Crystal Castle, Part One (Firmament)

 You’re here on a narrow frozen road clinging to the edge of a very steep, very snowy cliff. You are on the slopes of Monte Zakazaña, the highest mountain in the Sierra Xelar, the deadliest ridge of the Far Mountains. Probably only Irgavio Sol, or some of the peaks of Outer Zzargod or deep Kelkora, reach higher towards the Firmament.

What is your purpose here? You are heroes, naturally - Hedge-Knights, perhaps, or a Hedge-Knight and their retinue. You must rescue Suhye Noche Jaráncada, the daughter of a prominent local Count, who was stolen away from her rose-garden by the wiła. Stolen away, into the strange frozen mountains high above the country of Xelar. Quite beside the ethical reasons to rescue the kidnapped noblewoman, Countess Jarancada of Xelar won’t commit to the Defiant cause until she knows she has no reason to muster her regiments for a doomed invasion of a distant, frozen mountain valley. 

That’s why you’re here on a narrow frozen road clinging to the edge of a very steep, very snowy cliff. Looming above you, you see it through the swirling snows and fogs - the Crystal Castle. A structure of absolute lucidity, a mathematical perfection in glass, blue ice, frozen air and white light. 

I wanted this to be a bit more like you’re looking at it through a snowstorm, but, hey, I’m alright with the result.

This is intended as a high-level dungeon - i.e., for “fully grown” D-Template characters, probably. Or maybe show up with four A-Template Outcasts and a single A-Template Scribe, or whatever, and loot everything flawlessly while your noble DM blinks and scratches their head and copes a bit. 

THE ROAD

Pansies, cyclamen, snowdrops and hellebore grow wild around the black stones of the road, in the sheltered alcoves of rock, and on each narrow switchback that ascend to the high ridge. 

Roadside shrines of unknown provenance dot the way - old marmoreal statuettes crouching in stone boxes, depicting owls, spiders and winged humans in a heavy, rounded, chunky kind of style. These statuettes are very old - they don’t even seem to be Seriasi. 

THE RITUAL SITE

The road terminates in a wide, shallow bowl in the mountainside, underneath the Castle-proper. The place is strewn with large chunks of glass. Here and there, stand wind-worn marble statues thrice your height, again depicting winged humans. There were more, now reduced to scattered rubble around the bowl. A gigantic bronze cauldron of some kind is set down into the ground in the dead centre of the space - it is full of a vaporous, freezing blue-white liquid. Anything dipped in there is frozen solid - anyone drinking it who needs body heat to live saves vs. death. 

On the north side, the white, hard-edged stairs to the Castle Gardens ascend. 

A strewnfield spreads out down the sheer slope of the mountain below - on the ledges where small firs struggle and narrow waterfalls sculpt rock, you will find luminous blue tektites scattered hither and yon. You could gather 25g of tektites in an hour’s dangerous climbing.

If collecting tektites, make a MOVE roll - with a result of 10 or less, you need to be rescued. 5 or less, you fall to your death and tumble a few thousand feet down to smash to pieces on the top of the glacier far below.  

THE CASTLE GARDENS

The stairs ascend through an arch of braided willow trees. 

The flowers from the road grow here in abundance, besides raspberries, mint, lime-trees, thyme, sage, lavender, and many other plants. It is always green and blooming - an eternal spring suspended among the permanent mountain winter. White gravel paths wind between planting beds, pretty marble gazebos, and kinetic sculptures of unblemished steel, turning in balanced beauty in the wind. 

If you roll an encounter in the Gardens, the first time, it is a herd of 2d6 eidolon clockwork deer, then it is Navācār, the Gardener, and thereafter, a unit of 12 Stellar Sentries and their Captain, patrolling. Mostly, you will only roll encounters in the Gardens if you loiter for a long while or make a loud noise. 

The great doors of the Crystal Castle, which sunburst from sky-blue at the top to indigo-black at the bottom, stand open, and white light blazes from within. 

CRYSTAL CASTLE ENCOUNTER TABLE (1d12)

1. Eidolon Animals (clockwork deer, owls, cats, doves, spiders, and so forth. Harmless, beautiful.) 

2. Navācār, the Gardener Eidolon. 

3. Theophano Garzea, the Librarian. 

4. A Khthesine, engaging in whatever the room is for. 

5. 1d4+1 Khiones (1. “Patrolling” (Goofing Off) 2. Playing Chaturanga on the Floor 3. Dancing)

6. 12 Stellar Sentries, on patrol through the halls. They are led by a Captain (roll on that subtable to determine which). There are a total of 108 Stellar Sentries in the entire castle. If you roll Rasalased, the tenth result, he is patrolling alone. 

7. 2d4+2 Khiones. 

8. 24 Stellar Sentries and their Captains. The Rasalased clause above applies here too. 

9. A Khthesine and two Khiones. 

10. 12 Stellar Sentries, their Captain, and a Khthesine.

11. The Eikon-Panoptes.

12. Lady Nirupama. 

NPCs

NORMALLY I PUT THESE AT THE END BUT

THIS IS A LONG-ASS POST AND

YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHO

THE FUCK I AM TALKING ABOUT FOR

IT TO MAKE EVEN ONE

IOTA

OF SENSE

Navācār, the Eidolon Gardener

This being is a clockwork eidolon of steel and brass, in the image of a slender and androgynous human, with a face of sliding silver pieces and a little phrygian-cap of black silk. They are dressed otherwise in finely embroidered, old-fashioned clothing, of a roughly Seriasi style and otherworldly, high-quality fabric (all black). 

They are exceedingly gentle and precise. Having lived their two decades and change in pristine protected seclusion, they are innocent, naïve and good-natured. They are the gardener of Crystal Castle, and walk around the grounds tending to the plants, repairing the animal eidola, and sweeping the paths. They are also the chef, when a guest that eats is present, and are passionate about cuisine despite having no need or ability to eat. If they cook you something, they’ll probably hang over your shoulder and watch you eat it, smiling. 

They think of you intruders as exciting curiosities, and are inclined to help you in a mischievous way. Attacking the castle’s inhabitants where they can witness it is a faux pas which causes them to flee from you, and alert Lady Nirupama to your presence. 

They are a creation of Lady Nirupama, assembled from metal in recursive imitation of Standstill’s creation of the Lady herself. Nirupama feels a fond protectiveness for the fragile mechanism she set spinning. She doesn’t consciously realise that she considers Navācār, in essence, her child, though the young eidolon seems to understand Nirupama as a beloved but very busy mother. 

Any harm dealt to Navācār will be returned tenfold, and is the single universal faux pas that turns every inhabitant of Crystal Castle against you. 

Actually breaking them, stilling their mechanisms, is grounds for Nirupama dedicating however long it takes to wipe out whatever mud-stained human dung-hole village you happened to be born in. If that “village” happens to be a major city, well - she’ll schedule some extra time. 

Theophano Garzea, the Librarian 

An old(?) fellow, with silver-grey hair and tired eyes, but a young face. He is dressed in a white tunic dyed with a wavy blue pattern, and a togalike garment of blue-green sailcloth, tied to his waist with rope. Once blessed with a fine bronze complexion, he is now perhaps unhealthily pale. He seems somehow both a sturdy, sailorlike fellow, and a fragile ancient. 

Theophano speaks a language which is mutually intelligible with Seriasi, but which is not Seriasi. This is Ondriman, an ancient language spoken Above and Below. He is an Ondriman, and is in fact centuries old. Lady Nirupama saved him from a dreadful fate (or perhaps acquired him at the right moment?) and had him preserved as her personal amanuensis, Scribe, librarian and interlocutor. 

Theophano is almost absurdly well-read (one has to be, to keep up with a Khthesine in conversation), and is educated enough that spirits will occasionally visit the Castle to consult him, which is a source of great pride for Nirupama. On the other hand, he prays in private to the great serpent of the Moon, which is a source of mild embarrassment for Lady Nirupama. So far, the pride outweighs the embarrassment. Cautious Theophano is careful to keep the balance - wry or no, he’s not a fool. 

Theophano is a Dream Scribe C, who knows the Inscriptions Fog of Sleep, Bird Call, Echoes, Feed the Wolf, Sunder and Find the Path. He knows the Arts Lost and Found, In the Garden and Fencing Education (an Iron Scribe art that teaches the method of using the scribal Quill like a main-gauche). 

Suhye Noche Jaráncada, the Guest 

She is, in fact, an Astrologer, and was quite happy to be stolen away. In point of fact, she requested it, and getting her to return home to her overbearing and forbidding mother will be something of a challenge. Still, for the greater good of securing Countess Xelar’s alliance to Defiance? 

She has dark eyes, brown skin, and waist-length black hair decorated with beads and gold-coin medallions. Her embroidered red dress of expensive silks has been fastidiously cleaned (by Tanvi). She has a small pearl-handled pistol, (for shooting highwaymen) and a long bone-handled dagger. 

Suhye is exceedingly well-educated, both in the Chantry view of the World and the more correct but less popular kind of education you can get from Stellar spirits. She is, by all metrics, a very intelligent, refined and patient young woman, but nevertheless is wilful, occasionally thoughtless, and aristocratically proud. She made friends with Standstill by wandering into the ruins of a half-buried temple to her in the hinterlands of Xelar - she could show any Astrologer the spot, if convinced to return to the lowlands, where they too could get Standstill’s acquaintance. 

Suhye is a Star Astrologer B, with the acquaintance of Chill, Precision, Lock, Jaunt and Standstill. 

STATBLOCKS (AND MORE NPCs, I SUPPOSE)

Stellar Sentries 

3HD (15HP), AC16 DR 2 (Frosty Steel Harness), Morale 8 (Brave)

Spiritual infantry lent by lords of the Myriad Stars. 

No. Appearing: 1d4 (5d10 when upon a Star) 

Movement: As an athletic human. 

Senses: Excellent hearing like a bat’s, otherwise as human. 

Morality: Law-abiding, stoic, obstinate. 

Intelligence: Equal to a human’s. 

Attacks: Sabre, +4 to Hit, 1d6+2 damage OR Clockwork Bolt-Thrower, +2 to hit, 2d4+1 damage at range.

Exceedingly Durable — The Sentries’ subtly crystalline bodies are heavy, resilient and dense. They take no damage from flames, have 2 DR, and are immune to light weaponry. However, they are incapable of moving with haste or swimming (instead sinking and walking along the bottom). 

1d10 Captains of the Stellar Sentries

Unless otherwise stated, a Captain has stats as a Stellar Sentry, but with 4HD, +5 to hit with a melee weapon, +3 with a ranged one, and Morale 11 (Undying Loyalty to Lady Nirupama).

When off-duty, which only happens if the castle isn’t on alert (i.e., you are moving through in social-scenario mode), the clannish Sentries hang out together. They’re all from different Stars, see? They spend their off-duty time in various places around the castle - if not their own barracks, then the library, the tennis court, the great hall, the museum, etc. 

1. Nivvaja - Wears a polar-bear fur cloak and affixes a veil of silver wire over the front of her helm. As a note, the World Above does not have polar bears. She is boisterous, direct, and has excellent memory. Bears a seemingly-silent silver bugle which, when blown, startles animals and disrupts cogent thought. A painter, sculptor, mosaic-maker and composer. Her unit of 12 Sentries have arctic fox-furs adorning their helms, and wield two-handed pikes in place of sabres. 

2. Lantberaht - Wears a helm set with many onyx lenses on a complicated clockwork mechanism. He can click lenses in and out when he needs to look at something in great detail, or at a great distance. He is well-read, proud, and has a habit of correcting people. His unit of 12 Sentries are armed with brightly glowing white longswords, that makes fighting them an exercise in “I cannot fucking see shit”. They, like him, are also equipped with onyx lenses. 

3. Nuakh - Wears a cloak of frozen air that lets off plumes of vapour, and a hounskull helm. Bears a staff of star-glass which can be used to direct rays of light (2d6 damage, autohit, deflected by mirrors). He is knowledgeable, patient and avuncular. His unit of 12 Sentries wear sashimonos of white silk daubed with a black circle, and are also armed with mirror shields (+1AC) that they use to bounce Nuakh’s light-rays around corners and so forth. 

4. Megrez - Wears a visored helm with a plume of white feathers on the top, and a white horo cloak. He is proud, stern and obstinate.  He and his unit of 12 Sentries are given special dispensation to ride clockwork eidolon deer (1HD) through the halls, and bear long steel lances (1d10+2, +1d6 on the charge) along with their other equipment. They are adorned in steel medals. 

5. Ingram - Wears a veil of steel chains and silver bangles. Dual-wields katanas, fuck yeah, and attacks twice in a round. He is soft-spoken, witty and seems kind of half-asleep sometimes. His unit of 12 Sentries wear steel chains as necklaces and bear star-ice baselards instead of sabres (+2 damage, and the damage they deal is half cold damage). 

6. Toshiaki - Seven feet in height, and incredibly strong. His helm has a shimmering hood of aquamarine, adorned with turquoise gems on silver chains. He wields a two-handed crystal-breaking maul with a nasty spiked head, of wonderful balance and dreadful weight. Flamboyant, gossipy and romantic. His unit of 12 Sentries are adorned with trailing ribbons of blue cloth, and have polished aquamarine gems set in the forehead of their helms. Toshiaki and his unit can enter reflective surfaces and hide there as images, blending into the crystalline surroundings, ready to spring out for an ambush. Much of the Castle is reflective. 

7. Kaniehtiio - Shorter than the average Stellar Sentry. Wears an absurdly heavy set of plate-mail, bears it with ease. Curtains of interlinked metal plates guard her legs, a prowlike chestplate bitten by bolts and void guards her torso, and her helm is peaked and has a folding visor that opens by clockwork. Her AC is 20. She wields a pair of shining blue-steel stabbing-spikes, of almost amusingly simple construction. Stern, gossipy and melodramatic.  Her unit of 12 Sentries bear gigantic tower shields with a layer of jagged crystal on the outside, which they use to form walls that they stab from behind with their spike-headed spears.   

8. Nanabah - Wears a blue-steel helmet crest shaped like an owl. She moves as though gravity has little hold on her - long, springing steps that take a long time to settle to earth. This somewhat offsets her crystalline slowness. She wields a cold-burning torch of blue flame, and flings from it balls of icy anti-fire (1d10 damage). She is easily-distracted, easily-frustrated, and indomitably determined. Her unit of 12 Sentries wear silver “cloaks”, which are actually folded metal wings, which allow for gliding and short bursts of flight. They carry no sabres, but have +4 to hit with their bolt throwers.  

9. Rukhsana - Doesn’t wear a helm, wears a pair of blue glass spectacles with steel frames, and ties her shining silver hair up into a bun on top of her head. She wields a pair of fancy blackpowder pepperboxes that she spins around on her fingers, and spiked boots. She’s deadpan, sarcastic and devil-may-care. She also wears an enveloping sky-blue cloak. Her unit of 12 Sentries wield oversized heavy blackpowder rifles (note: I do mean rifles) with rattling clockwork firing mechanisms and fine glass scopes mounted on them (+4 to hit, 2d6* damage, hits AC10). They hang back while Rukhsana approaches unknowns. Generally, they’re reluctant to fire unless necessary - Lady Nirupama hates the ruckus of guns. 

10. Rasalased - A heroic figure who patrols the halls alone, with a lion’s head helm, a necklace of teardrop diamonds, and a pure white cloak.  Stats as a Stellar Sentry, but he has 6HD, fights with an oversized zwëihander (+7 to hit, 2d6+2), attacks thrice in a turn, and has 1MD. He has the acquaintance of the Stellar spirits Wall and Stasis. He is heroic, completely forthright, and wistful. He spends his off-duty time in his chamber, or on the Uppermost Ramparts, brooding picturesquely.

Khiones (or Yuki-onna) 

5HD (25HP), AC14 (Ice and High Fashion), Morale 9 (All Good Fun ‘Til It’s Not)
The handmaidens of Cold Voyager Winter, a powerful Stellar spirit. They appear as snow-white young women, pretty and pale-eyed, with white or black hair and little black horns on their forehead. They tend to dress quite richly, and have a strangely cutesy, friendly affect for beings of their lethality. Even greater is the contrast between their sanguine manner and the famous grimness of their mistress. 

Movement: Flight like the winter wind. Agile on their feet, too. Can hover, like to do so. 

Senses: As a human, plus they can see heat. 

Morality: Complete lack of empathy in any regard. Loyal to Winter (always) and Nirupama (for the moment). 

Intelligence: Postgrad student. 

Attack: Freezing Touch - +5 to Hit - A grip, punch, slap, claw or gentle poke which causes dreadful numbness in the affected body part, and deals 1d8+2 cold damage. +1d8 damage to those not in cold weather clothing. 

Magic: Khiones drastically drop the temperature of anything with which they physically come into contact, and can summon snow and ice from thin air. The quantity of snow and ice summoned is only limited by time - in a round, an icicle dagger or a snowball. In a minute, an ice-wall. In a day, a cabin of ice. Multiple Khiones working together achieve greater results quicker, and ten together can spend an hour among the clouds to conjure a brutal blizzard, no matter the season. 

The Proper Hour - Like all the seasonal spirits and their servants, the Khiones are locked to certain rules in the ordered balance of the world. These ones are not permitted to leave the grounds of the Crystal Castle in Summer, allowed to travel the mountains in Spring and Autumn, and allowed to pursue a fleeing foe all the way to the very gates of Irgavio Sol in Winter. 

Snow and Ice - Khiones take double-damage from fire. They know this, and they know to kill people who know this with extreme prejudice. 

So Cold — If a Khione kisses you on the mouth, save vs. death as your lungs freeze. Other kinds of kiss provide mere numbness. Combat-kissing-on-the-mouth is only really applicable against the incapacitated, restrained or unwary. 

1d10 Khiones 

1. Xue - White hair, neatly combed in an even waist-length cut. Blue eyes. Wears a fringed sleeveless surcoat patterned with white roses. She also wears an oversized white silk dress with huge hand-obscuring sleeves and a weightless, hovering train. Carries (hidden in her sleeves) a pair of nasty spike daggers. She is giggling, shy, and occasionally suddenly brutal. Familiar with the basics of the art of Heraldry. 

2. Itztla - Long black hair, hanging to mid-back, tied back off the face with white ribbons. Blue eyes. Wears florally-patterned pink and blue hakama, and a baggy tunic of white with voluminous sleeves. Carries around a longbow over her shoulder, and a quiver of blue-fletched arrows that let off a cold vapour. She is cocky, cunning and observant. 

3. Aushti - Short white hair, wild and tangled, dotted with huge snowflakes like hair ornaments. White irises. Wears a flowing sky-blue dress, a white sash, and a black tasselled hood, all embroidered with geometric patterns in silver. Carries around a long stick with a little pointer-hand on the end. Smiles all the time, daydreams a lot, and has a decently high chance of ignoring what you say as if you didn’t say it. 

4. Mavsa - Short black hair, in a short high ponytail. Black irises, like huge pupils. Wears a white kimono patterned with blue flowers and black ten-pointed stars, and a pair of indigo hakama with tiny silver bells sewn into the hems. Carries around something that basically resembles a comically oversized shuriken. Frowns all the time, reads constantly, and is very vigilant. Pining for the ignorant Aushti. 

5. Unatsi - White hair in a huge, knee-length braid with a steel ring on the end. Blood-red eyes. Wears an indigo tunic with rolled up sleeves, practical three-quarter-length black trousers, solid crystal geta, and a sky-blue mantle patterned with flying owls. Carries around a handheld drum and padded mallet. Has a very loud voice. She is strident, boisterous and secretly anxious. 

6. Huka - Wildly long and tangled black hair, knotted and massed in a thatch that obscures her eyes. Kind of smiles like “:3”, you know. Wears a velvety black gown, sleeves decorated in spikelike fragments of sapphire and diamond, with a netlike pattern of silver thread scattered across it. Wears heavy soldier’s boots under the flowing dress, with steel spikes in the toe. Carries around a white velvet bag full of hailstorms (borrowed from the Stellar lord Hail, destroyer of harvests). Usually calm and wry, but poorly manages her bitter and furious temper. 

7. Lumi - White hair in eight braids, blood red eyes. Wears a black dress with white embroidery, puffy sleeves, a high collar, heavy layered skirts and a boob window. Carries around what you could probably call a headsman’s axe, and a frog-shaped whetstone on a blue cord. She is jovial, faintly murderous, and laughs a lot. 

8. Nive - Black hair, combed, flowing and shiny. Eye-obscuring fringe. Wide and placid smile, gap between her two front teeth. Wears a well-fitted white dress patterned with dark blue hyacinth flowers. It has poofy sleeves, and is decorated with hundreds of tiny gemstones, so it glitters in the light.  Carries around a wand topped with a crystalline star that gently glows. Relaxed, popular and amusingly gullible. 

9. Vrosta - Wild white curly hair, about half of which is tied into a short and springy ponytail. Ice-blue eyes. Much taller than the other Khiones, and subtly muscular. Wears a heavy and practical jacket a bit like an arming doublet, rimed in spiky frost. The same goes for the rest of her garments, grey-white and reinforced with many small metal panels. Carries a long iron staff as tall as herself. Unusually serious and mission-focused when compared to the other Khiones, but becomes a wacky, giggling drunk with even a sip of alcohol. 

10. Erɣ - White hair, curly. Wears a voluminous, silky silver-grey cloak, with a huge hood. Curls of hair escape the hood here and there. Also wears a shiny full face mask of black glass that resembles the shell of a tortoise. Carries around an aulos of black crystal, formed to be playable while still wearing the mask. Rude, puckish, dislikes violence strongly - will never willingly harm a living being. 

The Eikon Panoptes 

10HD (50HP), AC20 DR3 (Cold Steel), Morale 11 (Duty) 

A reflective humanoid figure hovering above the floor, some ten feet tall. It has no feet, its legs simply trailing off into hovering silvery shards. There is a head - it looks like a glassy starburst, rays of frozen light suspended among a glimmering cage of silver bars. Unblinking dodecahedral eyes of light stare from within. It has over-long, reaching arms, with huge and heavy hands of steel. Such a thing’s appearance on the earth has only been properly recorded once, by a very honoured old Law Scribe of Saeferk. He was known by the title and name of Mędrzec Felix Maeng. He named the thing the Eikon Panoptes - is this the very same being? Or do the heavens play host to hosts of them?

Movement: A slow, but unstoppable striding hover. 

Senses: Sight, and how (see below). Can Sense Dissent and Sense Criminality, by Stellar standards. Has no sense of smell or taste, totally voluntarily deaf (immune, it was reasoned, to whispers that would poison that manifold mind). 

Morality: Kind of hard to tell. Exceedingly loyal to Lady Nirupama and the Parliament more generally, either apathetic to free will or simply perfectly morally aligned with those it serves. 

Intelligence: Inhumanly mentally powerful, able and agile, but does not communicate except with high-ranking spirits and the Khthesines. 

Attacks: x2 Crush, +10 to Hit, 2d6+6 Damage, Automatic Grapple 

Magic: 

• Reinterpret - The Eikon Panoptes places two hands flat in the air, and focuses. Replacing one of the attacks it makes on its turn, the Eikon Panoptes can de-invest the MD from an active Inscription, deactivating it and restoring [sum]HP to itself. 

• Shockbubble - Replacing one of the attacks it makes on its turn, Eikon gestures circularly with its left hand, creating a shimmering sphere of air. This sphere is 5ft in diameter. If it is struck, it explodes in a shockwave in all directions, knocking anyone unprepared prone, blasting unsecured objects away, &c. The Eikon Panoptes is immune to the shockwave. 

• Slownet - Replacing one of the attacks it makes on its turn, the Eikon gestures squarely with its right hand, creating a 20ft cubical area of shimmering, weblike strands of light. Anything save for light that passes between the strands loses 90% of its velocity, including sound. 

Pantopicon — The Eikon Panoptes has perfect 360° vision, with the strength of a telescope, the precision of a microscope, the ability to see in total darkness or blinding light, and the sight-beyond-sight which allows it to see even hidden spirits. It can remove and place dodecahedral crystalline eyes in various places, and the outside of the Castle is dotted with them, giving it an excellent view of the Castle’s environment - however, to suit Nirupama’s preferences, very few of its eyes are placed within the Castle. They’ll be mentioned if they come up. The Eikon’s eyes have 1HP when outside of its body. The supply of eyes is not infinite, but practically is so for the purposes of an elfgame adventure. 

Light Ray — At the start of its turn, the Eikon Panoptes can choose to strike anyone it can see with a beam of white light, dealing 3d6+3 light damage. This is an autohit, unless the target can interpose a mirror. It can also do this to the projections of spirits, destroying them and rendering their Astrologer unable to use them until the next day, when they’ve had time to recover. 

Detain — The Eikon Pantopes makes a “cage” shape with its huge hands, replacing both attacks on its turn. A target is surrounded by a semivisible shimmering birdcage of tempered light, which is nearly indestructible. Only one cage can exist at one time (presumably, it only has one, and moves it around). If the Eikon is defeated, the cage vanishes.

Hear No Evil — The Eikon-Panoptes needs permission from either a Lord of the White Ice Parliament, (the ruling body of Stellar spirits), or from Lady Nirupama, to activate its ability to hear. 

Khthesines 

8HD (40HP), AC17 (Steel, Glass and Crystal), Morale 11 (No Fear, Sometimes Reason)

The galatea-proteges of the great Stellar lord Patient Eternal Standstill, current Prime Minister of the White Ice Parliament. Khthesines are like flawless mechanical imitations of hard-faced women in glass, silk, steel and silver. Their bodies are full of gears and clockwork, constantly ticking. They are perfectly aware of time and its passage, and fly like arrows. Their voices are like pealing bells. 

Movement: Flight (like an arrow, as mentioned), otherwise, inexorable, mechanical, insanely precise, ungentle. 

Senses: Incredible hearing, sight, proprioception. Muted touch. No sense of smell or taste. 

Morality: Unmerciful, completely loyal, often monomaniac, rarely equivocal, vaguely Tory. 

Intelligence: Excellent facility with mathematics, physics, literature, history, &c. Poor social skills, little empathy. 

Attacks: Three of: 1x Timesling, 1x Oxeia, 2x Physical Reprimand OR 1x Strike from the Future. Some Khthesines in the list below have additional attacks, as specified. 

• Timesling - +8 to Hit, hits AC10. A whistling and a sense of tension surrounds the Khthesine, and a faint shimmering motion forms over her shoulder. At the start of her next turn, a steel ball the size of a fist fires from the distortion at the target, dealing 2d6*+6 damage unless they got into cover somehow. It then vanishes away to be flung in the first place. 

• Oxeia - A paradoxical cutting-edge conjured from non-reality scores across a straight line 1mm wide and up to 30ft long anywhere the Khthesine can see. Anyone intersected by the line takes 4d4 slashing damage, save for half. Anyone killed by the Oxeia is cut into perfectly equal halves. 

• Physical Reprimand - The Khthesine punches you in the gub. +8 to Hit, 2d4+6. Critical hits or max damage hits destroy equipment in the Khthesine’s unfriendly hands. 

• Strike from the Future - +6 to Hit. An inexplicable metal fist materialises to hit you. Target suffers precisely 14 damage if the attack hits, but the Khthesine suffers 1d6 paradox damage if it misses. 

Slow Arcs — Projectiles seem in no hurry to approach. The Khthesine is immune to arrows, and guns must actually hit her AC to damage her (instead of hitting AC10). 

Reassess — The Khthesine can take 2d6 paradox damage to re-roll any d20 and take the new result. Only once per individual action, of course. 

Immediate Future Sight — Khthesines win initiative automatically if engaged in combat, and can only be surprised by those somehow supernaturally shielded from them.

1d6 Khthesines 

1. Pratibha - Wears a steel mask and a bizarrely Dradian set of black, well-fitting hunting garb, with a little fetching bycocket. All of her clothing is decorated with purple peacock feathers. She cradles a monstrous repeating mechanical crossbow like a cat. She is very personally serious, but quite gullible. Has an obsession with large animals, and wants to collect trophies from them.  Seems to be relatively newly manufactured.
   
   Has an additional option for attacks, as follows: 2x High-Tension Bolt-Thrower, +8 to Hit, 2d6*+4 damage, critical hits pin targets to whatever’s behind them. 

2. Sadhana - Wears a indigo cloak and torc of twisted blue-green cazrin. A veteran of some great war, her body is burnt and scarred, and her right arm ends in a twisted hook of crushed metal. In her left hand, she carries a long spear of frozen blue-green lightning. She speaks with a raspy voice that sounds more like grinding gears than a pealing bell. She alone among the castle’s Khthesines is kind of chill.
   
   Has an additional option for attacks, as follows: 1x Lightning Spear, +8 to Hit, 2d8+6 lightning damage. Blinding, deafening. Returns to her hand once flung. 

3. Upasana - Wears a crown of cold blue fire, carries a scepter of ice, wears a heavy dress of woven silver. Mechanic, metalworker, clockworker, bellmaker. Tells anyone who seems interested about her grand plan to select six equidistant points around the circumference of the World Above, then saw off the “excess material” with otherworldly powers. This will allow the remaining land to be neatly demarcated into an easily navigable “hex grid” of equally sized land units - this will doubtless immanentise the Oecumene. Occasionally seized by doomed knight’s-move-thinking genius ideas for solving some problem or another, that distract her from this primary goal. 

4. Tanvi - Wears a huge veil of blue silk that shines like polished lapis lazuli. It obscures her head and hangs down to her middle back. Exceedingly concerned about dirt and filth, will react poorly to you unless you are meticulously clean and primly presented. She has a serious eye for detail, and a neurotically caring attitude.  She is armed with a pair of shiny clicking clockwork pistols that she carries in white silk holsters decorated with glittering diamonds. She uses these primarily because she cannot abide the idea of striking a filthy animal with her own hands.
   
   Tanvi replaces Physical Reprimand with the following attack: 2x Firearm Reprimand, +8 to Hit, 2d6* Damage, loud. 

5. Vidya - Wears a wreath of blue-green glass roses on her head, and a blue halter dress. She carries, usually in both hands, a gigantic steel tuning fork. Dreamy yet intent. Carries around a clockwork device which simulates a set of lungs, allowing her to play wind instruments and engage in glassblowing.  Vidya seeks the secret tone most pleasing to the universal ear, and studies musical instruments from all the nations of the World, just in case they happen to have captured some element of it. If you ask her - even if you don’t ask her - she’ll tell you that she’s fairly sure the Zzargovi are the closest, at the moment. Vidya is, to the great embarrassment of herself and all the other Khthesines, a hopeless romantic.
   
   Has an additional ability: Determine Resonance - Vidya can take a turn tuning her giant tuning fork to your resonant frequency. She can then take another turn at any point whenever she’s in earshot to bash it off something hard and boil your miserable organs inside out (5d6 damage, HRTS for half). She can only attune to one target at a time, and is prevented from doing so if there’s a very loud noise occurring nearby.
   Has an additional option for attack: Club You Round the Head (With a Huge Tuning Fork) - +8 to Hit, 1d10+8 damage, makes a goofy ass “bong” noise. 

6. Radha - Wears a crown made of hovering silver blades, and a gown of steel wire decorated with clusters of spikes. Militant, severe, deeply interested in history, anatomy, medicine, and dentistry. She is writing a completely comprehensive thesis on intraspiritual warfare, titled To Defend the Stars. Every time she writes the final draft of a page, she copies it four times. An unusual combination of strident and reclusive, she dislikes to be bothered - and she especially dislikes to be bothered while writing. 

Lady Nirupama, Mistress of the Crystal Castle
11HD (55HP), AC18 (Steel, Glass and Diamond), Morale 13 (Would Rather See the Sun Fall than Retreat)
The ruler of the castle, a Khthesine of great seniority, adorned with many deeds and honours. She is diligent, forthright, highly knowledgeable, and entirely inclement. She wears a long gown of cold glittering white fabric, a metallic mantle woven of hepatizon wires, a crown of sterile white light, and a necklace of rainbow gemstones. A pair of swords, one small and narrow, one huge and heavy, float around after her like loyal hounds. 

Movement: Flight (like an arrow), otherwise, inexorable, mechanical, insanely precise, ungentle. 

Senses: Incredible hearing, sight, proprioception. Muted touch. No sense of smell or taste. Can also See Heat. 

Morality: Unmerciful, completely loyal, definitely monomaniac, never equivocal, definitely Tory. 

Intelligence: Excellent facility with mathematics, physics, literature, history, &c. Poor social skills, absent empathy. 

Attacks: Three of: 1x Timesling, 1x Oxeia, 2x Physical Reprimand, 1x Strike from the Future, OR (1x RIGHT HAND MINUTE + 1x LEFT HAND HOUR). Nirupama cannot repeat the same attack multiple times in a turn. 

• Timesling - +10 to Hit, hits AC10 (i.e., automatic, barring cover or a fumble). A whistling and a sense of tension surrounds Nirupama, and a faint shimmering motion forms over her shoulder. At the start of her next turn, a steel ball the size of a fist fires from the distortion at the target, dealing 2d6*+6 damage unless they got into cover somehow. It then vanishes away to be flung in the first place. Multiple Timeslings can exist. 

• Oxeia - A paradoxical cutting-edge conjured from non-reality scores across a straight line 1mm wide and up to 30ft long anywhere Nirupama can see. Anyone intersected by the line takes 4d6 slashing damage, save for half. Anyone killed by her Oxeia is cut into however many perfect centimeter-square cubes they can be cut into. 

• Physical Reprimand - Nirupama delivers a metallic slap and steely backhand. +10 to Hit, 2d4+6. Critical hits or max damage hits destroy equipment in her unfriendly hands. 

• Strike from the Future - +6 to Hit. An inexplicable metal fist materialises to hit you. Target suffers precisely 14 damage if the attack hits, but Nirupama suffers 1d6 paradox damage if it misses. 

• RIGHT HAND MINUTE - Nirupama gestures with her right hand, and the hepatizon greatsword that flies around in her wake swipes at a target. +11 to Hit, 1d10+8. Any damage dealt by RIGHT HAND MINUTE is repeated exactly 24 hours later. 

• LEFT HAND HOUR - Nirupama gestures with her left hand, and the black steel xiphos that flies around in her wake swipes at a target. +11 to Hit, 1d6+8 damage. LEFT HAND HOUR is constantly new, existing in a one-day time-loop - before noon, it is hot as if fresh-forged, glows, and deals +1d6 fire damage. Between noon and sunset, it is shiny, tempered and fine, becoming vorpal. After sunset, it is merely a sword. 

Parry - Taught by Duel himself, Nirupama is more able in melee even than other Khthesines. She can reduce incoming damage from a melee attack by 1d6+10 up to once per round, and if she reduces the damage to 0, she can immediately use RIGHT HAND MINUTE or LEFT HAND HOUR on the attacker. 

Slow Arcs — Projectiles seem in no hurry to approach. Nirupama is immune to arrows, and guns must actually hit her AC to damage her (instead of hitting AC10). 

Reassess — Nirupama can take 2d6 paradox damage to re-roll any d20 and take the new result. Only once per individual action, of course. Technically, she could do so forever, but she swore to Lady Standstill that she would not. 

Timejump - Once per minute / ten rounds, Nirupama vanishes until the start of her next turn. She can do this in response to, for example, failing a save or being caught in a powerful spell. 

Immediate Future Sight — Nirupama wins initiative automatically if engaged in combat, and can only be surprised by those somehow supernaturally shielded from her.

If you were to defeat Nirupama, you could claim RIGHT HAND MINUTE and LEFT HAND HOUR as your own. They’re +1 magic swords, and have the effects listed above (i.e., the repeat damage thing and the timeloop thing). They were given to her for safekeeping by Standstill, who "commissioned" them from a solar prince called Crucible. 

Nirupama is, in essence, Standstill’s ambassador in the World Above. She refers to the World Above as “The Garden”.  She acknowledges the Sun King as the ruler of the “Garden”, but doesn’t personally like or support him.  She has absolutely no interest in letting Suhye go - after all, the young lady explicitly requested to be taken here. 

THE CRYSTAL CASTLE

Unless otherwise stated, doors are solid steel. Where they are locked, they are locked by complicated clockwork. 

Unless otherwise stated, rooms are lit from all around by a bluish radiance coming from the walls and floor. 

Generally speaking, there are two modes you can go through this dungeon in: one, the probably-automatic one, is standard dungeon style. The other is as a social scenario, where you announce yourselves at the entrance (or announce yourselves by accident on the approach to the castle), and are allowed entry so long as you obey the inhabitants’ rules. 

I hemmed and hawed about calling it a scenario or a dungeon. Either. 

Things which swap the social scenario back to dungeon mode and turn some (and eventually all) of the inhabitants against you are marked as faux pas. Generally, robbery and violence are, as you may expect, faux pas. 

If you’re arriving at the castle looking for Suhye, roll 1d6 to determine the room she’s currently in:

1. The EAST NOOK, mid girls-night with six of the Khiones, who are protective. 

2. The GLASS LIGHT LOUNGE, taking in the view. 

3. The GRAND BALLROOM, looking around in awe and wonder. 

4. The GAMING PARLOR, playing chaturanga with a Khthesine, or tarocchi with some off-duty Sentries. 

5. The HALL OF TROPHIES, wandering between the bizarre exhibits under Sadhana’s watchful eye. 

6. The TEMPLE TO DIVINATION at the very top of the castle, praying for answers on the universe. 

GROUND FLOOR

1. ENTRANCE HALL

Through the doors, you enter a vast chamber, luminous and ice-blue. The floor is a single contiguous piece of crystal or glass, cold, hard and perfectly reflective. Anyone passing through these doors is known to the inhabitants of the castle (eyes watch from within the hidden watchtowers either side). 

The ceiling is decorated with and obscured by hanging chandeliers and ornaments, which emulate snowflakes, icicles and clouds in negative space and radially symmetrical crystal pieces. A heatless white light emanates from every piece, banishing all shadows from the room.

Eight immense pentagonal pillars hold up the chamber, blending into the floor, each a solid chunk of blue crystal like a glacier cross-section or a piece of frozen sky. Beyond them in the NORTHEAST and NORTHWEST are gravity-defying hanging steel staircases, which ascend to the FIRST FLOOR. To the NORTH, a vast arched doorway, over which hangs a white icosahedral lantern of hissing aether. 

If you caused any ruckus on the Road, at the Ritual Site, or in the Gardens (or lit any visible fires), a squad of 12 Stellar Sentries and their captain, Nivaja, await you here. They greet you coldly, cordially, and keep a close eye on you while you are guests of Lady Nirupama, ruler of the Crystal Castle. (I.e. - you are now in social-scenario mode). 

Obviously, attacking them immediately is a faux pas. Do I need to specify that? 

2. INNER HALL

Glittering gemlike vapour rings in the air and swirls around the freezing half-pillars protruding from the walls. Great archways lead out in four directions. Each archway has a (currently) open set of double-doors, each six-inches thick and made of solid steel. The doors are decorated with deer, owls, snakes and tortoises, in a geometric and simplified manner.

There is a large, square-shaped mosaic on the floor, divided vertically (from the view of one entering from the south) into two patterns. Any Signatory or Hedge-Knight could recognise a heraldic impalement. 

On the dexter, or senior side: Sable, a warhorn argent, below three snowflakes, argent.
On the sinister, or junior side: Argent, a long sword palewise sable, below a short sword bendwise in chief, sable. 

These arms repeat around the castle, on shields, cornices, walls, above hearths, and so forth. Defacing any of them is a distinct faux pas. 

If one were to go all the way to Irgavio Sol, and search in the College of Arms, one would find the junior arms as having been granted to a “House of Nirupama” in 289, and stripped by Royal decree in 1050. One would find the senior arms still belong to a “Lady Aven”, which is unusual, because they are granted to families, not people, and the ones who hold them are not often simply titled “Lady”. 

3. HALL OF TICKING CLOCKS

Every place on the towering blue crystal walls of this chamber is taken by a clock - mostly functional, a few broken, and a good few esoteric in nature. Most clocks are divided into twelve, but there’s more than a few divided into tens - and even one into sixteen! 

The most unusual clocks are as follows: 

1. A ticking brass clock upon a crystal pedestal. It’s squarish and block-bodied, with a face made up of overlapping revolving discs. It displays the current season, the day of the year and the incipient weather. A float sits upon mercury in a tall tube of blue glass on the right side of the clockface(s), indicating how likely a lightning-storm is tomorrow. In this place, it never goes above the 7-per-centum marker. On rails around the outside of the clock, four little figurines slide around at various hours of the day. Three depict in brass young women mid-skip, one antlered, one feathered, one draped in wool. Their pedestals are marked AUTUMN, SUMMER, and SPRING. The fourth, solid silver, depicts a sternly posed figure in sleek plate harness, armed with a sword. This one is marked, of course, WINTER.
   This clock is worth 130 talents, and is 6 slots big. 

2. A gigantic, crude block of a clock, within which turn clunking gears of patinated bronze and dark varnished hardwood. An immense calendrical disc turns slowly, divided up precisely - each degree is given to a day of the year, which are numbered. Great arcs of decoration run between months, showing seasonal scenes in an archaic style. Scraped-at text is assigned to every day - some are completely destroyed, but some remain nearly-readable - spiritual titles?
   This towering thing is probably going to be damn hard to sell, but maybe the right Scribe will fork over a fortune. It’s also 20 slots big. 

3. Two elaborate gilded incense clocks of ancient Dramythan make, covered in curlicued designs and glyphs. One is like a leaping dolphin with a polished marble base, the other a rearing amphisbaena with ruby eyes.
   The dolphin is 2-slots big and worth 120 talents, the amphisbaena is 1-slot big and worth 135 talents. 

4. A churning glass vessel full of bubbling, jolting black liquid spins balanced on a ridiculous, inexplicable frame of thin glass. Tiny fragile glass cogs tick away, to no clear purpose. The Khthesines hate and are fascinated by this apparently-pointless clock, which came from the depths of the Void, and doesn’t seem to tell time.
   This 300 talent clock(???) is 1 slot big. It’s also insanely fragile and full of, basically, flesh-eating acid. 

5. A clock of dull steel, made up of various bells. They ring at various intervals with distinct tones - the hour-bell, for example, has a low, sonorous tone, and the diminutive second bell pings with a tiny, jolly little sound. Each bell, gear and surface of the bell-clock is marked with a distinct texture: whorled, knurled, stippled, dented, spiralled, grooved, and so forth. This clock, any Khthesine would mention, was made by eyeless people in the World Below.
   This clock is worth 190 talents and is 5 slots big. 

One of the Khthesines floats down to check on the clocks on the hour, every hour. 

4. SUNDIAL 

In the centre of this windowless chamber, there stands a gigantic floor-mounted sundial of freezing-cold steel. 

It accurately tells Solar time, and casts a long pitch-black shadow, despite being in a sealed room where the Sun cannot be seen. Upon it is the motto EARTHLY GLORY ALWAYS PASSES. Lady Nirupama and the other Khthesines find something about the inscription amusing - one of the few things that actually provokes from them any laughter at all. Even if only a haughty chuckle at some joke you don’t share. 

5. DIDACT GUARDROOM

Serves double duty, as the place for a Levy patrol to rest, and any users of the Library to sit and read. The crystalline walls are shaped into many high shelves, laddered nooks, deep alcoves, and so forth. A hanging chandelier containing thousands of irregularly shaped pieces of sea-smoothed glass hangs overhead, lighting the space a bluish tone. Sadhana made the chandelier, and destroying it is a faux pas which will earn her eternal ire. 

There is a 5-in-6 chance a randomly determined Captain and their patrol of Stellar Sentries are sitting here reading, to while away the time to their next patrol. To determine exactly whom, roll 1d8 on the Captains table below, instead of 1d10 - Rukhsana and Rasalased aren’t exceedingly literary sorts. 

6. WEST ARMOURY

Access to this room is controlled by a huge steel door, some four inches thick. Each Captain of the Stellar Sentries bears a key. 

The room contains massed iron racks of weaponry, either side of a path towards the watchtower marked out by a long roll of indigo carpet. They’re here just in case. Nirupama has, in the past, used them to arm villagers in the surrounding mountains, if she deems it necessary. 

Within, are:

1. 30 steel spears (medium). 

2. 30 steel shortswords (light).

3. 20 steel maces (medium). 

4. 10 steel halberds (heavy).

7. WEST WATCH TOWER

Six floating eyes of the Eikon-Panoptes watch the gate and approach to the Castle through the wall, which is a vast one-way window. 

8. READING ROOM 

This side-chamber is appointed darkly, and plushly, with indigo drapes hanging down from above, and tables of varnished mahogany. Great armchairs in a comical variety of sizes are scattered around the chamber. 

On a central table, an extremely fragile and extravagant vase of solid luminous crystal, worth 1000 talents to any noble of the World Above. There is a bouquet of frozen-solid snowdrop flowers in the vase, at the moment. 

 

9. LIBRARY OF FRIPPERY

Nirupama permits this chamber to exist despite her disapproval, to keep up morale among the Khiones in Summer, and among some of the Levies otherwise. This sparsely populated chamber contains, as Nirupama would put it, “adventure stories, castaway stories, exile stories, just-so-stories, human philosophy, and other fiction”. 

Theophano secretly allows Nāvācar to read all the interesting books, like a cool uncle. 

This, and all of the Library chambers, are cold, dry, high-ceilinged, brightly-lit, and full of sheltered alcoves within which sit fur-clad chairs of immense and comfortable construction. The bookshelves have frames of iron. 

10. LIBRARY OF THE ARTS

Contains information on the Arts. That is to say, grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and Astrology. Nirupama does not believe that books on the production of images should exist. In her mind, images are either perfectly representative, or deceiving, and she does not like to have deception in her library. 

An eye of the Eikon-Panoptes hovers near the books on Astrology. Just in case. 

11. LIBRARY OF SCIENCES

Contains information on the Sciences. That is to say, alchemy, law, metalworking, agriculture, cooking, Law, Signature, Heraldry and Scripture. 

A statue of a skeleton in dark iron, a silver statue of man holding a knife with a blue lantern for a head, and an internally luminous statue in the figure of a crowned woman share an alcove against the castle’s outer wall. They are helpfully labelled Death, Lunacy and Sunlight. 

12. LIBRARY OF POLITICS

Groaning iron-framed bookshelves are loaded down with an excess of books. Both Lady Nirupama and Theophano, the librarian, consider religion and geography to be subsections of politics, so this most remote and frozen library-chamber is the most overfull. 

13. PENDULUM HALL

This long room has walls plated in tall metal sections, acid-etched with geometry. The chamber is dominated by an immense swinging pendulum, which sweeps by close to the floor, rises to a great height, then falls and repeats on the other side of the room. The pendulum consists of a perfectly polished, teardrop-shaped piece of steel, 40 slots or so in size, on a braided steel cable. 

This is a very soothing object for the Khthesines, who hover into this chamber to meditate. In fact, this room’s sole purpose is to serve as a calming space for the Khthesines. In social scenario mode, they will retreat here for calm if you manage to annoy them a great deal.

14. GUEST SITTING ROOM

This chamber is prepared for those few guests who make the long trek up to the castle on foot, which, naturally, includes you, if you haven’t started shooting already. Dark drapes hang from above, and hanging wall-icons of metal and negative space depict scenes of Stellar warfare. 

The hard, cold floor is somewhat softened by three huge blue rugs, covered in highly detailed and symbol-laden designs. Any Khthesine could tell you the rugs are authentic and ancient “Eovado” rugs. Whatever it means, they seem proud to own them. Each massive rug is 8 slots in size and worth about 600 talents. 

On top of the rugs, there sits heavy furniture constructed of chunks of dark wood riveted together in varying but always symmetrical forms. Some of the chairbacks and cabinet doors are thick enough to be bulletproof. These, and the wall icons, are the work of Upasana.

15. LOWER ART GALLERY

This chamber has austere walls of white crystal, blocks of smoothed marble carved into the shapes of hanging cloth, and large glass spheres set into the walls. This is where Nirupama displays the less beloved and valuable half of her collection of art. The art in this collection is of human origin, spiritual origin, and also of other origins.

Detailed below are the major pieces of this half of the collection - the walls are decorated with many minor pieces, including paintings, ceramics, relief-work, sculpture, mosaic panels, embroidery, and so on. 

Appended in italics are the comments Nirupama would make if asked about each piece. The other Khthesines would repeat them precisely, the Khiones imprecisely. 

1. Bristled Boar
   Sculpture, Fired Clay, 2ft in height.
   Depicts a squat, heftily done boar, glazed and painted in a bright selection of greens, yellows and duck-egg blue, with a round black eye and many steel-tipped bristles on its back.
   “I traded for this piece with a group of forest-folk who live in this region of the world. I find their rituals pungent and pagan, but their art is very finely made.” 

2. Woman with Entrails
   Sculpture, Dark Iron, 5ft in height.
   It depicts a jubilant, nude woman, with entrails drawn out of her stomach through a ragged hole in the side of her abdomen. She holds the entrails looped between her hands. On her shoulders are immense, battered geometric chunks of metal that may intend to depict bat wings. Her feet are scaled and taloned.
   “This is a cultic image of the figure called Grandmaman by certain impure beings. I like the way the sculptor has used the material, and obviously object to the religious purposes it was created for.” 

3. Blackened Doorway
   Oil on Canvas, 3ft X 6ft

Huge looming depiction of some dark underground cellar, lit by a single guttering lantern in the foreground, which reveals only the vaguest suggestions, in many subtly-done shades, of covered objects, strange machinery, taxidermied animals, human skeletons, leaking barrels, and beyond them all, a thin doorway into a deep darkness.
“The painter was a human called Magnus Ozero. He was an alcoholic seditionist, debtor and dissolute, but I’m yet to meet someone who can capture darkness in their work as he did.”

Anyone who spends a minute or more staring into this painting must save or suffer 1d3 XHA damage as they suddenly find their mind transported to a dark, cellarlike room churning with hungry nightmare-rats. 

4. This Sepulchre
   Oil on Board, 3ft x 4ft
   Painting of a style alien to the world above - harsh, geometric and mannerist, it depicts a robed skeleton in a great dark hall laden with odd tricks of lighting and perspective. The skeleton sits upon a block of stone surrounded by small statuettes (?) or dancing figures in grey lighting, and carries a dark rusted sword. A faintly glowing monogram, a squared spiral, occupies the lower right corner.
   “I’m naturally very proud to own one of Torun’s original works. They say this was painted from life - or, from death, rather.”
   
   

5. Fair Governance
   Oil on canvas, 2ft x 8ft.
   Tall, narrow, looming painting of a heroically muscular man in a twisted pose, straining to haul a plough just peeking into frame, ankle-deep in mud. He’s clad mostly in plants, and mostly only to preserve some kind of modesty. He steams and seems to shine with sweat. Despite it being a night scene, his crown of laurel-leaves is inexplicably sunlit. Small, faint crowds gather on the hill in the background, watching with an air of awe. On the subject of modesty, the attention given to the figure suggests the painter had some ulterior motives when it came to the depiction of half-dressed sweaty muscular men straining in hard work (though Nirupama doesn’t seem to notice).
   “One of a series. The rest did not feature subjects I was interested in. It was a fairly ordinary purchase from a workshop in Saeferk, though the censors got to it one-hundred and sixteen years ago.” 

6. The Siege of Ceremtis
   Oil on canvas, 8ft x 10ft

It’s unclear which “Siege of Ceremtis” this painting supposedly depicts, and further examination is no help, because everyone involved in attacking or defending the walls is depicted in a dizzying array of anachronistic costume. Ancient Dramythans are armed with muskets, modern Arumite jaegers attack with dagger-axes, and that Seriasi in the back looks to be throwing lightning. A huge, tawdry, florid, and beautiful work.
“I keep this painting because it annoys me, which I feel is good for my mental processes. The artist didn’t use any sources.” 

7. The Attack
   Oil on canvas, 5ft x 5ft
   A muddy mass of darkly cloaked figures bearing burning brands charge towards three proud, brightly-dressed figures bearing blades and Kelkoran war-dress in the top right corner. Many of the attackers have blonde curls escaping their hoods or hats, depicted almost bronze or coppery in their torchlight. The three proud soldiers are much more brightly lit than the rest of the painting, as if caught in some invisible beam of moonlight against the vaguely foresty darkness of the background. 
   “An ideological work. It was given to me in Neydes by the painter, in exchange for forgiving his myriad crimes against me. He was a rather boring fellow outside of his art.”
   
   

8. “Pakal”
   Oil on plaster on removed section of brick wall, 4ft x 5ft x 1ft (thick)
   Al-secco style, applied somewhat in haste. Old Arumite style, entirely in profile, no perspective - figures are sized in order of relative importance. An immense figure dressed in blacks and whites rides a brown horse, his silhouette head surrounded by an orangey aureole. Orange banners wave over many small soldiers in Dradian armour arrayed around him, riding horses, marching in ranks, driving wagons, hauling hwachas, and so forth.
   “I don’t think he had this one deliberately made to aggrandise him, but it would be like him.” 

Any individual major artwork would be worth half a fortune to the correct collector (i.e., one who is very wealthy, but who avoids the rational instinct to not buy inexplicably-sourced masterpieces). 

16. DISPLAY AND ASSEMBLY

This is Upasana’s castle-within-a-Castle. There is a raised heptagonal platform in the centre of the room, lit at all times of the day thanks to the hanging arrangements of mirrors and the massive circular crystal window in the heights of the room. Upon the platform, Upasana is usually present (she will be here if you haven’t encountered her already), working on something new with hammers, her strong mechanical hands, pliers, and so on.

In deep alcoves around the room’s walls sit Upasana’s projects - at least, the ones she hasn’t tired of and recycled. These are extremely avant garde and inexplicable metalworks. Allegorical dioramas, razor-edged kinetic sculptures, portraits in layers of steel, experimental alloys suspended from geometric frames on chains, and so forth. 

Among the exhibits there’s 350 talents worth of silver and gold, if you were to break down the art and strip it out. 

One of the allegorical dioramas depicts (from the right angle, with an artist’s mindset) a gigantic serpent being struck by a bolt of lightning, as it rises out of a wavy-bladed steel sea. The thin and jagged bolt is one slot of cazrin, a lustrous and intense blue-green metal. It could be extracted if you had some way to break apart a solid steel statuette of a snake. 

The doorway to the north, to the Forge, shimmers with heat. This room, along with FORGE, ARTIFICING HALLS, PARTS AND MATERIALS STORAGE, and DESIGNS AND SILVERPOINTS, are significantly warmer than the rest of the castle, especially the Forge. The Khiones rarely enter the rooms north and west of this chamber, mostly due to its singular and dreaded presence. 

17. FROZEN FRUIT HALL

This space is crowded by pillars of blue ice, lit from above by cold lanterns, within which are suspended hundreds and hundreds of fruit. Bizarre, perfectly preserved, many familiar, some totally unfamiliar (what the hell is that spiky thing?). 

This was a product of one of Upasana’s big ideas, and she finds the chamber extremely embarrassing in retrospect, such that she will not enter it, even in a life-or-death combat situation. The other Khthesines keep it around because they have learned that Upasana has a habit of suddenly rehabilitating bad ideas and producing marvels from them (even if they’re especially dubious of the use of frozen fruit). 

18. PILLAR HALL

A dark aquamarine room, dominated by a single looming structure frozen into the architecture by stellar ice. A gigantic, opalescent pillar, fifteen feet thick and fifty tall, covered in ancient carvings in a simplistic, naturalistic, almost innocent style. The carvings depict naked people, animals, plants, and stars. This thing stumps and frustrates the Khthesines, who do not understand its origins. Radha found it buried in the glacier below the castle, and dedicated hours to its study, to little avail. 

Any human looking at the pillar can tell it resembles a massive, petrified tree-trunk. Trees do not grow in the cold stellar heavens. 

19. MIRROR FLOOR HALL

Hovering lanterns sit in a constellar pattern above a perfectly reflective floor. They are made of jagged, shrapnel-like silver segments suspended in the air, around a glass core radiating blue light. They resemble suspended explosions, a symbol of Standstill. 

20. CLOCKWORK LIFTS

This gigantic pentagonal chamber runs up nearly the entire height of the Crystal Castle, walls coloured in glimmering bands of white, indigo, blue, purple and black. 

Suspended in the middle of it from steel gantries and crystal ledges are three things like birdcages encrusted in clockwork, which move up and down the floors on shining steel chains. They can run separately, are operated by internal levers, and are loud enough to be heard throughout the castle when they operate. 

21. FORGE

Dark, soot-stained (unusually), with thick iron-plated doors that ratchet shut on self-closing mechanisms. Everywhere, hammers of various increasingly bespoke and bizarrely specific shapes (no tongs - Upasana, the smith, has metal hands). 

The heat-source for turning iron red is contained within a thick, angular metal shell with foot-thick gear-driven doors. It’s opened by a large pedal on the floor, which Upasana can stamp down easy, but it’ll take two people’s weight for you to open it. It is a burning “coal” from the Sun, gained from a trade with a Solar Prince. It kicks off a fair bit of heat all on its own, and any resemblance to a massive glowing egg should be considered coincidental. 

This room is also used for Vidya’s glassmaking. Sometimes she and Upasana work here in comfortable parallel silence, which they both treasure and appreciate. 

22. ARTIFICING HALL

This dark chamber has deep facets of luminance worked into the sea-blue walls, giving it all a slow, calming glimmer. Racks and racks of carefully organised mechanical parts stand along the walls (cogs, springs, weights, cams, splines, bearings, axles, etc). 

Here, clockworking is done.

This is a medical hall for the Khthesines, too, in the off chance their complicated machinery is damaged - it takes a day of careful, intense effort for any Khthesine to restore 1HP to another using this chamber. Tanvi alone can manage 3HP of repairs in a day, which is why she secretly thinks she is Nirupama’s favourite. 

23. PARTS & MATERIALS STORAGE

In long low racks with long low drawers, many billets of metal. Each billet’s a slot big:

1. 25 Copper 

2. 20 Zinc

3. 50 Iron

4. 40 Lead

5. 50 Steel 

6. 4 Red Steel (immune to rust, heat-resistant, acidproof)

7. 3 Blue Steel (solidly refuses to conduct heat)

8. 1 Corecopper (conducts emotions like other metals conduct heat).

9. 4 Lead-of-Chogorh (black-white metal, soft, insanely heavy. Each billet weighs 10 slots despite being the same size as everything else). 

10. 4 Lead-of-Yuzha (snow-white, slightly crystalline. Explodes violently if heated to 100°)

There’s also a great amount of many-coloured mosaic tiles, huge blocks of sculpting clay, blocks upon blocks of blue wax (for sealing letters, just in case), and two metre-cubed bins of the type of sand Vidya prefers for artisan handmade glass. 

Stored in a tall steel jar in the southeast corner labelled “TOXIC” are 15 slots of Tallow-of-Yuzha. This is an oily, white, shiny, almost buttery mineral product. When lit, it burns like a road flare, blinding spirits that look into the flame. The smoke produced causes hallucinations and vomiting in humans and animals, and long term exposure causes bouts of rage and ennui. The jar is well-sealed. 

24. DESIGNS AND SILVERPOINTS

Gigantic steel-surfaced drafting desks with heavy legs squat between racks and racks of drawings, many furled and unfurled. Stout-cornered plan-chests sit around a single beam of mirror-controlled light illuminating Upasana’s drafting desk, where she meticulously drafts and redrafts the designs of the things she will make. 

The contents of this room could allow a competent blacksmith, engineer, gunsmith, or similar to make significant leaps from the current technological milieu with the right equipment. These advances can never pass the threshold of harnessed electricity, and are entirely devoid of much of the context that would allow them to revolutionise society. Still, if you want a ridiculous clockwork lathe, rifled firearms, a clock accurate enough for use as a marine navigational aid, and so forth, the designs in this room can aid you. 

25. RAINBOW WINDOW HALL

This long hall is dominated by, you guessed it, a massive rainbow-coloured window, made of huge sections of inch-thick rock crystal of the appropriate colours inserted into the outer wall of the castle. The hall itself features a pair of large, cushioned wooden benches along each wall, where one might sit and ponder the meanings of the window. 

The window is used as a handy visual aid by the Khthesines when they need to explain the parties (or perhaps constellations) of the White Ice Parliament -  the upper, redder part of the window is the Solar-aligned tendency of Stellar politics, and it gradients through the centrists, towards the Void-aligned radical tendency down at violet. 

The Window

The uppermost, red section depicts beams descending from the resplendent Sun, eagles and phoenixes in flight, mice among wheat, and finely made swords. This represents the worshipful Reflectivity, who love and admire the Sun as queen and artisan of the whole of creation. 

The orange section below depicts interlocking gears, high castle walls, pointer hounds and a large blank circle. This represents the isolationist and inward-facing Singularity, who say give unto the Sun that which is hers, and give unto the Serpent Moon that which is his, and give unto us which is ours, and give nothing to the misrule of the Void. 

The yellow section below depicts cattle, pillars, clocks, hounds, bells, blaring trumpets, pyramids and nails. This represents the conservative Stability, who say stellar unity goes first, and stellar strength goes second, in a pair before any other concern in all the world. The leader of this faction is Standstill herself. 

The green section below depicts embracing men, doves, spiders in their webs, quills and scrolls, and owls. This represents the neutral Centrality, who rise above strong political stances and intrigues to facilitate the will of the Parliament and the moderation of debate. 

The blue section below depicts tortoises, serpents, snowflakes, knives, chains, shackles, quarrels in flight and barred windows. This represents the punitive Misery, a party with a strong core of ideologues and many unwilling members, a gaol-party and penal-legion whose ideological stance is that transgressors of the law cannot be allowed to exist unpunished. The darker half of the Stability. 

The indigo section below depicts interlocking gears, roads receding into the distance, wheels, king stags, bees and ants, lattices and scrolls. This represents the expansionist, reformist Complexity, who agitate for more machinery, more treaties, more advancement, more efficiency and more stars in the cold dark heavens. 

The violet section at the lowest rung depicts wolves, crows, exiles’ arrows, open books, lenses, broken swords and swords-sans-point, horses, and a tower struck by lightning. This represents the radical tendency referred to as the Transparency, who engage in full-throated defense of extreme liberty and unflinching honesty, and are described as antinomian by their detractors. 

26. GREAT DINING HALL

Nearly the equal of the vast feasting hall at Surang, eh? Vast glinting rafters loom overhead, at once artificial and alike to nature’s caverns. It’s freezing in this vastness, and sound echoes and rambles strangely around when the serene silence is disturbed. 

On the eastern and western side are two large, low, wide daïses, and at the northern end of the chamber is a large, stepped, almost zigguratic dais of dark indigo stone. On the western low daïs, a long table has ten high-backed seats all on the western side. On the eastern low daïs, a long table has seven steel-backed thrones all on the eastern side. On the high northern daïs, stand two massive thrones (built clearly for beings much larger than humans), one made of white stone, and one made of black. They stand empty except for when Standstill and Winter visit the castle. 

Between the daïses lie ten long trestle tables of polished black wood, with space to seat hundreds (though they almost never do). 

The only inhabitant of the castle who currently needs to eat is Suhye, and Nāvācar is greatly enjoying having someone to perform culinary experiments on behalf of. A perfectly preserved and bizarrely undecaying meal sits at the northern end of one of the long tables, a culinary miracle suspended cold, to await the next time Suhye gets hungry. 

Perfect flowers of chilled marzipan sit next to frozen glasses of crushed-ice frambozen and lemon sorbet. Behind them loom perfectly balanced pyramids of small spherical riceballs, each stuffed with a cold mixture of spicy vegetables or game. The castle of the centre is a large shimmering trout on a bed of sauteed vegetables, well-salted, cooked and drenched in a pungent, complex soy-based sauce (which Suhye won’t like).

In the outskirts of the dinner lie shining aspics clear like gemstones - a truly alien delight for inhabitants of the World Above, and especially for Suhye, who has discovered she despises gelatin dishes. She hasn’t been afraid to let Nāvācar know, but the eidolon is holding out hope that this quail one or that one with the boiled duck-eggs will bring Suhye around. 

27. KHIONES’ LOUNGE

This chamber is outfitted for a large group of people to be able to both lounge and laze about, and also to all still be able to see each other. On chaises, cushioned platforms, and in deep blanketfilled alcoves, you could host twenty six (or upwards of forty if everyone was comfortable with cuddling). 

It’s rare the room is entirely full, but the castle’s Khiones remember the preferences of fellow handmaidens currently elsewhere, and maintain their configurations of pillows and end-tables carefully. 

28. WEST NOOK

Dark, comfortable, quiet, muffled, plushly-appointed. This chamber has an astoundingly good view of sunset through the one large, tall window that sits in the middle of its outer wall like a cabochon. This place seems optimally designed for a nap. 

This nook is home to a head-sized penta-chambered clockwork incense burner with a carrying handle. (2 slots). The burner is used to provide a calming vibe to the room, but would provide a +2 to bonus to all Seeking attempts to the Astrologer than owned it. It currently contains 3 doses of sandalwood, 2 of frankincense, 2 of agarwood, 2 of nag champa and 1 of jasmine. No myrrh. 

29. NORTH-FACING OVERLOOK

Seven forty-foot high windows of thick crystal smoothly form out of the walls, looking across the great glacial valley to the north and west of the castle. Before them, a wide and silent room with shiny black floortiles, like onyx. Seven thronelike chairs of cold tensegrity steel loom, looking out over the valley. The chairs are supremely uncomfortable. 

Down on the white ice of the glacier, you may occasionally spot Khiones frolicking around. Patterns alike to snowflakes are carefully worked into the windows, next to arrangements of lines and layered glass that resolve to humanoid figures from the right angels. 

30. EAST NOOK

This chamber is brightly-lit by towering windows along its outward-facing wall. The dawn especially shines directly in here through a gap in the surrounding mountains, perfectly placed to lay a single illuminating ray upon this section of the castle. The gap is artificial - the Khthesines punched it through the mountain over a solid month of work. 

The chamber itself is cozy, quiet, brightly-outfitted, gauzy and airy. This is a place to daydream, or a good place to sit and read a book. Many instruments are present here, also, all of which are the handiwork of Vidya. There is a harpsichord, a guzheng, an erhu, a sitar, a zither, a range of fiddles of varying sizes decorated with engraved tin plates, flutes of bone, wood and steel, and a single pair of ivory-handled bagpipes locked in an inch-thick crystal case with a note appended: “Erɣ, dont you dare.” 

All of these instruments were tuned by Vidya to draw closer to the universal tone. All failed, but are supernaturally pleasing to the ear. The moment a human clumsily retunes them, they lose this property (unless, you know, it’s a flute. Can’t exactly retune a flute). 

31. KHTHESINES’ LOUNGE 

Austere, severe, and full of sharp steel corners. Pretty dangerous for a drunk human, but Khthesines are never drunk, and made of metal. The centre of the room is dominated by a massive, six-player boardgame, upon a plinth of punch-dented steel. 

The board consists of magnetic interlocking hexagonal blocks, sort of like unnaturally regular columnar basalt, 10 metres across and sketching out the topographic silhouette of a mountainous region. 

The game is basically a miniatures wargame of headaching complexity. On the 21st day of each months, all seven Khthesines seclude themselves in this room and play for 24 hours straight, to maintain cohesion and sublimate interpersonal aggression. 

The plot of the game is as follows - the “Ideal Kingdom of Wisdom” (played by Tanvi and Radha) is invading the mountainous borderlands of the “Kritarchy of Tone” (played by Sadhana and Vidya), helped or hindered by two mercenary groups, one from the “Coalition of Artifice” (Played by Upasana) and the other from the  “Autocracy of Prowess” (Played by Pratibha). 

Pratibha has changed sides multiple times, while Upasana has assumed a stance of staunch and principled non-interventionism and neutrality, fortifying her corner of the map with increasingly bespoke units, towers, and 

handmade fortification pieces. 

Sadhana is sending her letters (i.e., writing them and handing them to her) accusing the Armymaster of the IIIth Coalition Regiment of forgetting her place in Tone and beginning to establish a personal fief, to which Upasana responds with multi-page essays on jurisprudence.   

Lady Nirupama referees from an elevated, spiked throne. She takes this exactly as seriously as she takes everything else, and has recently declared an entire regiment of Wisdomite troops destroyed by sun-fire for rules infractions. She proceeded to have the relevant pieces impounded, carried to the FIRMAMENT by a visiting spirit, and physically burnt in the Sun. 

Everyone’s having a lot of fun. 

32. DEBATE FLOOR 

Clean vast mirror-polish floor of malachite-green semiprecious stone. Rising up from the level immensity, two opposing podia, one decorated with a silvered eagle, the other with an iron-clad crow. A curling path of un-banistered stairs leads up to each.  Both are towering and slender, equipped with a lectern and a personal lantern of blue glass.

Away from the walls, and surrounding the podium at distances of 10ft, 20ft and 25ft, are perfect circles of stone chairs molded directly from the floor and polished to a similarly frosty mirror finish.

If you challenge any inhabitant of the castle to an (earnest) debate, they will find it almost impossible to resist. Speaking in averages, the Sentry Captains and Khthesines argue in good faith, while the Khiones argue in bad faith. 

Breaking the debating rule or resorting to ad hominem will result in your being barred from debating here. Throwing something or attempting to win a debate is a faux pas that will get you thrown out of the Castle (hopefully not on the side with the many-hundred foot drop to a glacier). 

33. COLD POOL

This chamber is dominated by a pool of water about three feet deep, which sits in a heptagonal divot in the floor decorated with alternating blue and white ceramic tiles. The water is held just above freezing temperature. 

In the centre of the pool is a steel grate decorated to resemble a number of overlapping eight-ray starburst designs inside a circle. Under the grate is a vertical shaft about a mile deep, which terminates in a pure, freezing aquifer deep under the earth. This aquifer is riddled with connections to a series of flooded, subterranean tunnels, which Scribes have recorded as spreading all around the lands of Serias and Saral Sar. 

Some versions of the Knightly Matters feature these tunnels in the episodes of the Beautiful Lady, an oft-banned series of passages where the Knights repeatedly encounter a sodden-haired, mysterious woman who arises from flooded pits just like this one. Any Hedge-Knight would know of this, in theory. 

34. SNOWGARDEN CONSERVATORY

This chamber exists to protect and encourage the growth of rare, heavenly plants from the Snow Garden Star, which grow in deep planters of white ceramic. They are watered by a system of pipes and sprayers that run all through the room, which trigger automatically each time the towering grandfather clock in the centre of the room chimes the hours. 

Planted here are sixteen-petalled see-through flowers, onyx-black roses, creeping spiny vines with glassy thorns, lapis-blue sea-hollies that smell of loam, solid grey “succulents” that feel like blocks of ice, hoarfrost hyssops and chokingly poisonous sweet white mulberries, among others. 

One large planter nearest the window is filled with small blue flowers with double-stems and exactly two inflorescenses reaching either side, so that with their closed buds, they look like little flowermen standing swaying in the wind. The stellar lord Gate planted these things. They are little flowermen, and if watered with wine, they uproot themselves, grow to human size, and serve the waterer loyally for an hour before dying and releasing some kind of wispy flowersoul in a satisfied exhalation, to return back to the Snow-Garden Star and become another flowerman seed. 

Lady Nirupama hates the damn things because they cause a proper mess when they uproot themselves and expire. But you don’t throw out the gifts of a powerful Stellar lord, now do you?

35. SCULPTURE HALL 

Various works, in metal by Upasana, in stone by Radha, in clay by Tanvi, and smaller pieces scrimshawed out of unnaturally massive bones by Pratibha. 

Upasana favours depictions of her fellow Khthesines, geographical features, and abstracts. 

Radha likes to depict buildings she has seen, spirits she has met, and bas-reliefs of battles real or imagined. 

Pratibha carves bones into demons, or into wild animals hunting or fighting each other.

Tanvi creates mugshot-like busts of long-term or notable visitors to the castle. She could walk you through them - centuries of curious astrologers, lost scribes, would-be exiles. Oh, and a bust of the Knight Viradon, made from life. Tanvi thought he was a very reasonable fellow. 

Due to the extreme number of statues, this room is a complete labyrinth, and even the Khthesines might have trouble perfectly navigating it at high speed (not that they’d ever admit so). Anyone being followed when they enter this chamber can make a SNEK check to exit any of the seven doors leading out of it unseen by their pursuers. 

36. LAW RECORDS

Gigantic crystalline cabinets contain hundreds of heavy books which delight in, explicate, illuminate and practically worship the whole immense complexity of the Law. Note - this is not the same thing as human “laws” - this is The Law, and it governs more than just taxes, tolls and Exiles. 

Defacing the books  is a faux pas which will cause all of the Khthesines to desire your destruction. You, who have no respect for the Law, have no respect for existence.  

37. HERALDRY

This is a dark, lightless, almost sepulchral chamber. Deep alcoves in the wall are filled with masks (wood, clay, steel), cloth costumes of various types, and odd hand-held props - a brush, a drum, a hand-mirror, an unstrung bow, a blunt sword, a sceptre, a quill, and so forth. Faint depictions of animals and objects overlap within the crystal of the walls.

In the centre of the chamber, a dark slab of stone like a mortuary table. 

This is not where the Castle does the mortal frippery incorrectly called “Heraldry”. This is where the castle performs the Art of Heraldry. In practical terms, it means that Nirupama or her apprentice Xue use the chamber to instill animation into the castle’s eidola. This is the chamber where Nāvācar was born, and they think of it as a fond place of safety - if things go wrong in the castle, they’re liable to flee and hide here. 

Hedge-Knights studying this chamber for some time can get access to the following Deed:

Simple Eidolon

The very first symbol is the body, the very first heroic deed is to live at all. 

Instill animation into a physical depiction (or simple simulacrum) of a human for [sum] days. They are slow-moving and have the same HD as you. 

38. DENTAL CHAMBER

This pristine white chamber centres around a large chair covered in straps and surrounded by a hanging arrangement of shining mirrors and gleaming lanterns. A shining steel washing basin is fed by pipes in a crystal alcove on the northern wall, which it shares with decorative crystal statactites and a small round window. 

Around the room, dark wooden cabinets reinforced with iron contain all the frightening, unusual and occasionally somewhat gruesome tools of dental practice. 

Radha is the castle’s dentist. This is not work for her, not an obligation - it’s a hobby. Herself not possessing teeth, she finds them a particularly interesting part of the human design, and possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of them. She is careful, if not particularly gentle, in her treatments. 

The tool cabinets contain no pliers. When she has to pull a tooth, it is most easily done with her inhumanly precise and deft hands of cold steel. 

The people of Havenferk and the villages around the Crystal Castle have the best dentistry anywhere in the World Above, and possibly in the World Below, too.

39. LABORATORY   

Iron worktops, burnt crystal walls, cracks in them. Dent in the floor. A huge blue-black blotch dominates the far wall. 

A great blackened vessel with flames constantly applied to it from a pit of burning coals, sits by a hissing aeolipile of shining brass letting off luminous steam. Next to that, a bubbling glass vessel full of black tarlike liquid squirms and squirms and tries to reach a perfectly frozen flower suspended above it on a thin steel rod. Boiling vessels of sulfur connect to a glass dome with a block of many-coloured salt undergoing chemical convulsions along the gold rods stuck into it. A polished pearl of great size floats in a hemispherical vessel of shining quicksilver, shimmering and shifting as an intense beam of bluish light is focused onto it with a looming arrangement of mirrors, crystals and lenses. 

The Khthesines remove some of their layers of strict operating procedure when in this chamber, in order to better widen the possible horizon of study. That is to say, they’re kind of just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. 

Literally, in the case of the blotch. 

40. ART STUDIO

In the southwest corner, there looms a huge ratcheting thing of elaborate and gigantic construction - it’s sort of the hybrid of a crane and an easel. It’s currently holding a slightly frightening and inexplicably large 11ft x 22ft canvas in an early state of work. Upon it is a vast, over-epic, wild-eyed war-scene of vast intensity and vast passion, which is kind of odd coming from Stellar hands and eyes. Perhaps they work it all out in the paintings.     

This the work of Nivvaja and her unit of Sentries, who, when they’re not patrolling, work carefully on the current quadrant on little rattling wheeled ladders borne back and forth by their fellows. 

The battle appears to feature a battle between a gleaming warband in what’s probably ancient Kelkoran dress, attacking a much-less well-equipped but equally rugged and nobly pensive garrison of a steep-walled fortress. The walls somewhat resemble the honey-coloured and distinctly talused walls of the city of Sabenon, but more can’t be said until the painting is finished. Which, at this rate, could take a decade.

Damaging the work in progress accidentally will cause Nivvaja and her Sentries to hate and despise you forever, and to try and beat you severely. Damaging it deliberately will cause them to coolly swear to oppose that which you and your bloodline do forever, until the very world is extinguished. 

Also in the room are half-finished mosaics of tortoises and snakes, and a clay statue of a bull halfway painted in bright geometries. Around every outer wall are the steel storage cabinets of valuable pigments (1 slot fistful of pigments is worth 10 talents), mixed to form the fine and long-lasting colours of the Castle’s original artworks. 

41. NIVVAJA’S SQUAD BARRACKS

Scattered around the personal alcoves and carved wooden screens are many (valuable, interesting) books of Kelkoran history, of which the Sentries are fairly protective - some of these are the only copies in existence, you know, except for some maybe still sealed in the hazy halls of sealed Dhurakarh…

On the walls, hunting trophies fight for space with portraits, self-portraits, draft canvases, small mounted mosaics, and experiments in the properties of oil paints. It has a bit of an oppressive, overhanging atmosphere, but the squad prefers it this way. One thing they don’t like is what’s in the neighbouring room on the other side of the south wall, but hey, that’s life. 

Sealed inside a large box in the corner of the room, labelled “DON’T OPEN - UP” is an automatic self-powering hot-air balloon, which, upon the opening of the box, fills with hot air and fucks off directly upwards over the course of a minute. Its motion is guided entirely by wind, it will stay airborne for 1 hour, and there are no provisions for safe landings. The box is the balloon’s basket. They won this thing in a bet. 

42. EXTREMELY HIGH TENSION OBJECT

The castle’s inhabitants advise you to stay out of this chamber. 

Some kind of inexplicable, fear-inducing thing suspended in the middle of the room, which is otherwise empty. It hovers off the floor. It consists of a sphere of ticking gears, interfacing with just shy of a flat mile of torso-width and paper-thickness blue-steel ribbon. The ribbon is curled and tangled around the entire room, aside from a keyhole and a small level on the sphere, helpfully labelled UNLOCK and RELEASE, for a Scribe’s benefit. 

Nirupama has the key for UNLOCK, which allows the RELEASE lever to be pulled. Doing so causes everything in the room (or within 60ft on an open field) to save vs. death as the ribbon releases all the held up tension and whips around like a deadly serpent sawing bits off. Success on the save means you “only” take 6d6 industrial slashing damage. After RELEASE, the ribbon spools up inside the sphere with a dreadful snap, and the sphere remains hovering, ready to be re-tensioned. 

This is one of many akin to it held in spine-tingling toe-curling grimacing looking-from-side-to-side suspense all over the world. Lady Standstill uses them to store energy for emergencies. If you ever feel a monstrous reverberating TWANG shake every cup in the castle, order has broken down in heaven. 

The Castle could deploy it as a weapon, but there would be an inquiry. 

43. HALL OF GLASS FLOWERS

Hundreds of them, carefully designed. Roses, cyclamens, pansies, primroses, petunias, camellias, buddleias, sunflowers, marigolds, and so on, and so on, in every rainbow-colour of glass. They stand in bunches on shelves and in massive reinforced metal vases about 6ft tall. Light creeps into the room from overhead mirrors to set them a-glittering. 

Vidya makes them all by hand. 

She does this when she’s feeling some kind of pining for someone, something, or some-idea, so she does it a lot. All the other Khthesines know the true purpose of the flowers, but don’t comment. Wouldn’t be proper. If you somehow got Vidya to really trust you, she could explain what each and every flower is dedicated to. 

Perhaps unexpectedly, their destruction wouldn’t necessarily bring her despair. If someone did it to harm her, she’d respond to the insult, of course, but she’s oddly fond of the ephemerality of the encoded feelings. It makes them all easier to handle. This is why she stores them all near the Extremely High Tension Object. 

44. LANTBERAHT’S SQUAD BARRACKS

Softly-lit, softly furnished, a very relaxed space. It has a meditative, calming aspect to it, helped by the thick plates on the walls filled with cork, which baffle the sounds of the castle beyond and fill the place with a pleasing scent. Curtained alcoves serve as personal spaces around a communal area where twelve chairs face a small stage for parlour-plays, debates, faux-duels for training, and oratory practice. 

A quadrio of large glass lanterns (2 slots) sit in the room’s corners, providing the soft lighting. Each can be adjusted from white through the rainbow with a small turning-dial that cycles the lantern through a kaleidoscope of interior glass plates. Another dial controls the intensity of the light. They never seem to run out of fuel (they will, eventually, but it won’t be within your lifetime). 

45. DARK IRON HALL

The walls here are plated with, you guessed it, huge pieces of acid-etched iron, depicting war-scenes, farming-scenes and animal-taming-scenes. 

Around the place, beneath the huge plates, is furniture sized for guests near twice your size, reinforced as if Nirupama expected someone to take an axe to them. A massive table holds a glass vessel inches thick, full of smoothed stones, and the benches and chairs are covered in oversized, overstuffed cushions of black velvet, embroidered with geometry. 

There’s a 1-in-10 chance a Priestess is visiting the castle, and is reclining in this room intended for visitors from her people, awaiting her appointed time of meeting. 

Her name is Gaeru. Ten feet tall, monstrously fanged and clawed, indigo skin with wild red eyes and a blood red tongue, and heavy red robes detailed and embroidered with a hundred types of insect, spider and worm. She’s an emissary of dark forces (voidly, that is), and a hidden people that live out, out, on the edge of Serias. The King drove them out there into the dark mountains, but they remember what glories they had, and they feel the tide of Defiance rising. She is guarded by twin warriors from her people, equally massive, armed with iron-bar clubs, dark armour, and pots full of extremely venomous spiders and flies.
The Priestess is here to bargain for better weaponry. 

46. NĀVĀCAR’S HALL

Hexagonal, clean, blue-white crystal. Home to a pair of eidolon songbirds with tiny peeping voices, which occupy an elaborately curlicued silver birdcage. They sing short but distinct songs for anyone who passes through the room (one for each Khthesine, Khione and every single Sentry, plus Theophano, Nāvācar and a newly composed ditty for Suhye.

This is for the amusement and pleasure of the person thus sung to, and it serves as a sort of social early-warning-system for Nāvācar. 

They also have a song for intruders.

47. EAST ARMOURY

Access to this room is controlled by a huge steel door, some four inches thick. Each Captain of the Stellar Sentries bears a key. 

The room contains massed iron racks, either side of a path towards the watchtower marked out by a long roll of indigo carpet. 

Within, are:

1. 40 Steel Hogshead Canisters of Smokeless Gunpowder

2. 20 Muskets (not Rifles)

3. 5000 Steel-headed Arrows 

4. 10 Steel-Shelled Explosive Canisters (Anti-fire clockwork timer-fuses, deal cold damage)

48. EAST WATCHTOWER

Six floating eyes of the Eikon-Panoptes watch the gate and approach to the Castle through the wall, which is a vast one-way window. 

49. NĀVĀCAR’S ROOM

Full of the fond debris of experimentations and passions. Unused art-supplies, dust-gathering books, various outfits, dating from before Nāvācar’s current period of self-knowledge (re: the triple passions of gardening, cooking and complicated mechanical engineering, anyway). They’re kept for fond nostalgia, and in case of future learning. 

Nāvācar’s chamber also has a bed in it, since they heard of what they are from Theophano. They don't sleep, of course, but they really think it's a neat place to chill out. 

50. KITCHEN

Steel cutting boards, marble counters. A huge oven, wood-fired, as per Nāvācar’s whims (The khthesines take turns converting entire mountainside fir-trees into firewood for them whenever they run out). Micro-waterfall against one wall, piped up from far under the castle, for washing dishes. This is where Nāvācar cooks happily - the room’s function has been revived by the arrival of Suhye. 

51. NĀVĀCAR’S WORKSHOP

The joy and experimentation continues here, where Nāvācar works on and repairs the decorative eidola-animals that populate the castle gardens. Nāvācar wishes to expand into more and more strange animals - civets, springboks, dholes, frogs, locusts, tapirs, and other even stranger things they’ve read about in the library’s books. The (extremely valuable beautifully made clockwork) prototypes sit inactive in this room.   

Nirupama has a plan to slowly phase in Nāvācar’s new animals. Pratibha keeps trying to convince them to work on eidolon bears and tigers. 

52. WINE CELLAR

Wines of various varieties are stored in a riotous number of funny-shaped bottles. Each deeply recessed shelf has a lockable hinged grate over it. Nāvācar keeps the keys, naturally. 

There’s about 10000 talents of fine vintages here, from Serias, Iridia, and the islands. A wine bottle is a slot big and is 1d6*100 talents in value, with a 1-in-6 chance of being worth an extra 1d6*100 talents, and a separate chance of actually being worth nothing at all because it’s made of some kind of wacky fruit you’ve never bloody heard of before, like “lychee” or “cloudberries” or “pineapple”

There’s also a separate 1-in-20 chance that the funny-shaped bottle you just picked up does not in fact contain delicious, valuable wine, but some “other poison for humans”, which may be dangerous to consume, or even lethal. 

The storage of poison in the wine cellar is not retributive or a trap on Nirupama’s part, her brain just genuinely works that way. 

53. FREEZING CHAMBER

Huge demijohns of clear cold perry sit on high shelves by emergency crystal casks of strong vodka and kumquat wine. Around it, food of various sorts from various kingdoms sit suspended in blocks of blue ice like ridiculous fish in ridiculous aquaria. 

Goat’s cheeses, beautiful confections, Idami apples near as big as your head, Iridian popped-corn, jawbone-sized blocks of rich toffee (alien to inhabitants of the World Above as yet), and so on, and so on. Only a Khione can carefully unfreeze them in such a way that leaves them perfectly as they were. If you thaw them out with fire, they’ll be rather soggy and a bit stepped-on. 

Also present in the chamber is a frost-rimed, vapourous machine. It consists of various large brass vessels, interconnecting pipes, and a beautiful spigot of clear hard glass. This device is used for freeze distillation, to produce strong applejack from Havenferk apples. The device (and Havenferk’s orchard) exist only due to Lady Winter’s secret fondness for applejack. 

The remaining floors of the Crystal Castle will be detailed in a subsequent post. :)