Well of Ascension

The Well of Ascension is a place of legend on Scadrial. The old stories belong to the Terris people of the north: their prophecies speak of a Hero of Ages who journeys to the Well, where an enormous power gathers every thousand years, and takes it up to save the world from a smothering doom the legends call the Deepness. A thousand years before the Lord Ruler claims to have faced the Deepness and taken the Well's power, and his church dates his godhood and his empire from that Ascension. Under his rule the old prophecies are dead religion and dangerous scholarship, and where the Well lies, what its power is, and whether it will gather again are questions no one may openly ask.