A Glimmer in the Depths
Day of Rule, 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)
Stones rise from the barren floor, not mere lumps of hewed rock as they seem at first, but finely carved with the patterns of vines and flowers, fruit and thorn, the patterns of which one cannot long follow least they snare the eye. Your company thus take your seat, more easily than you thought you might and you speak of many things, your journeys, east and west, north and south. Lightly do the words lead you to talk of the city that you are now to enter and easily without dissemblance does the spirit of stone speak of the city.
Stone, he explains, has the longest of memories, enduring through the long ages of the world, but he admits stone is not easily given to vitality. A tablet of stone might be long lasting, but hard would be the chiseling or so at least thought the first of the Keepers whose hands were wary of the task and so they turned to the pondering of other elements: first fire to mold stone and in the making create a repository that could guard itself by the very radiance of its being. The task did not end well and by powers of sympathetic magic which your host honestly admits he does not understand mountains spewed fiery innards upon the realms of men, upon what would become the islands of the Anwa. The very house that Ro now dwells in was made up of lose stone thrown up by such a mountain...
Though you shudder at the thought of such might you do not speak aloud and allow instead Zaia's questions to drive the discussion onward. Thus you find that being stymied by fire the elder fey who would become the keepers turned instead to water and to stone refined, of the blood of the earth to make metal copper and tin, wheels of bright bronze that with each turn, each twist would remember a thing and by the work of levers and buttons that lore could be cut from the parchment fed into the machines.
The Lore of Naught they called this thing, but the keepers were not content with just this easing of their labors. All well and good to make the water turn the wheels and the rods of bronze in their arrangements recall the lore of ages, but these mechanisms were vast, filling the halls with clink and clatter, like rampant bramble of bronze. So some turned to fire again, to steam that would move the machines with far more strength. That lead to more scaldings and slayings than it did refinements of the Trove of Bronze as the repository was now called.
In the end it was Geir, one of the gremlin get, thought of as more pests than scholars who came upon the answer that would transform Glimerdale. What if instead of using fire they would make use of lightning, the soul of the air, anathema of stone. Small hands toiled in secrecy, magics so small that they would scarce be able to raise a gentle breeze against the skin carved arcane pasterns in the stone, an alchemy to coax the steady thrum of one element into the other. So the lightning flowed, through copper, through stone and by the water driven. The Lightning Stone was a thing six times the height of a man and twice as wide, yet it held lore vastly greater than even the Trove of Bronze.
"More than all the libraries in all the realms of men," the stone get says.
"I hope you do not wish to linger more than the day in these lands," you say to Zaia, only mostly in jest, for one would have to be blind to miss the scholar's look of awe, that refined greed that is beyond lust, gluttony and avarice.
"All the knowledge in the world is worth little without the chance to make use of it," the alchemist replies. "This repository already has its keepers."
And so it does, Geir called the Lightning-Whight who is master of the stone and Trove Keeper, small of stature but great in power and when he is not busy with the refinements of his machine a being of both generous and vengeful mien. Though if you are careful to abide by the laws of hospitality and take nothing for which you did not pay for out of the dale you should be well enough.
"Now the Wingless, him you should watch out for, born of the
pixie-folk and beloved of the air he lost his wings to a hawk that was in the service of one of the sorcerer priests of the Anwa and he loves them not for that. He won't harm the little one just for that, the law and honor binds him, but he might interpret her deeds in spiteful ways, treat him and those under him with respect keeping ever in mind his stature in spirit and not in flesh and you will be well served."
It is you who ask the final question just as the turn of the conversation goes again to your own deeds and your own travels: "What of Dragons? Why would the thief be so keen on taking that one spear and then fleeing?"
"Dragons are older than us, all of us..." the tool-taker motions to his own stony chest. "I may not look it, but there is more kinship between me and ye than between either of us and a dragon, children of an age of thunder, the age of the Walking Serpents, when the land steamed with the mist of Earth's slumbering breath, gone like a dream. Perhaps they now think that we are the dream that must be blown away. I know only what I heard of those few who passed this way since I was given the task, a strange kindred hunched and scaled and greedy eyed came into the depths and they said that they are the kin of Dragons-to-Be demanding tribute. They have been driven back and the keepers say they lie. They can do that since they are creatures of flesh and not fey spirit... but mayhap some in Glimerdale feared they spoke truth."
Your talks concluded the troll-kin stretched out over the river like a span of living stone growing and growing until there is a path that even Silver can cross. "Come on across, I can bear the weight of all of you easily enough... tickles a bit though."
There are perhaps stranger ways to cross a stream than accompanied by the giggling of the 'bridge', but you cannot think of any at the moment.
Ahead the lights of Glimerdale gleam on mirrors of stone and the huff and the creak of wheels fills the air, a thin fog of steam escaped from the old knowledge machines wafting to greet you, your fellow travelers once you meet the main road are all about three to four feet high at the tallest, kin of gremlin and pixie and mite as well as the shelled tinker fey on contraptions of bronze that look like everything from ornate carriages to great wheels that roll on with spark and sputter of chained lightning.
"A good thing they build to suit their ego and not their stature," Esha jests.
Your look of reproach might have been more believable if you were not also biting back a smile.
Past the ornate gates, thankfully unguarded by any who would ask toll of name you come into a great hall large enough to hold the whole city in its embrace, of stone one can but guess for it seems that every part of the walls is covered in belts and gears, levers and bearings ticking along like a great celestial clock.
The town itself is no less fantastical, the radiance of chained lightning hanging like arcane fruit from the branches of false trees and odd mechanical spigots spraying the scent of flowers ever changing upon passers-by. The homes and shops on either side of the great thoroughfare wide enough for even an elephant to pass through grow each by the whim of their masters, some like limpets of stone on the cavern walls, metal threading through the brick, others like mushrooms with roofs of glass and bright tile, some seemingly even of gold and silver, though Zaia says those are most likely glamor.
What do you do next?
[] Keep following the trail, you are here for a reason, better not to give your quarry warning
[] Go to speak to the Wingless, he is the master of law in this place and so he should be informed of the presence of a thief, perhaps he will aid in the rogue's capture
[] Go to the market, surely it must hold many fantastical things and you are not without gold and silver to trade
[] Visit the Lightning Stone, Zaia would see this great repository of lore with his own eyes
OOC: Steam-punk fey ahoy, I have been giving some hints of this as far back as those crossbows, but this is the first time you get to see them in their full glory.
