cosmos
and wove strange magick. 

One day one of them astounded the others with horrible news:
she had found a disharmony in the great Tapestry. As they
studied it using their immense knowledge, they realised that
inside the subtle patterns there was a slight error, a broken
thread, which eventually would dissolve the entire Tapestry
of reality. It was impossible to repair without taking all of
reality apart and recreating it;  something even the Twelve
were unable to do. 

As they pondered what to do, they took a walk across the
countryside, watching its beauty with worried eyes as if it
could dissolve into grey nothingness at any moment. Near
midday, they entered a small village for some drink and rest.
As they sat in the shadow outside a tavern, they watched a
potter at work. The old man was apparently oblivious to the
heat as he critically scrutinised the bowls his apprentice
had made and returned many he found inadequate to they pile
of clay they came from. But a few he accepted, and put in the
oven to burn into hardness and perfection. The Twelve looked
at each other and smiled. 

They returned to their temple and set to create a new
creation, a creation without error or flaw. They soon
realised that it would have to be completely separate from
the old creation, to prevent any of its instabilities to
enter. They also quickly found that just as not all clays can
be used for pottery, so can not all powers be used to create
a world. As they laboured in the evening, they began to
realise that only one force in the universe retained its
original purity and strength: their Avatars. 

Using magick beyond anything known today, the Twelve set to
remake their own Avatars into a perfect creation during the
night.  They purified them further, reducing them to their
singular essences through a secret alchemy only they knew.
They hammered them together into an unity despite the
agonising soul- pain it caused them, shaping the brilliant
essence of their being into the perfect creation they
desired. Their twelve interlinked Avatars formed a single
structure without a flaw, with a mathematical regularity and
elegance. With a final burst of power the Twelve sealed it,
creating the Dodecahedron. 

The next morning the Twelve awoke in their temple, weak with
exertion but joyous at their success. They greeted the dawn
with thanksgiving invocations to the gods, and then turned to
the altar to watch what they had created. But the
Dodecahedron was not there;  true to their design it had
become a cosmos in itself and was unreachable to both gods
and men. As they still tried to perceive it, they began to
notice that something was amiss; they no longer remembered
how to work their magick. They, who had turned seas into
mountains and harnessed the powers of the gods, now
concentrated all their powers but were unable to even make a
leaf fall from the trees outside. All of their power, all
their knowledge had vanished into the Dodecahedron. 

Nobody knows what happened with the Twelve. One is said to
have killed himself by fire, hoping to regain his power
through the whispers of the flames. One is said to have
become a blacksmith, renouncing all higher ideals for the
simple joy of shaping a piece of metal, finally dying of old
age like any other mortal. One is said to still be alive,
wandering the world seeking a way to undo his greatest
success. Of the others nothing is known, and the Oracles of
Spirit still ponder the mysteries of the Dodecahedron.