"It would open the door to a world of true and holy darkness, extinguish the sun, and take us to a place where we would be redeemed of our base and corrupt need for light and warmth."
- Manuela Dominguez, MAG 143
The Extinguished Sun is the ritual for The Dark.
Overview[]
The Extinguished Sun is one of the more complex rituals to be performed, involving multiple groups of The Peoples Church of the Divine Host all over the globe. It involves a "week of horrors"; one week of night with thousands of sacrifices culminating at the eclipse of Ny-Ålesund, where a special focal object was to replace the sun, plunging the world into darkness. The ritual in 2015 used a sun made out of darkness made by Manuela Dominguez.
Known Components[]
- A Sacrifice: A symbolic creature of the dark was to be killed, and its blood used to fuel the ritual. The Sacrifice for the 2015 ritual was The Still and Lightless Beast.
- A Channeling point: Usually a powerful avatar of the dark, the main pulling force of the ritual. Maxwell Rayner was the Channeling Point of the 2015 ritual.
- A Focal Object: A object meant to replace the sun if the ritual was to succeed. The object used in the 2015 ritual was The Dark Star.
- The Church: The entirety of The Peoples Church of the Divine Host was to help channel and guide the ritual.
- The Sacrifices: Thousands of people meant to continue powering the ritual by being killed one by one.
The 1715 ritual[]
Not much is known about this attempt as the attempt that followed, but it involved a pool of blackest water in a region of forest where the canopy blocked out the light of the stars at night. Astronomer Edmond Halley was instrumental to this ritual in some unspecified way, and because of this it was unwittingly disrupted early on by Halley's rival, Astronomer Royale John Flamsteed, who drowned him in the pool in self-defense. Despite the ritual's failure to summon the Dark, it created a new monster of the Dark that resided within Halley's body and led the followers of the Dark, transferring into new bodies as needed and eventually becoming known as Maxwell Rayner.
The 2015 ritual[]
The 2015 ritual was the most recent ritual of the Dark, with Maxwell Rayner as The Channeling Point, The Still and Lightless Beast as The Sacrifice, and The Dark Star as The Focal point. The Church had come very close to completing the ritual this time, as no outside interference actually happened. The ritual collapsed under its own strain, leaving many cultists dead, and the others began bickering about what went wrong and started to fall apart. In the aftermath, Manuela Dominguez was tasked with guarding the Dark Star, which she did until Jonathan Sims and Basira Hussain encountered her in June 2018. John destroyed the Dark Star and Manuela was taken by Helen.
Other notes[]
This ritual is the oldest known ritual, as Maxwell already devised it long before Smirke made his list of 14.
This ritual failed for no apparent reason, as Gertrude Robinson had not made any preparations to stop it and no other avatars had any plans. The reason was revealed in MAG 160, the entities are too closely interconnected to summon individually, and all rituals will fail on their own.