Solusek Ro, the Burning Prince

Son of fire

Solusek Ro is the son of Fennin Ro, the Tyrant of Fire, and he is the god of fire himself, discordant neutral: chaotic and destructive, fond of burning away obstacles and impurities. He rules the Plane of Sun, which draws its power from his father’s Plane of Fire, and he goes in golden ringmail beneath a crown of flame, a spear of fire in his hand. In the oldest telling he was “allied with no one, enemies with no one.”

His faithful believe fire birthed the world and that in fire it will be consumed. They are bold and brash, say what they mean, have no use for social graces and expect respect. No orderly soul may follow him, but many wizards, hungry for raw elemental power, do.

The day the world ended

In the Lost Age he arched the spine of the Serpent Mountains and brought the burning sun down on the Elddar Forest, “in a fit of jealousy over the prosperity of Tunare’s elves,” as The Lava with Life puts it. Over the years the rivers dried and the forest became desert. Takish-Hiz fell, and the elves fled Tunaria.

The in-game books remember the cost in single lives. Veldyn’s Elven Tale follows an ordinary Elddar silk-weaver at a festival on “the day that the world ended.” The giant shaman Goru’kar D’Toldan died fighting with all his magic as the mountains rose, the Windwillow Spirit relates. Dragon eggs were lifted into the sky together with Ashengate Temple. And one clan of hill giants found itself trapped in the valleys and marshes between the new peaks, the beginning of the story of Frostcrypt.

Rathmana Allim

A later illustrated tale shows the young Burning Prince leaving his father’s realm for the first time, his eyes burning with the fury of the sun. Crossing the desert he had made in ages past, he found a lost wizard and, unusually for him, saved the man with flame and magic, because he foresaw a use for the wizard’s descendants many generations later. The wizard, Rathmana Allim, swore his life to Ro.

Wizards of the flame

Wizards have always been his. “Solusek Ro has been very generous to those who wield magic in Norrath,” says Solomen in the wizard epic. Four wizards learned their trade from the god himself, and the four staves he gave them became the origin of the Staff of the Four. Even in Erudin, a page of AGHJournal tells of a sealed room above the atrium, open only to the High Council, where “the flame of Ro burns bright and unfiltered.” His darker servants plot in the Scroll of the Burning Dead to raise their master Marnek Jaull and “spread the cleansing fire of the Burning Prince.”

The Temple at Solusek’s Eye

His only known temple on Norrath sits in a great rift in the northern Lavastorm Mountains, cut into a south-facing cliff above the lava pit called Solusek’s Eye. Fire elementals, imps, goblins and drakes roam outside. Within, the Seekers and the Keepers keep a surprisingly orderly peace among hidden rooms, sudden enemies and unexpected allies.

Rebellion against Fennin

His neutrality did not last. He formed an alliance with Rallos Zek and began to siphon power from his father’s realm. In the in-game book TSRRiz, Jiva the Reckless tears an opening between the Tower of Solusek Ro and the Plane of Fire using knowledge from Arlyxir, long a trusted go-between for the two gods, who “has decided to form alliance with Solusek.”