Nightlands: The meteor and the Hidden Vault

[mimi_sardinia]

I was contemplating the story of the Crafter Prince finding the Sisters and got into a line of thinking about details about the meteor, and what happened to it.

So to start with, the meteor itself was not small. I came to a rough proportion of three metres by two by one-and-a-half. It is shaped like a fat lenticular shape.

When the Prince found it, the leading point had already broken off, with the majority of the point still in one piece but a number of smaller fragments having crumbled off the broken edges.

After the Sisters took their Quendár forms, the Prince gathered them up, dropped a marker stone and then opened a portal and took them home to Arélenimbë and his wife. Once the girls were safely situated he returned to the crater by following the marker stone back, bringing with him bags and equipment, and a couple of his sons to help lift the larger part of the meteor and transported every piece of it back home, to his personal forge.

In subsequent years he made use of the small fragments to experiment and craft a few items, but most of the meteor was left untouched.


Now it is noted that the Crafter Prince was also the one who created the Arcane Dragon monument located in the plaza in front of the Dwarven Royal Palace, but what is less known is that when preparing the plaza for the placement of the three life-sized dragon statues, a strengthened foundation was installed, but that foundation included a large sealed metal box, made of layers of all three arcane metals.

The box, at proportions of four metres by four metres square, and two metres high, was featureless on the outside, with absolutely no way of breaking into it. It was embedded in the rock floor of the plaza and the stone sung around it. The dragon statues were set in place over top of the box and sung into the Living Stone so they would become a key part of the city's wards - wards that now included the box hidden beneath.


Edit to add - 10:14PM 6/2/20: Two metres in height is a bit short, with particularly tall people (Maedhros-expy) having to bend. I'd say it would be better at 3 metres high, if not a full four metre cube.


Now while the box has no entry from the outside, on the inside of the box one wall has the runes of a portal gate engraved on it. This gate has embedded in it three small shards of the meteor geode crystal. All three shards are paired to partner shards. The gate can only have a portal opened to it if the Gatekeeper opening the portal has one of the partnered shards. These key-shards are in the possession of the Three Sisters, who worked out a way of keeping them hidden in arcane pockets so the shards are never on their Mundane bodies. They can open portals into the box without ever removing the shards from said arcane pockets.

The primary contents of the box is the pieces of the meteor, but in the centuries since Nightfall all three Sisters have come across important and potentially dangerous arcane artifacts that they have stored in the box.


Outside those arcane pockets - located deep in the Sisters' extended arcane forms - and the caverns underneath the palace within the Seelie Queen's Domain, the box is the most protected storage vault in the Nightlands, hiding probably the most valuable piece of rock in the Nightlands.


***

Edit To Add 14/9/19:

Starfall Valley

I place this here instead of a new post because it directly relates to the meteor.

The place where the meteor landed did not just return to more or less the way it was before, it was permanently changed by the meteor, far beyond just the crater it caused. These changes were not known straight away of course, but they were discovered prior to Nightfall, when the Three Sisters wanted to visit the crash site for themselves.

To start with, the location was a broad open valley in between two of the lateral mountain ranges (the Khazad Mountains ran roughly north-to-south but had branches that ran roughly eastward and westward, and those were the lateral ranges), not particularly close to either the range northward or southwards. A river ran through the area and the valley was edged by moderate hills.

Now the initial damage of the crash resulted in a oval crater due to an angled landing, blasting a lot of the land directly around, causing a lot of damage to the plant life.

By the time the Sisters were able to visit, the whole valley was totally altered, with the forest not only grown back, but grown back in strange and unusual forms, with all the plants glowing in ways that would not be seen elsewhere until after Nightfall, and said plants have grown back in so the valley is also mostly heavy forest -in less than 200s years, which trees too large for that relatively short time. While the river was practically the same (changed path, but not drastically so), a new body of water has appeared, and determined to be located in the crash crater left behind by the meteor. The water in this crater lake glows and radiates magic quite strongly.
There is also a lot of random crystal formations that have cropped up that seem very similar in structure to the geode inside of the meteor.

Further looking about shows there are no sapient (intelligent) creatures in the valley, but they do find non-sapient miniature analogues to all three of the Great Races besides the Quendár, like tiny dragonettes akin to pseudodragons, mini-phoenixes the size of a canary, and dwarf unicorns (about the size of a medium-large dog). All of them white in colour.

Further investigation later shows that no sapient can enter the valley unless one of the Sisters is holding their hand as they walk in, no portal can be opened into the valley unless one of the Sisters opens it or the Gatekeeper has a piece of the meteor of the Sisters. Only exceptions to this is the Sisters' direct blood family (not even their eldest brother can enter without their aid), though the one exception is Kári, but that is because of the link he shares with the Sisters after taking the fourth keystone in the Protection Ritual. Ciaran and Tirin can enter, as well as their second eldest brother, but those three have their marital soulbonds to the Sisters. No mortals descended from the Eldarion line can enter, probably because their trace of starfire is too weak. Jarren and Avalië have not yet had reason to ever visit the valley, so it is unknown if their bonds with Damián and Silmá lets them in.

At time of writing my nebulous thoughts about some highly magical parts of the Nightlands resembling Sixam in The Sims 4 may be applicable to this valley, but more heavily covered in plant life.

Link to the Random Plants post.



***

Edit 7/10/19:
Bonus Thoughts

The geode-like crystal lining of the meteor comes in numerous colours.

Each of the children of the Sisters and subsequent grandchildren received piece of meteor crystal as their personal arcane crystals. No, it is not usual for Quendár to have arcane crystals the way other races who follow the religion of the Arcane do, but for the children and grandchildren of the Sisters, they have different purpose, a lot involved with being their personal keys to communicating between each other, and accessing restricted portal routes, like opening Gates to Eärelenatollë, Arélenimbë and Endánór Elenimbë.

I have not decided if there are great grandchildren, but if there are (and there is no reason why Elossí's grandchildren would not marry and have ooffspring, or Veriél and her husband wouldn't. Carnéisil might be a different kettle if aquatic creatures due to his reincarnation, which may have blurred the issue. Suffice to say my rule of thumb is that grandchildren are still strong enough to be a step above average, but great grandchildren are diluted enough that they are on par with average Quendár, just with an inner spark of starlight in their souls.

The crystals can be smelted into metal alloys, especially if it's a mage-metal alloy. Damián in particular had his crystal divided into smaller pieces and set in a few pieces of jewellery, including a ring, a stud earring, and a couple of pins that can be used in multiple ways. His crystal was blue in colour. I am inclined to say Leofric had red, Andrel had golden yellow and Veriél has green. When Leofric was killed, his crystal was retrieved and eventually given to Falmaránnor aka Carnéisil when he regained his past life memories.

Andrel's crystal was also retrieved after his death and remains in the vault.


The Three Sisters created a kind-of back door into the Queen's Domain from Starfall Valley, by giving Silmá a piece of meteor crystal and piece of valley crystal, giving Silmá a link to the valley. The Seelie Queen knows about this and never raised an objection. She never steps into the valley herself, except by explicit invitation. Oddly, the one exception to the restriction on his movement her husband has is that he can enter to valley, something believed to be a direct result of giving Silmá a link to the valley. He also respects his daughters' right to dictate when he is allowed to visit.

The crystal in the valley is believed, by the Sisters, to have grown out of crystal dust their father had not been able to gather - potentially crystal dust thrown some ways away from the crater. It is just as variable in colouration is the geode interior of the meteor itself.

The glow features of all the plant-life and animals in the valley have a high tendency to be white.