Crystal Castle, Part 2 (Firmament)

 Crystal Castle continued consistently ‘cross constant complications. Special thanks to Primeumaton for helping me find paintings to put in the post. 

See here for the first part of this dungeon, which explains who all these people are.

FIRST FLOOR

1. CRYSTALLINE COURT

Gigantic crystalline statactites hang down from the ceiling, and the floor is reflective. The walls are covered in alcoves in which stand statues of various Stellar luminaries (ha ha), along with strange winged beasts and abstract symbological tangles. Uncomfortable rows of steel seating, arranged on steel scaffolds with cold grille floors, crowd the edge of the room, facing inward. Standing at one end of the open inner space, there is a throne constructed of interlinked complex shapes of cold steel, held in tensegrity, clicking with clockwork. This is the Lady’s second throne.   

This great chamber serves three purposes - one, this is where Lady Nirupama sits in court over her subjects. This has happened less and less as the centuries go on, but once it was a fairly regular occurrence.

Second, parliamentary gatherings - rarest of all, since there are more than enough halls for parliament to meet in among the cold Stars, and the political climate these days rather makes it infeasible to gather so many lords and ladies upon the contested earth. 

Third, duels. For these, all the furniture is cleared away, and a space left for a fight to the death. Stellars don’t mess around with all this “to the first blood” and “yielding” nonsense. Clearly, we’re both here because this town ain’t big enough for the both of us. 

Four eyes of the Eikon-Panoptes hang hidden among the stalactites, watching the chamber always - it provides a second opinion on Nirupama’s more challenging cases. 

2. SOUTHERN GALLERY, WEST SIDE

Austere walls of crystal tinged white. Huge translucent sections feature three-dimensional abstract art pieces, which Nirupama considers old-fashioned (a positive, in her eyes). 

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. Opposing Selves
   Two Mirrors, Circular, 3ft in Diameter.
   Two glistening opalescent mirrors upon which light and colour play like rainbows on the surface of oil. Neither shows accurate reality - one shows a perfectly-realised, happy, confident version of you, the other a wretched, miserable, crushed and battered version. It seems to determine what to show you based on the lighting inside your own head - a change in self will result in a change in what is seen in the mirrors.
   “They’re Lunar in origin. I captured them as war-treasure, centuries ago. I keep them for their psychological uses.” 

2. A Suggested Scene in Lines
   Engraved Glass Plate, 5ftx5ft
   Decorated with an interlocked, radially-symmetrical pattern scored thin and pale into the sheet of glass. Staring into its labyrinth depths, the mind can trick the scattered lines into the shapes of islands, spiders, soldiers, vistas, towers, and the like.
   “A charming piece of Stellar art. One of Lord Machine’s protegés made this.” 

3. The Flying Ship

Oil on Canvas, 10ft x 12ft
Done in a bright, airy, low-contrast style, with a lot of impasto and breezy, imprecise brushwork. It shows a large shape moving among rainclouds against the blue sky. It is a fog-shrouded, wide-keeled ship, seemingly with a shining metal hull, suspended in the air as if weighing no more than a feather. Far below, a brightly blue-green forest dotted with massive, pillarlike trees can be seen.
“You might find it hard to believe, but this scene is not, in fact, fantastical.” 

4. A Young Warrior
   Steel Statue, 6ft in Height
   Depicts a multi-armed figure in a blocky style, on one knee as if about to spring up. He is clad in lamellar and a peaked helm, and carries swords and ropes in his many hands. There is an undeniable sneer on his faceted face.
   “Appreciably warlike, hmm?” 

5. Portrait of the Affected
   Oil on canvas, 2ft x 2ft
   Depicts a young woman sitting as if for a portrait in a dim, dank room, in Seriasi peasant clothing. She has dark brown hair, a somewhat sickly pallor, and a sad, tired expression. One half of her face is hidden under a thick growth of red-and-grey protrusions, which at a first glance might be horns, or perhaps, are coral.
   “This piece presents a persistent mystery. For a long time, I thought it fabulated, until I met in passing a man with this exact deformity. Now it clearly represents something unknown to me, which is vexing.” 

6. Strange Festivities
   Oil on board, 3ft x 5ft
   Depicts a group of inexactly-depicted, blurry, energetic, dancing figures, who seem to be human. They are cast in a bright red light emanating from somewhere that cannot be seen. Figures (seem to) drink from chalices, eat from plates they hold in stained hands, and chew on loose entrails. Between them, a huge shape that resembles a pale, disembowelled bird is splayed out.
   “I purchased this from an artist in Magnos. He died the next day. I wasn’t involved - the local Heptarch’s signatories killed him in a shootout.” 

3. MUSEUM STORAGE

Each door into this chamber is sealed by a locked clockwork door of heavy steel. Radha carries the key within her metallic person at all times. She has no particular reason to open it for anyone, but you might be able to convince her by showing interest in the extra exhibits she has stored in here. Though, first, she will direct you to the cream of the crop in the MUSEUM on the floor above. 

1. A tattered strip of cloak once worn by Muktuk the Red, an ancient Kelkoran khagan slain in pitched battle on Seriasi fields. Patterned and fringed, though quite burnt by the manner of his demise. 

2. The ledger of a lost army from the World Below - hailing from somewhere called Alabaster, this neatly-laid-out book records all their expenses on their last disastrous campaign into the dark forests of Kadatha. 

3. The bones of a stallion with a large horn on its forehead. Weird. 

4. The shattered remains of a sword with a wide, flat blade of red steel, and a hefty handle wrapped in black cloth. “No longer occupied”, Radha would comment. 

5. Some kind of thick brass cylindrical casing covered in small, scraped-on letters, that has been burst open from the inside. Full of blue-green rust shimmering with an unknown liquid. The storage case is labelled “Don’t Touch”. The legible part of the writing on the casing says “PROPERTY OF LADY AYLIZ, ETERNAL QUEEN OF KARALUZ”.

With the scrap of Muktuk’s cloak, a Hedge-Knight could study to gain access to the following Deed:

Charge of the Red Khagan

Sunil-Muktuk’s vanguard were unstoppable when he led them - even on the day he died, not a single one of them faltered in the face of flame or beasts. 

You and up to [dice] other creatures enter a headlong charge towards the enemy - shimmering with a red haze, you each physically cannot be stopped until you reach your chosen target. When you do, you may deliver a free attack with your critical-hit-range expanded by [dice], and dealing [highest] extra damage.

Sitting in their own thick glass case at the northern end of the room, there are sixteen lead tablets with a series of symbols scraped into them. Each is about ⅓ of a slot big, and seems to contain a novel writing system unknown to scholarship. Unfortunately, they don’t - the letters are simply the work of a disreputable rogue, who deceived Radha, though not without consequences (see the HALL OF FROZEN PRISONERS for more on Mssr. Edmund Lao Bing). 

While the tablets are bunkum, the visual system employed by Mssr. Bing could, theoretically, come to represent meaning. Radha and Theophano are experimenting to see at what point the symbols become writing, legible to a Scribe - is it the number of people who might understand it? The length of use? Study continues. 

4. STUDY

Shared by Theophano and Radha, who get along well enough. Shiny pillars, large flat metal desks, and rattling ornamental cogwork displays behind thick glass walls. All around lie examining glasses, vitrines full of objects awaiting study, and reams and reams of notes on thick paper and crystal tablets. 

Also scattered around a few ongoing experiments of Theophano’s and Radha’s. Bubbling alembics, gently hissing flasks in a sealed glass box, small kinetic sculptures atop the desk - detailed notes on the history of certain families in the villages around the Crystal Castle, not interfering, but carefully observing for some unseen factor or form that each seem to believe exists. 

Disturbing any experiment has a 1-in-6 chance of causing a small explosion. It has a separate 1-in-6 chance of causing a mad-science accident that lets someone re-roll a randomly chosen stat and take the higher result. 

5. THEOPHANO’S CHAMBER

Spacious, surprisingly well-appointed. A dark wooden writing desk, a four-poster bed covered in blankets and furs, thick rugs laid down over the hard crystalline floor, deep carved shelves, a screened dressing area, two oak armoires of thick construction, and many chairs, sideboards, seats, and so forth. Looming over all are large wall icons of beautifully realised landscapes and dignified heavenly subjects. This place is well appointed for human comfort, Nirupama says, because good librarians are in short supply. 

About 30 talents of old gold jewellery in the shape of fish, crustaceans and winged men are scattered throughout, in the form of amulets, bangles, and a torc. These are from Theophano’s previous life, and he feels alienated from them. Still, stealing them is a faux pas. If you befriend him, he may well gift them.

Also present in and around the writing desk are the seventeen or so drafts of A View of the Cosmos, Theophano’s impossibly overlarge magnum opus - a dictionary of all creation. He has spent the free-time of centuries struggling with the hard work of taxonomy and classification, and has thus spent much of his time on the easy and pleasurable work of writing uncategorised entries. If you can somehow sort through this bedlam, you might find an unexpected answer to any number of questions about the World and what lives in it. 

Many, many entries are censored or edited by Lady Nirupama in gleaming silvery block capitals. 

6. SOUTHERN GALLERY

Clustered in this room are statuettes of unmelting ice created by Khiones and preserved by the greater power of Lady Winter, who can freeze anything (short of time or death, of course). Their presence makes the room even colder than the rest of the castle, like the interior of a meat locker. There’s a 2-in-6 chance two Khiones are present in this room every time you enter, discussing the statues, considering making new ones, or laughing at the funny ones. 

The statuettes are of widely varying style, subject, technical competence and level of social acceptability. Lady Winter doesn’t freeze every statuette of this sort, so that beautiful dynamic realistic depiction of a bear must share something with that blocky self-portrait and that crude ice-axe sheela na gig. Whatever the common thread is, it’s not immediately obvious. 

Were Cold Voyager Winter not a Stellar spirit, we might be able to assume the criterion is mere whim - but in the Stars, nothing is done due to mere whim. 

7. SOUTHERN GALLERY, EAST SIDE

As with the other galleries, there are many, many minor works present, though this chambers’ are mostly oil paintings of landscape scenes. “Minor works” is too dismissive - each and every one is wonderful, they’re just not as relevant as the following: 

1. Slain Snakes
   Fired Ceramic Sculpture, 3ft High

Glazed porcelain-white, eight large snakes are depicted dead, hacked-at with blades, and piled high and twisted into a sort of helical knot. Red paint, representing blood, pours from the glistering, damp-looking crevices between the slain snakes - though, there is no moisture, merely the cunning effect.
“The work of a fellow from the city of Dramyth - is it still called that these days? I haven’t visited in a long time.” 

2. Last Earthly Remains of the City of Zicu (Aside from the Crater)
   Rubble, piled, 2ft high.
   Partially blackened, pinkish-red bricks, once painted with green plant patterns, and smeared with an unknown black powder. Standing close, the burnt bricks smell quite bad.
   “I hear Prince Meteor doesn’t like to destroy a city - even an empty one, even an empty one full of monsters. But then, I hear Prince Meteor has a soft heart.” 

3. Winsome God of War
   Mosaic of Metal Pieces, 6ft x 3ft
   Depicts a large, dynamically posed figure, clad in old-fashioned armour of polished steel and armed with blue steel weapons, against an abstract background of copper, brass, lead and tin. Red steel pieces pick out the mark of a deep wound drawn by his leading blade, and pieces of white steel (which absorb light then glow in the dark) are scattered around his head. Upon the white steel pieces are carved little scenes of agriculture, life, and prayer. 

“He’s troubled by his thoughts despite his obvious strength. A very human piece, which amuses me.” 

4. Decorated Skeleton
   Human Skeleton, Decorated, 6’1’’
   Lies inside a glass case on a crystal pedestal in the middle of the room. Every bone is individually scrimshawed with a dense, interlocking pattern, and those which are broken or damaged are carefully repaired with kintsugi. The ends of femurs, ulnas, and similar, are capped with gold.
   “The King’s army was looting the tomb this skeleton was buried in, not far from Ustchok. Normally, I wouldn’t trouble myself with irrelevant matters such as that, but wouldn’t you agree the decoration on the bones has great aesthetic value?” 

5. Reverent Dagger

Gilded Dagger, Light
A cinquedea of pristine black steel, inlaid with a detailed scene in gold. Upon it, an armoured figure lofts a spear towards the Sun in salute, while a long banner clutched in his other hand swirls around his armoured body. Around him, the words “NADAB, GOD OF HOSTS, PRINCE OF THE SUN”, are marked in strange characters. It is a wickedly sharp +1 weapon, and, like all weapons of black steel, casts no shadow and makes no sound.
“I have met the Prince in question. I admire his rigorous manner. This dagger was gained as tribute from a defeated foe in the land of Igren, Below.” 

6. The Power of a Giant
   Oil on Board, 10ft x 10ft
   Gigantic abstract depiction of something gigantic and monstrous, four-armed, with an anguished-looking face, grey skin, and pitch black eyes. The surface of the painting seems twisted and textured, jagged with thick impasto. A split, splintering tree of apparently great size is grasped in its four hands, bending and snapping like a piece of kindling.
   “Hope you never find yourself standing where the theoretical viewpoint of this painting is standing.” 

7. Scene of Plague
   Oil on Canvas, 10ft x 8ft.
   Fifty or so people are painted in and around the lower and upper level of some kind of Seriasi teahouse or tavern. They are dying, slumped in chairs, painted with bile, sores and blood, or they are dead, laid out on the floor, or on tables, under stained white sheets. Some towering shape stands above the sick and dying, standing as if gazing back, assessing work, before it moves on through the bright doorway framing it. It is clad in a heavy grey haze, a vague suggestion of fog, smoke, or a veil. It is wielding a huge brush, stained with ink, and carrying a sloshing bucket. Its hands are a bloody red, and seem to have peeling skin.
   “Not Plague himself, but one of his Dyers. I despise him and his servants, but the level of detail and command of light in this painting was impossible to pass up. I hear it was originally painted for Tordu Manor, near Arum, but never arrived there. Political reasons, I think.” 

8. The Spirit, History
   Oil on board, 6ft x 2ft
   Depicts a gigantic winged figure, seemingly made of stone and metal. The painting feels like it radiates cold, if you step close to it. History’s face is beautiful, symmetrical, and appears to exhale a white vapour, rendered so realistically it almost feels like it could lift off the board. They hold a map, scroll and tablet in one arm, and a white quill in the other hand.
   In an unusually demure tone for Nirupama: “I’ve only met History once, on their sole visit to this Castle. What a day! A memory to treasure…” 

8. GLASSWAY

Vertiginous corridor with a floor of transparent glass, and an entirely translucent wall formed of fused shards of crystal. Provides an excellent view of the road up to the castle. One of the Eikon-Panoptes’ eyes floats here. 

9. SCRYING GLASS

This chamber is dominated by a huge, rattling clockwork device, around a gigantic lens of shimmering, hazy glass. This is a machine that can look anywhere in the World Above, or Below, but not into the Firmament. (Well, you can, but the glass isn’t insulated against the effects of looking into the Sun or the Moon, so I really don’t advise it). 

Created by the spirit Scry herself. Works flawlessly for Star Spirits, but Astrologers can attempt to operate it - 4-in-6 chance for a minute of seeing what you want to see, SKLL every minute, damage the Glass on a fail, destroy it on a fumble. Breaking the Glass is a faux pas that draws Radha’s ire. 

Scry visits regularly to maintain it - regularly by spirit standards, anyway. There’s a 1-in-20 chance she is literally standing in the room when you enter, maintaining the complex glass - in this environment, you don’t need to Seek her to befriend her, just show even a minute of interest in her handiwork. 

10. CARTOGRAPHY CHAMBER 

This high-vaulted chamber is lit by large windows in the shape of irregular polygons, with thick crystal panes of clear, unornamented glass. The light admitted here cannot be allowed to be distorted - cartography is serious business. 

The northern cabinet contains various large reference maps, mostly used for discussion. These are printed on thick cotton, and display in broad terms the World Above, the World Below, the concentricities of the Sun, the places which spirits lay claim to as their earthly fiefs, and a few maps of the largest cities on the Earth. That last category is appended often by Upasana, who points out where she sees echoes of the Oecumene to come. 

Arranged on the central table and in the cabinets in the south are very detailed maps of Outer Defiance, the islands of the Seriasi Sea, and parts of Saral Sar, roughly sketching a wide segment of a circle, intersecting with the World Above, with the Crystal Castle at its centre. These maps are presented in a wide variety of scales, levels of detail, and cartographical focus - here’s one that focuses on the hydrographical environs of the city of Rozendak, at the scale of 5 miles to an inch, here’s another showing the topography of Seriasi coast at a scale of 20 miles to an inch, and so on. These are laid out on sheets of impossible microchainmail, individual pinhead-sized links recoloured to illustrate the curve of hills, the path of rivers, and the growth of settlements. They are cold, heavy, and absurdly durable. Wrapping yourself in them could serve as very crude medium armour. 

These maps are of obvious military use, and thus of obvious value. You could fill your arms with them and make a fortune, but of course, even touching the maps without explicit permission is a serious faux pas. 

11. EAST-FACING INSTRUMENTS

This chamber is full of various fantastical, almost comical sensory devices - mechanical frippery, to enhance the ear and the eye. The back wall is dominated by reflective dishes, which probably pick up something, and by the window large glass spheres hiss with stellar aether - they flicker and spiral in response to signals from beyond.

Glowing metal bars hum in cases, a tall glass jar contains metallic moths spiralling back and forth, back and forth. 

Tubes like expensive telescopes point up and out, connected to little boards of bells and ball-bearings rising and lowering on cushions of quicksilver. A large dial indicates the current relative position of the Sun and the Moon.  The instruments in this room are mostly unreadable by a person with human experiences and knowledge, but the inhabitants of the castle could inform you that they keep track of certain goings-on and phenomena in heaven. 

An eye of the Eikon Panoptes floats inside a small mirrored hemispherical dent in the ceiling. 

12. SOUTH-FACING INSTRUMENTS

Glass pipes, sound-catching horns, bubbling pressure vessels and gleaming orbs suspended in water. They attach to various outward-facing devices that project through holes bored in the castle wall, giving this chamber a terrible draft (or a freezing blast during a blizzard). As above, the instruments in this room are mostly unreadable by a person with human experiences and knowledge, but the inhabitants of the castle could inform you that they keep track of certain goings-on and phenomena in the World Above, and the World Below. These include storm activity off the side of the World, instability in the earth around the castle, and falling stars. 

13. COURT RECORDS

Gigantic ledgers occupy glinting shelves dug deep into the crystal walls. The columns of shelves are protected by steel gates, set with thick chunks of dark blue glass. The floor is plated with hexagonal tiles of the same dark blue glass, working into irregular polygons at the edges to conform to the shape of the room. 

The ledgers contain records of all decisions made in and by the Crystal Castle. On the pearlescent white pages live carefully kept notes on messages received and sent, expenditures and acquisitions of resources, the formalisation of agreements and hostilities, phenomena and actions observed in the locality, and so on. 

Recordkeeping is spiritual to inhabitants of the Stars. Their dream is to see everything, to reveal all, to have perfect knowledge - to discover everything hidden by darkness, unpuzzle everything made cryptic by dreams, and to discern the true shape of everything concealed in blinding light. So, any fuckery in this room is a universal faux pas. Don’t mess with the records. The Lady of the Castle (and her superiors, too) will be rather upset. 

14. WESTERN SPIRIT COURT

This chamber is reserved for visiting spirits to use as a space for litigation, discussion, record-keeping, and other courtly matters. This chamber is used by Stellar and Solar Spirits. Lunar ones aren’t welcome. It has high walls decorated with shining golden decorations, and bright white glass, shot through with luminous veins. 

This is a friendly gesture to the sort of Solar Spirits who can combine heroic passion and considered jurisprudence - these are commonly the allies of the Stellar lords. Currently, the Spirit Court is empty, and not in use. 

15. HALL OF BRIGHT LIGHT

This chamber is utterly blinding to enter - every surface except the stairtop coming up from below is perfectly reflective - polished a thousand times ‘til it shows a still reflection of the world, under a false-heaven ceiling of many-faceted reflective silver. Huge, tall windows allow light to stream in and run rampant everywhere, blinding the human eye if the Sun is above the horizon. This is, in part, the purpose of the room - in here, one may meditate on how the light of the Sun can just as easily obscure as reveal. 

Stellar installations on the surface of the World often feature chambers like this as a philosophical statement, but the Crystal Castle’s example is particularly impressive. 

16. NANABAH’S SQUAD BARRACKS

The decor in here is cozy. It’s mostly in black, dotted with white here and there, with a shimmering purple-blue floor, which is opalescent in appearance. Velvety blankets are laid out atop plush mattresses in deep bed-alcoves carved into the walls. The walls are decorated with spiralling designs resembling snakes constructed of chains, coins and locks. The sentries have no need to sleep, but all agree that beds are rather nice places in which to relax and read a book. Speaking of which, above each bed, a little bookshelf - Nanabah’s squad mostly read novels written in the Heavens - sprawling, boring political sagas with hundreds of characters, which they all have immensely strong opinions on. 

In the centre of the chamber, a polished, circular metal bench stands, with a tall central section. Upon this central piece, the clockwork flying-cloaks of Nanabah’s squad are usually hung, and the bench around it is used to maintain and repair them. 

Sitting in an alcove in the west wall of the room is a life-size apple made of, apparently, solid silver. It’s actually a cunningly disguised freezing grenade, which is activated by pulling off the leaf. It explodes for 5d6 cold damage 6 rounds later, reduced by 1d6 for every 10’ from the blast point. If anyone takes the full 5d6, they must save vs. frostbite. Targets that are wet when they get grenaded will be briefly frozen solid, and if it went off underwater, it would create a ~20’ diameter sphere of ice. 

17. GLASS LIGHT LOUNGE

Vast and impossibly bright, separated across the main keep and an outlying tower. The crystal of the walls and floors is strange here - from the outside, it seems dark and opaque, but from within, the walls are clear as cold water, giving the chamber an appearance as though it has no walls or floor, to a glance. Stepping within without knowledge of this constitutes a leap of faith, to step over what seems to be a drop down onto a steeply slanted slope dropping off the side of the castle.

Around the room are situated tall steel cabinets with thick glass fronts. In some, there are books, in others, glass decorations. In one (which is normally locked), there are tall, slender bottles of a clear, bluish liquid. The castle’s inhabitants call it “stilling elixir”, or just “the elixir”. In the Stars, nothing so crude as alcohol is drunk - a cup of this elixir produces a pleasant full-body numbness, and a feeling of weightless floating. 

In one particular case, there is a special artifact - a fingerless glove, with metal sections, glowing Inscription lines, and luminous blue cabochons. It was created by Ignacy Jaesu, an Iron Scribe who often found himself in service to Stellar forces, and was a famous paranoid. Sometimes, captains of the Sentry squads are allowed to use his glove, but for the most part, they are keeping it, in case he someday returns from the deep Void, into which he travelled fifty years ago. 

Jaesu’s Glove of Swordstopping - When an attack hits you, roll 3d6. If the result on any dice matches the number on the damage dice, a large luminous glyph, something alike to an Inscription, appears in the air and stops the attack.  This can only be done against one attack per round. Attacks with multiple damage dice will only block damage from dice which the glove matches - 2d8 rolling 1 and 4 into dice reading 2, 3 and 4 will still deal one damage. The glove has 10HP, losing 1d2 HP if the 3d6 roll doubles, and all of its HP if it rolls triples. Repairing the glove’s HP requires an experienced Iron Scribe, and time. 

18. INGRAM’S SQUAD BARRACKS

The feature which dominates this chamber is a pillar of soft bluish light in the middle of the room, with a glowing Inscription clearly visible at the top and bottom - this was written for Ingram and his squad by Theophano, as a favour. It’s not dissimilar to the Tome Scribe Inscription Levitate - step into the pillar, and you become negotiably weightless, suspended in the air, and able to move vertically effortlessly. Come in when Ingram and his gang are off duty, and you’ll find them all sitting lotus-position, floating in the pillar, meditating. 

Aside from this, the decorations of the chamber are simplistic, black-and-white, and fairly ascetic compared to the rest of the castle’s opulence. Ingram and his squad each have tall cabinets of black wood with carved lions’ feet, that contain their personal effects - most are not of particular interest (though there’s a total of 62T of treasure in here). 

One object is of significant interest, however - wrapped in black cloth under a false bottom in Ingram’s cabinet is a mask resembling a perfectly symmetrical human face, made of smoked glass. While wearing this, you are effectively a blank to any methods of recognition - when people look at you, they see a vague blur. When you speak, they get the meaning, but do not hear your voice. Scries fail, magic alarms don’t go off, you don’t even trigger pressure plates. This is an item that Ingram really should not have while working for Nirupama - but this is as safe a place as any to hide it. His squad, ever loyal, are aware of it, but don’t consider it too hard, since it’s very illegal. It’s a relic of his time working as a “problem solver” for the Transparency, a faction of Stellar politics. Maybe he’d tell you all about it - or maybe not. Depends if he thinks he can trust you. 

Trying to access the mask without Ingram’s explicit permission is a severe faux pas. If you grass him out to Nirupama about it, he’ll laugh, smile, deny everything, then try to kill you from behind when you’re next unaware, asleep, or gazing out in awe from the castle windows. 

19. TRAINING CHAMBER

This chamber has thick walls covered in scooped handholds for testing one’s ability to climb, and a lowered section in the centre of the floor covered in glistering crystal sand. Scattered all around are moving obstacles and training dummies operated by clockwork, which swing, sweep, rotate and faux-strike to keep the sentries on their paces. They can be rearranged to provide a broad array of increasingly specific and bizarre challenge scenarios - Ingram, Toshiaki, Kaniehtiio, and their squads like to gather here and challenge each other to weirder and weirder training settings: can you fight three guys dual wielding shields while hanging upside down and being harassed by birds? 

Some of the possible setups of the room are impossible for the heavy, slow-moving sentries, and some are impossible for light, fragile humans. A wide range is necessary. 

Stored in a metal case against the north wall, under the looming windows, are three clockwork automails, steel and crystal prosthetics which Ingram and his squad can easily attach to the stump of a limb to replace it. They will only do this for friends, of course. They have a right arm, a left arm, and a configurable leg. 

20. SWORD STORAGE CHAMBER

The walls are black crystal. Three swords are put in here, lying in state like beautiful sarcophagi upon cushioned plinths of white marble. Something unaccountable in the form of the swords in this chamber disturbs the Khthesines, though all refuse to articulate exactly what that may be. 

I shall tell you the reason, noble reader: it is because they contain imprisoned spirits. 

• TWIXT POLISH BRIGHT - A +1 medium sabre of garish aesthetic and competent design. The patterned blade is made of especially pure and lustrous red steel. Every inch of the blade is decorated with curlicues, tiny heavenly figures, glinting red cabochons, and carefully applied gold wire. The creator of this sword clearly took time to luxuriate in the details. The wielder of the blade becomes covered in a thin, flexible and perfectly reflective layer of woven air, deflecting rays automatically, and becoming impossibly bright in direct sunlight. Nuakh, a famous user of rays, has submitted yearly complaints about sharing a place of employment with the blade for about 100 years, or so, to little effect. 

• OUTER SOUL DISCOURSE, a battered +1 heavy falx, assembled of roughly-struck iron, patinated bronze, and gold coins battered flat and welded into the blade. Top-heavy and almost axelike, it does +1 damage to unarmoured enemies. The creator of this sword made it in anger. When wielded by someone who is, themselves, angry, OUTER SOUL DISCOURSE converts their anger into a mad and bloodthirsty frenzy which refuses to subside until they are disarmed. While in the frenzy of bloodthirst, wielders get +1 attack per round and +3 damage to all attacks, but cannot discern friend easily from foe.  

• HORIZON MY HAND, an old knightly sword in the Zzargovi manner (that is, a +1 medium oakeshott), made of mirror-finish black steel. A real nice piece, with a handle of bone, perfectly balanced, and excellently crafted, except for the mystifying stubby crossbar. The creator of this sword had some kind of a sense of humour. Whenever one edge of the sword cuts something, the other edge shimmers with an eerie light, and cuts a randomly determined foe within range of the strike. Same damage.  

21. SHIMMER CHAMBER

This chamber is a sitting room decorated in pinks, whites and blues. The furnishings are elegant, reserved, and tasteful. They seem fragile at a glance, but are in fact very durable.  They were all carefully designed by the Stellar spirit Contingency, who has a passion for interior design aside from his spiritual duties.  A special window of scintillant crystal fills the entire chamber with a shimmer like the bottom of a shallow lake during daylight hours. All around the room are glass cases, filled with little silver clovers and flowers that glint in the light. This room’s purpose is to be a place for a visiting spirit to retreat to, or to serve as a sitting room for light conversation. 

This room is the usual habitat of a weird little animal that sort of resembles a nobbly blob of mochi, with a pair of round black eyes and six nub legs. This thing is a sort of Stellar animalcule, in this case from the Soft Radiance Star. It high-steps and wobbles about the tables and couches, eating small morsels of food and producing small, musical toots. It is more or less indestructible, reacting to even explosions with just a startled peep and a rubbery bounce. They call it Mibi. It sleeps in a tiny to-scale house with a roof of silver tiles, situated at the end of one of the couches. 

A large but delicate machine rattles away in the corner. It is made of silvered clockwork and many small brass parts, some as thin as the stems of flowers. It turns a huge drum, like a birdcage with very densely clustered bars, tumbling hundreds of bright pebbles of many colours. They rustle over each other with an unusually soft, smooth whispering, slowly becoming smooth and round. Scattered around the room are rounded, almost soft stones that have been through the machine. Occasionally, they clear the stones out and let Mibi use it like a gigantic hamster wheel. 

22. TOSHIAKI’S SQUAD BARRACKS

This chamber has a bright polished aquamarine floor, and massive towering windows, facing north. Everything in this room is reflective, even the underside of the beds. The sole exception are the books, which crowd densely on the shelves that line the walls, and cannot practically be made reflective. There are hundreds of romantic books, sagas on scrolls, immrams, tales of foolish wars, and similarly exciting texts. Gemlike ribbons loop down from the ceiling and intertangle seemingly at random, but in truth, they are sketching out the images of the heavenly constellations where they meet.

Toshiaki and his squad are especially social, inviting other groups of sentries to their large barracks room to share poetry, play riddle-games, gossip and conjecture. He is also especially close friends with Nive, the Khione, who shares his love of sappy romances. If the moment arises, the two of them may choose (whether you like it or not) to play your match-maker, aiding you enthusiastically if not always carefully in the pursuit of romantic prospects. 

23. SHINE CHAMBER

This chamber is a sitting room full of harsh glints and reflective panels. Bright steel etageres supporting spikes, crystals, and strange trinkets stand around the edges of the room, backed by black velvet curtains. The floor is a checkered black and white - alternating pale, glutinous-looking marble, and cold black reflective glass 

Sitting in one corner is a towering cylindrical clockwork device, decorated on the outside with a Dradian-style acid-etched scene of various domestic servants undertaking various forms of cleaning, polishing and maintenance. The object has a door, which opens into an inner chamber lined with a wild variety of brushes, from sable to horsehair to wire. Any object placed in here and left for 1d6*5 minutes will come out polished as close to reflective as possible. Toshiaki’s sentries make use of this to create mirrory gewgaws to hide in. 

This room’s purpose is to be a place for a visiting spirit to retreat to, or to serve as a sitting room for serious conversation. 

24. GRAND BALLROOM

To those used to the architectural capacities of the society of the World Above, this space will seem impossibly vast and tall. Shaped a bit like a heptagonal pyramid, with a gouge taken out of the south side for the elegantly silvered and curlicued landings of the Clockwork Lifts. The roof shoots high above, vertices meeting at a luminous point which casts cold, unmoving beams of light down into the chamber, scattering the mirror-black dance-floor into a chiaroscuro labyrinth of shadow and light.

On rare occasions, the Lady of the Castle hosts many Stellar spirits at once, and here they dance a perfectly regular waltz among floating stands of frozen cyclamen, and whisper of politics, science, art, Reason and Revolution. On these occasions, music is provided by automatic organs, string-instruments, racks of clockwork drums, and wind-powered brass-sections - these tower along the north side of the Ballroom, integrated into the walls. On normal days, they play a deafening musical reveille at sunrise that echoes through the castle, and a slow, lullaby nocturne at sunset. 

There is a 1-in-100 chance a ball of spirits is happening at the Castle. Actually, probably there isn’t, because that would change the entire god damn dungeon. In fact, I’m keeping that in my back pocket for if I run this for any regular blog readers… 

25. DARK HALL

No windows, and only dim lanterns affixed, giving the chamber a distinctly gloomy, sepulchral feel. A sacred-steel blade with an eternal wicked edge and a squared end hangs from the highest point of this chamber’s ceiling. While this is, of course, an executioner’s sword, it has not seen use for a long time - it’s a Miserial tool, a possession of Lady Winter’s which is reflected here and there in the decoration of the room - it’s dark, foreboding, and almost lightless. Gigantic steel tortoise statues crouch in the corners of the room, with glinting lit-behind sapphires for eyes. Ebony furniture draped with white cloth makes up the rest of the furnishings. An eye of the Eikon Panoptes hovers unobtrusively in a hidden corner. 

Lumi and Vrosta, two of the Khiones, spend some of their free time here, plotting, playing cards, and discussing the world - they are the two most in-tune with the aesthetic mercilessness of Lady Winter, and like to, as it were, cultivate that ominous appearance. 

26. KANIEHTIIO’S SQUAD BARRACKS 

A high-ceilinged, architecturally designed chamber, full of decorated pillars and high archways. Images of flax-plants are intaglio’d directly into the walls, next to crystalline mosaic panels lit from behind by hidden windows. The decor is mostly in grey and white, but the glowing mosaics are decorated with a full rainbow. At one time, Kaniehtiio was a bodyguard to spirits of the Centrality, the “civil service” of the Stellar parliament. However, she has been, in essence, demoted here, after a high-profile failure on the job. 

Unatsi and Mavsa, two of the Khiones, can often be found in this room. They’re close friends with Kaniehtiio and a few of her sentries, and like to gossip with her.  

27. SHADOW CLAD LOUNGE 

Deep, consumingly black decorations - thick, soft, sound-muffling velvet, and especially thick walls, cast this chamber and attached bridge into total darkness at all hours of the day. Various unusually shaped, plushly-stuffed chair-bench-cat-tree-ladder-type mysterious objects are scattered around - both a kind of practical joke, as their blue-black velvet coverings blend in very well, and a statement on the power of darkness (and the Void) to suppress and muddle true understanding. 

The Khiones occasionally wait in here to jumpscare people - or, if we’re in a violent sort of mode, they wait in here to lethally ambush people. 

28. MEGREZ’ SQUAD BARRACKS

A stable for mechanical cervids, in large part - thankfully, the deer, being metal, make no ill smells or messes. A practical, oddly rustic sort of a chamber, with thick wooden furniture and decorative wooden beams acting as though they hold up the ceiling. Seats with thick leather cushions sit in a ring around a luminous chunk of stone, almost like some kind of campfire. 

This squad of sentries like Sadhana best, and are her entourage, in a distinct way. A Knight might recognise Megrez as something like Sadhana’s squire. Megrez himself has served nearly every master it is possible to serve among the Stars without getting oneself killed. He and his squad have a long record of loyalty, competence and ideological flexibility behind them. 

29. MECHANICAL CERVID WORKSHOP

Mechanical riding-deer eidolons in various half-finished states lie around atop large workbenches, surrounded by dark wooden cabinets full of various parts. 

In here are many tools, of which two are of particular note. The first, a thing like a claw on the end of a wooden wand, which can lift iron objects up to 4 slots big with a lazy wave, through a power called “Magnetism.” The second, a sacred steel saw of great antiquity, able to basically saw through anything. It is entirely unique, indestructible and irreplaceable - a relic of a better time. It sits in its own glass case with little blue-flamed incense candles flickering away in front of it. 

30. EASTERN SPIRIT COURT

This chamber is reserved for visiting spirits to use as a space for litigation, discussion, record-keeping, and other courtly matters. This chamber is used by Stellar and Unlit Spirits. Lunar ones aren’t welcome. It has high walls decorated with sparkling panels of black stone and lilac glass with preserved flowers suspended behind them. 

Very few Unlit Spirits actually give a shit about paying attention to courtly matters, but the Crystal Castle maintains the chamber as fuel for ego and as a political gesture. 

At the moment, a Stellar spirit is actually using the court - this spirit is titled Apport, and named Tahimik. He is pale, sky-blue, white haired, and dressed in a diaphanous robe that glitters like diamond made cloth. His eyes shine brightly, and upon his slender hands he wears rings of brass and rainbow crystal. 

He is locked in a complicated discussion with an old, bored-looking man - a Seriasi montañe called Wisdom Niebla who is grey haired, brown-skinned, wrinkled and weatherbeaten, and dressed in a thick jacket and raccoon fur hat with the tail hanging off the side. 

They seem to be trying to figure out Apport’s responsibilities to the old man’s village, but the spirit and the man are both unable to fully state what they’re trying to say. They have to tiptoe around some forbidden subject that nonetheless dominates the entire context and content of their discussion. This is the eighth day of negotiations - they’re on the verge of resorting to imagistic poetry.  

31. DELIBERATION ROOM

Used to deliberate in court cases, and also for meetings and conferences by the inhabitants of the castle. Dark, hanging cloth drapes block off deep alcoves full of abstract jagged designs carved right out of the walls. Many solid, dark, low-backed chairs sit around a circular table made of a single gigantic piece of cast steel - these present an air of equality, just as the large crystal throne cut right into the wall reminds all present that, while we’re all equals here, Nirupama is the first among us.

This is also where the unfreezing solution for releasing people stored in the HALL OF FROZEN PRISONERS is kept, in a tall steel-walled box with a lockable door. The bottles are made of a cyan-coloured glass, and the solution is a sort of pale, vaporous liquid, which feels somehow both warm and cold at the same time. Tanvi, Nirupama and Rasalased have keys. Two eyes of the Eikon Panoptes hang in here, watching the box. 

SECOND FLOOR

1. CONNECTING HALL

A somewhat unremarkable room, mostly notable for containing the stairs coming up from the second floor, and the ones going up to the fourth floor. The floor is decorated with heavy, irregular puzzle-tiles of deep blue sapphire-coloured stone. 

2. FINANCIAL OFFICE

Armoured ledgers chained to tall steel desks, integrated with huge abaci that use steel-prisma counting beads. A place of pure and untroubled mathematics, in the same way a quiet glade is a place of pure and untroubled poetry. Mathematics are a Stellar invention, of course - not counting, per se, but the principle of Mathematics. Same goes for currency - though a theoretical “true” finance still awaits the correct mundane conditions to arise in a cosmic sense. 

In fact, the purity of mathematics is so untroubled by practical concerns, in part because there’s not a single physical coin in here - all of the Castle’s funds are in the VAULT. 

3. GAMING PARLOR

Centred on an elegant rosewood table with a blue felt top and a ring of high-backed, comfortable chairs around it. In alcoves around the walls of the room are gameboards and pieces of all stripes - crystalline tarocchi cards with frightening designs, chaturanga with pieces of white opal and blue sapphire, luminous glass dice, and steel dominoes with funny mouse patterns. 

In an alcove at the western side of the room, flanked by two tall windows with a wonderful view of the glacier below, there stands a strange device made of ancient stone, shot through with gold. It has a golden flowerbud on top, of excellent artifice. This is a luck-detecting device, a gift from a better time. Lay your hand on it - how much the bud blooms is how much Luck favours you. The castle’s denizens ultimately prefer skill to chance, so sometimes test the luck of people they plan to play a game with. 

4. FRAGMENT FLOOR HALL

This chamber’s floor is covered in irregular tiles fitted together in a large, messy tessellation. Each tile is entirely unique, and the careful aesthetic of the castle is temporarily abandoned for garishness, glinting facets, bright colours, strange shimmers, and unique textures. 

They use this to play an amusing Stellar game called “Talking in Positions”, where one has a very long, formal conversation about complicated topics, moving to the appropriate tile through a carefully chosen path, until someone makes a mistake. The Khthesines love it, the sentries play opposed trios to settle inter-unit disputes and the Khiones use it to flirt with people.

5. OUBLIETTE

The walls of this chamber are thick enough to only admit a dull, sub-aquatic kind of blue light in the daytime, and to be pitch black at night. The door connecting to the rest of the castle is an immense steel gate rimed in frost - it’s so cold, if you lay an unprotected hand to it, your fingers would snap off. Lady Nirupama and Pratibha carry the only keys. 

Within, 12 large steel-framed beds occupy deep alcoves ascending up the walls on an internal stair, all looking down on a common seating area. In the seating area, there are twelve large crystal chairs around two large crystal tables, cut right out of the floor, unable to be moved. Each alcove has a door which can be locked from within, to allow privacy while sleeping.

This is where defeated but un-slain foes of the Castle are hauled to await judgement before Lady Nirupama in the Crystalline Court.  

Her judgements generally shake out into three fates:

• Exile - the castle’s Khiones strip you of any gear you have (save cold-weather clothing and food), then drop you at the bottom of the glacier below the castle. They command you to begin the long walk back to civilization. The town of Havenferk is three days trudge away, if you’re lucky. Common for inconclusive cases featuring irritating or disliked suspects. 

• Freezing - Nirupama and the Khiones freeze you solid into a statue of ice for a given length of sentence, then thaw you out once your sentence is served, and send you off to the nearest convenient human town. Some local mountain villages, and the town of Havenferk, give over their convicted criminals into the ice prison of the wiła for a year or two, reasoning it is more secure than any jail they can build. Some, however, who have crossed Nirupama personally, are serving statue sentences of centuries or longer. All Frozen convicts are remanded to the HALL OF FROZEN INTRUDERS. 

• Acquittal - Very rare. 

Astrologers with the acquaintance of a powerful titled spirit can claim the right to be tried in their “own” system of justice. 

Nirupama is not stupid. She is well aware that powerful Stellar lords will bury any case they dislike in inquiry and appeal, that Solar Princes very rarely rule against a loyal servant, that influential Lunars often “forget” to hold trials, and that there are precisely zero courts of law in the Void. However, it often behooves to befriend the powerful, by allowing them to display their influence over the fates of mortals. 

6. TENNIS COURT

A traveller from Rozendak introduced a few of the Khiones and Sentries to this game a decade or so ago, and their petition for a court was successful. The traveller has not since returned - he’s involved in important business to do with the ongoing revolution, of course - but the tennis court remains, bright, pale and strange in its relative worldliness. Note that the World Above does not yet have the abominable derivation known as “lawn tennis” - this is real tennis, courte-paume, a game of kings! And any given traveller might recognise it, and be surprised by it. 

The Khthesines don’t quite get it yet, but they expect in a few decades once they’ve gotten used to the unusualness of it, they’ll probably be the best tennis players in the World. Rukhsana, Aushti and Huka are our local tennis champions in the meantime - though Huka’s habit of crashing out if she loses too much might contribute to her record of victories. 

7. STANDSTILL STATUE HALL

Shining metal seats stand in a ring in the centre of the floor, surrounding an onyx-and-marble mosaic depicting a pyramid constructed of smaller pyramids. The walls have white and pansy-yellow curtains of thick and expensive velvet against them. An eye of the Eikon Panoptes hovers unobtrusively in a hidden corner. 

The main thing anyone will notice upon entry, however, is the massive brass and steel statue of Standstill herself - accurate to life, capturing the clockwork and the austere severity of her form. She looms up above everything, up into the rafters - a symbol of her patronage of, support for, and ultimate lordship over the Crystal Castle. This is an official meeting room of the Stability, and only members of that faction are allowed to use it in any way but a corridor. Though - they are allowed to linger and appreciate the greatness of Lady Standstill. 

8. RUKHSANA’S SQUAD BARRACKS 

Connected to the Statue-hall - Rukhsana and her squad are official members of the Stability, once assigned up high above on the Outer Clockwork Star, domain of Lady Standstill. They were sent down here to serve Nirupama a long old while ago, for they are specialists in more than guarding castle halls. They much prefer this posting - it’s significantly less austere, and really, they were only Stabilists-of-circumstance anyway. 

Pale yellow-white diaphanous curtains divide the space up into many small spaces, each of which contain either a comfortable bed, a bookshelf, a cabinet, or a gun locker. In the cabinets, you might find matching shimmering gowns of blue silk, for relaxing in (each worth like 100T to a noble).  Rukhsana’s reading chair sits in one corner - it is a large and thronelike rocking-chair with reinforced steel corners, situated strategically near the best-stocked bookcase. They have many texts of philosophy, theory, speculation and (disguised) pornography in here. Mobile shooting targets on little rails beetle around the ceiling, so the calm and silence is occasionally broken by a thunderous gunshot. 

The most interesting book they possess is called the Labyrinth Book, a Voidly thing that Rukhsana picked up on a mission, centuries ago. When you are reading it, it goes on forever, leading away down nonsense-poetic halls and nonsequitur galleries. You may save to stop reading the book after a minute, ten minutes, an hour, eight hours, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a semicentury, a century, a millennium - or, someone can pull the book out of your hands and snap you out of it. Rukhsana reports that she usually uses it to distract people, and the rumours of people who read it for too long vanishing entirely are just Voidly nonsense. 

9. UPPER ART GALLERY

Frosty chiaroscuro chamber, with many intimidating abstracts suspended in translucent pillars - they perhaps imply scenes of battle, but who could confidently say? 

1. Repurposed Shards
   Potsherds, parts of a destroyed gun, parts of a broken sword, fragments of stone castle wall, 2ft tall.
   The materials are cunningly rearranged into the figure of a defeated Knight, slumped on one knee, but gunshard sword still held defiantly aloft.
   “Tanvi and Radha made this piece. I am very fond of it. The broken materials were collected from the aftermath of the Rebellion of the Knights.”

2. A Highly Detailed Painting of a Fence in Serias
   Oil on board, 2ft x 4ft
   A near-photorealistic painting of the edge of a farm at the end of Winter, presumably somewhere in Serias. Low trees overhang a fine, tall, well-maintained and virtuous fence. Nothing exciting is happening in the painting.
   “This piece was given to me as a gift by Lord Language. He informed me this was the very fence that many accused him of sitting on. I located the fence and examined it in great detail for quite a while before the joke was explained to me.” 

3. Hasty in Love

Oil on Canvas , 3ft x 3ft
A fellow in old-fashioned Dradian dress is tripping out of a warmly-coloured window, trousers half on, and hat falling ahead of him down to the unwelcoming, cold, and dark street below. A nude woman stands behind him, looking on with an awed, or perhaps mocking expression.
“I despise this painting. The spirit Nowhere presented it to me as an insulting gift. The day will come when I will be able to burn it without political repercussions, but alas, today is not that day.”

4. Diverting Device
   Blue and Red steel, 1ft tall
   A strange little device - dormant gears of impossible minitude made of bright red and blue steel are arranged into a sort of twisted egg shape. Upon receiving any heat at all - even from the touch of a hand - the miniature gears startle to life, and it slowly transforms into a clockwork chicken, which walks in a circle around the plinth a few times, til it runs out of heat, and then returns back to its egglike shape.
   “A gift from Lord Machine. He was very proud of it. I am neutral towards it.”
   
   

5. The Moon-Bird
   Oil on slate, 2ft x 2ft
   A small, but passionately detailed piece, depicting in a somewhat awkward two-dimensional manner a huge bird with streaming multicoloured feathers in Lunar shades, somewhat like a peacock.
   “Quite an old piece. I think it is intended to depict a mayura - I believe the ancient Seriasi thought of such ancient birds as lucky omens.”  

6. Messages from Above
   Three Steel Stelae, 4ft in height.
   Seemingly endless interlocked and interlayered writing covers the faces of these steel objects, linking and lacing with sprawling geometric diagrams implying the shape of the World, the motion of the Sun, and perhaps the far, unseen side of the Moon. The writing systems in use are all unfamiliar, but perfectly legible to Scribes - except where the interlocking of the letters renders them unrecognisable.
   “I took them to be authentic writings of the great one, Divination, but experts have informed me they are merely a charming, convincing forgery. Ah well.”

10. KHIONES’ BEDCHAMBER

Absurdly cold, set behind thick steel doors, including one which leads out onto the battlements and is habitually ajar to admit freezing wind and flying Khiones. Curtains of winter-silk woven from ice and air sit shimmering against the walls - if a flame is held to them, they temporarily melt, but then reform. Neat party-trick. Aside from that, the furnishings are very dark - ten ebony beds laden with furs, cabinets fronted with tortoiseshell and with iron corners, and a huge trestle-table of ebony dripping with icicles and covered always in vessels of strange sorbet. 

This communal chamber is very rarely in use by all of the Khiones at once - after all, they have no need to sleep, and like all Stellar creatures are opposed to dreams by their very nature. Still, sometimes you want to curl up in a pile of furs, rest your eyes, and think for a while. 

11. NORTHERN GALLERY

Massive antique statues depicting winged squid, lions with human faces, and twist-faced men armed with blocky blades, are framed by gigantic north-facing windows shot through with a frostlike lattice of pale blue. These statues are clearly not the work of Stellar artisans - if asked, the Castle’s inhabitants will tell you they are Ondriman, dug up from the ruins of a city of that civilisation not too far from here. Gigantic octagonal stalactite spikes descend from above, their points gleaming brightly with cunningly redirected light. 

12. VAULT

The castle’s treasures and finances are stored here, behind a foot-thick steel door. The walls of this chamber are especially thick, and latticed with a web-cage of steel-prisma bars, all in differing shades, all with differing properties - it won’t stop someone determined and capable enough to hack through the walls, but hopefully, it will delay them long enough for Lady Nirupama to cut them in half. 

Stored within:

• 5530T in the form of Stellar True Currency, which just so happens to be worth about the same as a Talent, in the grand scheme of things. Convenient! These are stored in 56 1-slot steel lockboxes. 

• A 1-slot steel lockbox containing 2200T worth of diamonds, and a poisoned needle which would impale anyone reaching for a fistful of gems - save vs. paralysis, you may repeat the save at the end of each hour, three failed saves before becoming unparalysed results in 1d6 permanent DEX loss from nerve damage.  

• A 1-slot steel lockbox decorated with a turtle, containing 1800T worth of lapis lazuli craft-pieces. Property of Lady Winter, always cold no matter how long you hold them. 

• A large flawed sapphire, worth 500T. Small enough to conceal in a closed fist. Cursed (of course, it’s a gem with a distinct flaw), but it’s only cursed with intense sneezing, so it’s probably not that bad. The castle’s inhabitants know of the gem’s silly little curse, of course. 

• A 1-slot block of luminous crystal, worth about 1000T. 

• A marble statue of a beautiful woman (Ondriman in origin), worth 30T. The statue is 6 slots heavy, but wears a gem-studded silver-chain necklace adorned with hanging spikes of brass and emerald cabochons, worth 600T. 

This is not the extent of the Castle’s wealth, just what is to hand - the rest is accounted with distant ice-clad vaults in the high Stellar regions of the FIRMAMENT. 

13. MUSIC ROOM

A towering pipe-organ occupies the northern corner of this chamber, massive pipes interlacing with the thick wall and multisegmented window behind it. Hundreds of bells of various sizes hang from the roof, and the walls have cavities filled with automatic drums, steel strings, roaring brass sections, and similar. All of this is controlled from a high throne with a keyboard and a board of pullstrings, dials, buttons and levers. Note: this is a music room, not a room for playing music in. 

Commonly, Vidya’s domain, as she pursues her study of the perfect tone. She will sometimes sit here and send mysterious tones echoing out across the valley through sound-projecting pipes in the tower walls, before ascending above to her chamber. 

14. MUSEUM

This chamber has towering glass windows all around, facing in all directions, providing an excellent view of the castle’s other towers and the wide valley beyond. It is brightly lit by hanging vessels of white aether, making the windows set into the tower that contains it visible from miles away, even in a blizzard. Arranged tastefully around the chamber are various large vitrines, carefully labelled by Radha, the museum’s keeper. 

The first set contains old bronze helmets, rusty spearpoints, broken marble fragments, potsherds, and battered antique gold jewellery (85T). They are labelled “ONDRIMAN ARTEFACTS”. These are the results of Radha’s painstaking excavation of a ruined Ondriman city in the valleys off to the south - she has correlated the pale stole and style of construction to the foundations of Svietasala, Uurferk and Surang, and will happily discuss the archaeological implications. Of course, the archaeology is aided by the fact that she is personal friends with Theophano, himself an Ondriman familiar with their history. The largest results of this same excavation lie in the NORTHERN GALLERY. 

The second set contain palm-sized copper tokens, huge pieces of acid-etched bronze, raptorial-limb amulets,  an axehead the size of a human torso in its own case, a single broken link from a massive chain, and a heat-melted gilded bronze vase, slumped over and damaged. They are helpfully labelled as “EARLY SCARN ARTEFACTS”. 

The third set is halved: the first half is made up of bone needles, a warped translucent skull, a long wooden flute broken in the middle, a set of what seem to be scalpels, an unadorned curved blade, and a battered brass model of a brain. These are labelled “OLD ARGOLIAN ARTEFACTS”. They sit next to barbed arrowheads, a mask decorated with brightly-coloured feathers and giant-insect chitin, the hilt of a large curved sword, golden earrings of various shapes arranged by size, and a leaden bowl with a monstrous grinning face at the bottom, labelled “OLD AMARANTH ARTEFACTS”. 

The fourth set is labelled “MISCELLANY” - A dao of great antiquity, rusted but still with a wicked edge. An authentic old Dramythan incense clock decorated to represent the monstrous Lunar serpent. A compass, with a blazon of a ship with a furled sail on the gilded case. A large warhorn made of a single monstrous tusk, carved with a scene of strangely-proportioned naked figures hunting a giant insect. 

Lastly, in an octahedral vitrine, held in a little metal pinch, an old bronze signet ring with a flat decorative face, such that might be pressed into wax. It depicts two sheafs of wheat and a worn labyrinth pattern, and is clearly of significant age. Radha knows little of it, but if a Hedge-Knight were to study the ring, they could gain access to the following Deed:

The Minister’s Discernment 

Minister Abundius Felix Lao was exiled from Dramyth in that great empire’s final terrible conflagration. Afterwards, living in distant Exile in the town of Uurferk, his ability to decide what was best and to detect dishonesty remained sharp - his last, but best asset.
The next [sum] times you are lied to, actively cheated, sneered at behind your back, or subtly mocked, you will learn of it in a clear precise shimmer of revealing light. 

15. NUAKH’S SQUAD BARRACKS 

Bright, even cool light is provided by cube-shaped lanterns of thick glass full of an inexplicable, glowing substance. The desks, chairs, bookcases and (recently-added) harpsichord are all decorated in greys, slates, browns and taupes, to the taste of Nuakh and his squad. 

Five pillars divide the space of the room, one in each cardinal direction, and one in the centre. These are carved with scenes of Stellar history. The ceiling is decorated with a detailed map of the constellations, down to the most obscure and irrelevant stars. Considering that constellations are effectively political groupings, you might think Nuakh has had cause to regularly update this. But the stars are austere, and they hate unconsidered change, so in five centuries, he has only had to move a star once. 

Nuakh and his squad get on best with Tanvi, and accompany her on jaunts outside the castle. Nuakh is something like a patient uncle to Tanvi, to whom she regularly returns for advice. 

16. LUMINES

This long room is decorated on every surface with a mirror-finish, and has no windows. Light is only admitted through the door off the bridge to the main body of the castle, which is itself fitted with a massive set of complicated lenses. 

The admitted light is carefully controlled by mirrors, lenses, and opaque sheets of some black sclerotic substance. These move around on rails, revolving pivots and wheeled trollies, operable by anyone in the room. The easiest function, achievable by anyone, is crude shadow-puppetry, followed by the division of light into a rainbow (Lady Nirupama has thus classed light as an alloy). 

With experts, the Lumines could be used to concentrate darkness, reveal colours which the eye cannot understand, and to charge light-bearing objects (such as Nuakh’s staff and the glowing swords of Lantberaht’s troop). This room is the shared project of Nuakh and Lantberaht, who are the aforementioned experts. The most difficult task, which the pair still struggle with, is tempering light into weapons and tools - they know it can be done, and have seen examples, but are so-far frustrated in their attempts to create an entirely mechanical method. 

Nuakh and Lantberaht are here when they are not on patrol (if you enter the chamber in social-scenario mode and haven’t yet met them, they’ll be operating the machinery and bickering like an elderly gay couple). Messing with the Lumines without their permission is a faux pas. 

17. GUEST HALL

With a crystalline table, and seating-nooks, and fine old decorations gathered over a few centuries of Seriasi history. Also contains a thick-doored seat-of-ease, for human use, which is why the inhabitants of the castle generally avoid this chamber, even if subconsciously. 

18. GUEST CHAMBER

Heavy drapes against the walls, a thick patterned rug, dark wooden furniture hung with furs, and a large four-poster bed by an outlooking window. The furniture within doesn’t conform much to the Castle’s sensibilities - it’s like a room from an old-fashioned Seriasi noble estate, from a few centuries ago, out on the edge of the steppes farther north. The drapes and rug are arranged to disguise as much of the crystalline nature of the Castle as possible - one can’t help but feel this is some kind of human enclosure, designed by alien minds in an attempt to produce somewhere comfortable for someone to sleep. 

Suhye currently uses this chamber as her own, and the few possessions she had on her when she demanded to be spirited away are scattered around - her couvre-chef, her silken mantle, a heavy embroidered overcoat, and a pair of boots (brought just in case - she walks around the castle in her fur-lined slippers, of course). 

19. FLETCHERY

This is the best available term for this chamber, where Prathibha works on better and better bolt-throwers, and bolts-to-be-thrown. Coiled springs and toolbenches, ratcheting gears and high metal storage cabinets. 

In the largest one at the back, racks of experimental bolts for her bolt-thrower, which you could clumsily load into a crossbow of your own:

1. 5x Explosives - Upon impact, the strange stone at the tip bursts for 2d6* damage to the struck target. Everyone within 5’ of them takes the same damage, but may save for half. 

2. 10x Incendiaries - Upon impact, the glass nodule at the tip shatters, bursting into sticky burning liquid. 1d4 fire damage a round until they extinguish it somehow - it takes a full round of immersion in water, a splash won’t do.  

3. 8x Acid - Upon impact, the glass nodule at the tip shatters, spraying metal-and-flesh-eating acid. 1d6 acid damage a round, instantly neutralised by water. Eats through locks and metal objects with ease. 

4. 5x Metal-Ignoring - Tipped with a piece of weird white stone, with translucent edges. Passes through metal as if air, including metal armour. 

5. 4x Heatseeking - Tipped with a barbed point of glowing red steel. If fired at a target with body heat, hits automatically, with a 1-in-6 chance of a critical hit. 

6. 10x Penetrating - Tipped with a gleaming, slightly resonating bodkin point. +3 to hit and damage, punches through up to a foot of stone or metal without slowing. 

7. 10x Choke - Glass vessel at the tip contains a fine yellow-grey powder, which plumes out into a thick cloud - anyone who breathes begins to cough and wheeze, and are briefly incapacitated if they fail a save. 

8. 15x Water - Has a glass vessel of water at the tip . Pratibha shoots these with pinpoint accuracy into torches and lanterns, to amuse herself when the bearers panic. 

20. LOWERMOST RAMPARTS

Exposed to the elements, constantly blasted with high winds. The spiky machicolations and battlements shine in any light, faceted like gems. Among them are situated huge clockwork bolt-throwers of ballista size, clicking catapults that fling weighted metal-cable nets, and vessels of freezing vaporous liquid ready to pour down the steep castle walls. The Crystal Castle has never been truly attacked or sieged, but these devices might finally see use if you can’t convince Suhye to come home. 

You may find the Sentry-hero Rasalased up here, meditating. He has no chamber in the castle, and is only a transitory presence here. He has engaged in thousands of heavenly battles, and wars beyond the scale of human imagining. He is here to serve Nirupama, as a favour, but he is restless as a patrolman, and desires to do good in the world. It would be easy to convince him to descend to the lowlands, and join the Defiant cause - much easier than doing the same with Suhye, in fact. 

THIRD FLOOR

1. OFFICE OF LETTERS

High, vaulted ceiling, decorated with crystalline icicles. Ice-cold, dry, silent. Each Khthesine has a gigantic reinforced “writing desk” in here (they write in chunks of glass and crystal with steel chisels, with frightening speed and precision). These are given to visiting spirits to ferry back up to the Stars. 

Sometimes, packages and urgent correspondence are delivered directly to the castle via meteorite, with permission of the Solar Prince Meteor, who governs all which falls from heaven. The letters detailing Stellar politics and spiritual conflicts are still contained in Nirupama’s writing desk, which is sealed by a fiendishly complex mechanism that would snap off the fingers of a failed lock-picker. 

The delivery-meteorites sit on pedestals in the corner of the room - heatstruck crystal and iron, waiting for reuse. 

2. MISERIAL OFFICE

Currently empty - lucky you. 

Spaces like this are used by members of the Misery when they’re sent to hunt in the World. Offices of this kind are scattered in almost-unreachable locations around the World Above. Mostly, they go unused - the World Below has a lot more targets, these days. The room has pitch black walls, pitch black floors, no windows, and twelve austere, humble seats, arranged in a semicircle to face a gigantic throne decorated with smoked glasswork tortoises and snakes.

 

At the side of the chamber, there is a gigantic metal cabinet sealed by a magical lock that only opens to a secret password known by the Misery (or, well, to a magic, or to sacred steel pliers). Inside the cabinet are eight locked metal boxes, each containing around 100 talents of value in ten different currently-in-use currencies, for bribing people in the course of the duties of the Misery. 

The boxes contain:

1. 100 Talents from the Kingdom. Gold, precisely minted. Obverse: Royal Icon, reverse: Mint’s Mark. 

2. 200 Rupya from Kelkora. Small, light, silver, made with Iron Scripture, worth 0.5T each. Obverse: Seal of Great Kelkora, reverse: Agonist’s Mask. 

3. 10 Para, minted by the Scarn. Gold, palm-sized, hammer-minted, worth 10T each. Obverse: Lightning Killing an Eagle, reverse: Praying Mantis. 

4. 33 Feathers, from Arantheir. Gold, oblong with a hole in one end, looped on ropes. Worth 3T each. Obverse: Winged Figure with a Crown of Fire, reverse: Clarion. 

5. 20 Numis, from Ebrelin. Blue silver, beautifully made, worth 5T each. Obverse: Ship at Sea, reverse: Faceted Gem. 

6. 20 Dagger Coins, from Liyru. Iron, acid etched with an impossibly detailed pattern. Worth 5T each. All are light weapons. 

7. 50 Dirhams, from Sergor. White steel, worth 2T each, absorbs light then glows in the dark. Obverse: Warrior Killing a Lion, reverse: Peach Fruit, Leaves and a Star. 

8. 100 True Currency, from the Stars. Silver, worth 1T each. Obverse: Impossibly Detailed Star-Map, reverse: Symbol of Divination. 

Your average PC only has any fucking idea what 1 and 2 are. 

On the top shelf of the cabinet is a spherical communication-glass. It allows you to, by expending an MD or CD, make a direct connection with the spirit Psychometry, one of Winter’s assistants. You will appear to Psychometry as a shimmering vision in the air, and you will see his rough surroundings. Psychometry is kind of a gentleman detective, and often busy, but he’ll be polite with you, and have a full conversation. After this, roll SKLL or damage the glass. 

Any theft or damage here is a faux pas - Nirupama will be angry, as she has no interest in angering Lady Winter or her Misery. 

3. ENGINE CHAMBER

Metallic macramé decorates the walls of this room, which is dominated by a clockwork device contained within a 20ft-on-a-side cubical latticework of steel, which suspends it away from the walls and somewhat baffles its otherwise deafening ticking and tocking. It occasionally plumes out thick, cold vapour, or light, hot steam.When it needs maintenance, the Khthesines dart around it like bees at a hive, directed by Upasana. 

If someone other than the Khthesines had to maintain it, for some reason, they would need to use the access hatch in ENGINE MAINTENANCE, and crawl directly into its inexplicable inner workings, hoping not to be crushed. 

This gigantic machine powers the lifts, the Orloj, and all similar clockwork devices inside the Crystal Castle. It is a work of the stellar lord Machine, who has a habit of producing annoyingly-physics-defying devices such as this. Many believe he does this just to annoy Scribes who study the physical laws. Damaging it in any way is a total faux pas, and a crime against the Castle. Actually destroying it will personally anger Machine - he treats every individual creation like a delicate painter of watercolours. 

4. THE GREAT ORLOJ 

Blocks of lilac crystal glass are laid against the translucent walls of this chamber, giving it an otherworldly feeling. Dominating the chamber, set against the north wall, is a twenty-foot tall, ten-foot wide clock, with a clear glass case displaying its perfect gears of Sacred Steel turning within. 

The face is made of a single huge piece of onyx, with white-steel arms that give off a constant low luminance in the room’s artificial permanent twilight. The numbers are carved from bright cherry-red spinels. Something like this could no longer be made, but thankfully it would take impossible effort to destroy it. The Orloj tells perfect, universal time. Removing it from the Castle would be an absurd task, but it’s so valuable money can barely quantify it. 

5. ENGINE MAINTENANCE

Crystalline tools humming with their own resonance and dark lubricant oil stand ready to attend to the complex workings of the castle. A shared space for use by all, of course - maintenance on the engine is a sort of communal, almost religious activity for the Khthesines, and seeing the Khiones, Sentries, or Navacar attempt to assist fills them with the closest they can get to a warm fuzzy feeling. 

A steel hatch in the wall connects to a small crawlway, which leads through into the interior of the engine in ENGINE CHAMBER. The hatch is locked, and the only key is in NIRUPAMA’S OFFICE. 

6. HALL OF FROZEN INTRUDERS

Entering here, you might think it’s another room filled with someone’s statuary. Then, looking closer, you might see just how realistic the “statues” are, see the muted colours of life, and feel the terrible chill radiating from the otherworldly white ice cloaking their bodies. 

Some of the more notable people detained within are:  

• Ha-yun Brozyna - A powerful Void Astrologer (Template D), who deliberately broke the Crystal Castle’s laws (via a massive quantity of petty theft), in order to frame-perfectly dodge the furious retribution of Obscure Maw Plague, a mighty Unlit spirit and her former patron who she cheated out of a deal. Refusing to bring a pestilence right into the heart of Rozendak, she instead took the money and the magic mirror she was offered and booked it south. She located the Castle by the advice of her spirits (mostly Darkness and Abjure) then proceeded to formulate the time-skipping freezing plan on a whim. She is chaotic, a little insane, sometimes cruel, but mostly morally upright. She also happens to be the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, so watch out for that shit. [Sentence Progress: 3/5 Years] 

• Signatory Gunwu Sierra - A very overbold Hammer Signatory from Serias, entirely lacking in self-preservation instincts. Living in Svietasala, he heard of the Crystal Castle from the reported stories of a few arrested montañe bandits, and resolved to establish its reality. Despite succeeding in doing so, he made an enemy of the Castle’s inhabitants by attempting to steal the secrets of the Engine and trying to cart off a number of hand-portable clockworks. He is a very intelligent fool, and has not yet heard of the revolution consuming his homeland. [Sentence Progress: 1.2/2 Years] 

• Ardghal Seriov - The greatest hero of the Grey Nomads, thought dead for centuries, but no, just frozen here. His absurd career of worldwide robbery, adventure, derring-do, drunkenness, bravery, fraud, standing backflips and horse-riding tricks came to an end in the Crystal Castle, when his complicated multi-step kidnapping-robbery-siege-ambush-trick plan collapsed all at once. This left him somehow alone and disarmed in his shirtsleeves at the head of the glacier. He accepted trial and freezing over a fruitless fight. Note: he will immediately attempt to resume his career of mayhem if freed.  [Sentence Progress: 449/500 Years] 

• Dorji-Roshan - A Kelkoran swordmaster of modern legend, and passable Iron Scribe in the tradition of Maqsud Wafiya. He came to the castle wielding HORIZON MY HAND with the intent to duel, defeat and assassinate Lady Nirupama. He failed at this despite wounding her, though Nirupama isn’t exactly sure if her victory was due to skill or chance. They shall not return the sword to him when his sentence is up, naturally. The Castle’s inhabitants believe his actions were driven by arrogance and hubris - none know that he was contracted by the Transparency faction of Stellar politics, with the promise of a whole city to rule in the World Below as his reward.  [Sentence Progress: 151/200 Years]   

• The Long Silhouette - A strange dark figure, faceless and shadowy, with overly long limbs. A man twisted almost beyond recognition by the Void, used as a weapon of murder by the Unlit lord Nowhere, he was dispatched to destroy Nirupama with voidly poison and a cursed knife, and nearly succeeded, too. Enjoying the dreamless sleep of frozen stillness, would resent being unfrozen, but then immediately set about his task once again.  [Sentence Progress: 368/1000 Years] 

• Edmund Lao Bing - A small-time scammer from the city of Dramyth who managed to get himself massively in over his head. Absurdly lucky up until this exact moment, his arrest and freezing came as a genuine surprise to him. He may not be able to resist the temptation to try and scam the Khthesines again once he is released. [Sentence Progress: 2.8/3 years] 

They are joined by a crowd of various criminals from the local villages (as mentioned in OUBLIETTE), failed bandits from the area, the bodyguards of Sgnr. Sierra, and a few very lost Solar soldiers who reacted badly to the general atmosphere of the Castle. All are on fairly short sentences.

7. OFFICE OF NUMBERS

High, vaulted ceiling, decorated with crystalline icicles. Ice-cold, dry, silent. Around stand tensegrity writing-desks, tables with iron legs, reinforced iron safes covered in thick layers of stellar ice, and huge glass prisms flickering with glittering lights. This is the office where Tanvi carefully reviews the finances of the Crystal Castle (after all, Lord Currency is a Stellar spirit, and so they use money like you or I). 

Much of the financial matters, however, concern the castle’s holdings here in the Sierra Xelar, which are scattered around the vales and the mountains. If I run this dungeon as the crescendo of a campaign, players will recognise the places they have been - e.g., the high-mountain market-town of Havenferk, various isolated montañe villages, the camps of pale, world-weary hunters with a wry manner, and so on. 

This office is Tanvi’s exclusive domain. She despises that the staircases connect to her sanctum sanctorum, and has marked the paths on the floor you are allowed to use with little ankle-height silver chains looping along on Y-shaped steel stands. Accidentally stepping over means you will need to beg for Tanvi’s wrath to be averted. Deliberately stepping over makes her incandescently angry, and is a faux pas sufficient for her to demand that you be expelled from the castle, and killed and frozen in the glacier and dug up and killed again and  - - 

Nirupama is unlikely to kill you over this. But she will consider it, if you have otherwise annoyed her.  

8. HALL OF TROPHIES

Sadhana has crowded her trophies into the east half of the room to allow space for the relatively new efforts of Pratibha to flourish. The imbalance remains slightly amusing to visitors. The east end of the room is a maze of vitrines, drawn black curtains, and pedestals. The west is wide-open, and lit bright and reflective by the great tall windows. 

Each case or stand will be described in terms of what is physically there, and then the respective Khthesine’s comment in italics, afterwards. 

Pratibha’s Most Notable Trophies

1. The head of a massive boar, suspended in a solution inside a tall tank, bubbles clinging to the bristles. It must have been about seven feet tall at the withers, with beady little red eyes.
   “Such beasts aren’t uncommon in the Castle’s environs. Still, this was quite the hog.”

2. The black bones of a huge reptile, partially wrapped in cloth - gouging claws, a spine as thick as your torso, and a blocky, fanged skull with no eyeholes.
   “A disagreeable creature, this thing was  - they call it a Cacus, I think?”

3. A huge head on an equally huge set of spikes, eyeless and dried-out, but probably once slick and amphibian in nature. Sort of resembles the midpoint between the head of a gigantic man and a gigantic salamander, with massive protruding curved fangs, translucent and jagged.
   “The western edge of the world has some truly remarkable game, I must say.” 

4. The carcass of a huge bird, with a long spearlike beak, huge talons, and two broken wings. Every single feather is bristly and barbed - stick your hand into the corpse’s dry down, and it will come away either torn and bleeding, or with multiple feathers stuck into it.
   “They call these bristlebirds. They fly the plains west of the World Above. For all their danger and pride, they’re vulnerable to high-velocity bolts from a decent distance.” 

5. In a glass case, the sawn off head of a huge snake, with a wide flared hood brightly sunset-coloured on the underside. The inside of the glass is covered in a foggy green residue, and slightly decayed in places.
   “Quite the challenge! With the acid spit, it had me matched for range, though sadly, it didn’t in cunning.” 

6. An entire gigantic locust, dried and preserved in a glass case, pinned to a board with a comically oversized steel pin. A precise headshot with a narrow bolt seems to have killed it.
   “They get these in Laxakai, sometimes. Thousands of them in a swarm. I aided in protecting the harvest, one year. Excellent target practice.”

7. The front half of a gigantic beetle, about five times the size of a person, with its long whiplike antennae tied to its spiny speartipped legs, and its huge scything mandibles splayed open.
   “Tigerbugs, they call them. They’re common in the Amaranth, and venture to surrounding places. That place is very primal and untamed - after I shot this fellow down, an even bigger creature came along and bit my trophy in half!” 

8. Cabinet of 12 crowlike skulls as big as a person’s torso, all with huge heavy beaks. Unlike a crow’s skull, they appear to be adapted for weight and heft rather than lightness. Most are partially shattered by the bolt which killed them.
   “Rooks, from the World Below. They are a common sight in the east and south. ”

Sadhana’s Most Notable Trophies

1. A torso-sized frozen egg, covered in foggy opalescent swirls. Undamaged, unblemished. If thawed out, it would soon hatch into an inquisitive, hungry bright-blue snake some five feet long, with a pair of soft feathery birdlike wings. The bites of such Clutch-serpents can injure spirits, and when they get big enough, they can even eat them whole. And they happen to get very big.
   “I have some sympathy for the creature, but the Serpent’s spawn are too dangerous to let fly free, in the end.” 

2. An apparently-human skull, covered in strange green veins like it’s made of marble. A small, perfect hole is cracked into the middle of the forehead. The attendant mandible is not present.
   “Omnisclavus, the so-called King of Dlerac. I killed him quite thoroughly. It’s a shame he won’t exactly stay dead. Hmph!” 

3. A shattered stone, previously in a multifaceted shape, now in a number of shards frozen in a large block of clear, unmelting ice. Through the ice, you can see the surface of the stone warps, shimmers and ripples under the light. Stare for a minute or more, and you must save or be stunned. While stunned, you are half-awake and impressionable.
   “A hypnotic stone. The wielder didn’t stand up to the lightning-bolt so well, so I took the shattered remains of his stone as my trophy. Don’t stare too long.”

4. The chained, mummified corpse of a large, furry mammal, somewhere between a bulky wolf and a long, slender bear. It has frightfully large teeth, muzzled with a thick chain, and deadly slicing claws on all four legs, which are manacled together like it’s a prisoner awaiting trial.
   “Why the chains? Well, creatures such as this can occasionally be taken by brief bursts of murderous vitality, even decades after their deaths. If I was more scholarly, I’d have dedicated decades to fruitlessly seeking why, instead of merely years.”

5. A massive chunk of a crustacean, a quarter of a hemispherical shimmering shell, some chitinous “fur”, and a few thick, sharp-ended legs, curled in after the beast’s demise.
   “I went to Yore, to try to visit the Sage, the spirit History, but I couldn’t approach their castle. Insufficient gnosis, I suppose. Anyway, I consoled myself by hunting this huge nasty crab.” 

6. Contained inside a sealed glass jar of impressive size, floating in solution, are a dried tangle of hundreds of small, pale tentacles, attached to a huge chunk of black, gelatinous flesh.
   “A creature of the deep Void. I didn’t manage to slay the beast, it dove back up before I could strike the final blow. But I managed to rip this off, for a souvenir.” 

7. Situated on an iron plinth, an overlarge, blackened ribcage, smouldering constantly.
   “Some Herald burnt by imitating the Sun. All that was left of him. All that fire didn’t help him win.” 

8. Contained in a vitrine, something like a huge hollow metallic torso, with articulated shoulders, a blasted-open head, and the jagged rusty remains of leg-joints.
   “A very odd eidolon, from Baejan lands. Sort of like a gigantic kettle, really.” 

9. Situated on a plinth, a shattered statue head made of flint, somewhat resembling a jagged, angular wolf or jackal.
   “In Kuiral, they make eidolons out of flint, like this one. They lie in silent ambush for years at a time, waiting for a foe to come along. Very admirable.”

10. Something resembling the head of a huge crocodile. The head itself is the size of a person, and has a “beard” and “moustache” of silvery metal wire. The scales are made of a shiny greenish-black stone, and the glazed-over, unfocused eyes are a bright orange. It floats in a sealed vitrine full of a thick, viscous oil. Dark colour has bled slightly into the oil nearest the scales.
    “Younger jiaolongs’ golden scales turn to mere rock when they die. An elder such as this, however, converts immediately to highly lethal othstone. Revenge on its slayer, I suppose. Sadly for this particular beast, I was at an appreciable distance.”

9. SADHANA’S CHAMBER

Dark, almost monastic, though dominated by indigo, a shade which screams expense to an inhabitant of the World Above. Framed by the sole large window, a massive statue of a praying mantis hangs over the place, made of iron, and decorated with shining cazrin zigzags. Despite what seem to be candles and offerings laid below it, Sadhana is careful to insist it is not a shrine. If it were a shrine, of course, Lady Nirupama would have to destroy her as a traitor, and nobody wants that. So everyone agrees it is something like an art piece resembling a shrine. 

Scattered around are various trophies of an ancient war - blackened bones, shattered stone offering bowls, twisted cazrin knives, the melted heads of idols, occasionally with animal ears - that sort of thing. 

10. PRATIBHA’S CHAMBER

At the peak of the northern tower, stairs ascend through furs hung from iron hooks to the thick steel door of this room. It’s a bit of a mess - crowded with trinkets, cabinets, glass jars and iron boxes. In some are scattered handfuls of Stellar currency (41T total, in the whole room). In others, arrowheads, fancy gloves, small watercolours crumpled up, gewgaws, knickknacks and various cheap trinkets, which suggest wavering but intense interest. This almost crowds out the decorative style - silver wire, silver scrollwork, on black walls, black curtains, and a glossy black floor. Hanging on one wall is a crescent-bladed axe. This is a Pact-Axe, from a land below called Uhtar - if she is ever needed to protect that place, the axe will peal like a bell and she shall hear it from any distance. She agreed to it on a whim, and quite likes the feeling it gives her. 

In the steel armoire are many black outfits, all fetching and practically cut, in styles of the lands of the World Above. A fine Kelkoran huntress’ garb, a Magnite robe (patterned with black gears on a near-black field), and floppy woven hat (dyed black), courtly Zzargovi wear with cuffs of pitch-black fur, and even stiffly-starched and wide-ruffed Capitoline fashion (substituting the white for black, and the gold also for black). One must always be prepared for any social occasion, even the seemingly extremely unlikely ones. 

11. TANVI’S CHAMBER

At the peak of the northeast tower,  stairs ascend through gleaming curtains of white silk to the thick steel door of this room, which is always locked if Tanvi isn’t in it. 

Inside, lapis-blue furnishings, and pale pearly white floor, tall clean steel furniture supporting a precisely-arranged spiderweb of interlinked ledgers, itineraries, schedules and sewing projects. Among them, a tall narrow steel-cornered thing like a lady’s vanity, but instead of cosmetics it is used for the purpose of gunsmithing. The chamber is aggressively pristine. Tanvi will, without exaggeration, notice a single speck of dirt out of place. 

12. UPASANA’S CHAMBER 

At the peak of the southeast tower, stairs ascend through curtains of thousands of multicoloured glass beads to the thick steel door of this room. Upasana doesn’t bother locking the door to her room, reasoning that if anyone came all the way up here, they must know what she’s been working on within, and want to see it. 

Absurdly ornate and complex glass pieces hang on the walls, surrounded by what seem to be clocks, though if they are measuring time, it is not our time. Against the north wall, a strange silvery vision is laid out: a combination of a diorama, bas-relief and painting, depicting an absurd city consisting exclusively of vast, broad towers, rectangular and dotted with many windows. They would be impossible to construct, even with Stellar skills, you think. They are looming up above narrow, canyonlike streets, deep and detailed with tiny trees, and crowds of happy miniature people. The walls here are thinned to give every canyon-street an unearthly white glow in daylight, radiating from ground-level up towards the dark crowns of the myriad towers. Upasana will cheerfully report that this is her best projection of what the Oecumene will look like. Seems quite a maddening vision of the future, all told.  

13. RADHA’S CHAMBER

At the peak of the southwest tower, stairs ascend through webs of tied translucent string to the thick steel door of this room. Trying to turn the handle without the key to the room inserted causes a weighted net to fire from a concealed alcove in the ceiling. Beyond that door, the room’s interior is plain, pragmatic, durable and as unadorned as anything made by a Khthesine ever gets. 

The desk drawers are spring-loaded such that they’ll snap out and break your arm - Radha’s fine, she’s got the strength of a machine, but you don’t. If you open the cabinet behind the standing mirror, you will find it contains nothing but spring-loaded bands that shoot out and wrap round the unwary opener. The chair in front of the desk is fake (Radha never sits), it’s a fiendishly complex restraining device that activates upon any pressure on the seat, folding such that the would-be occupant must kneel with arms behind their back. Open the wrong box under the bed, and a puff of blue dye powder is blasted in your face. Reach too deeply into the tall standing cabinet and you may touch a metal strip, which serves as the trigger for a knee-height snare to lash out, tie your legs together, then haul you upside down to the ceiling. Actually, why is there even a bed - ah, yes, the “duvet” is just another spring-loaded weighted net, ready to snare the unwary. 

14. VIDYA’S CHAMBER

At the peak of the northwest tower, stairs ascend through brass chainmail curtains to the thick steel door of this room. Sound constantly emanates from within. Entering, you’ll find the place decorated with silver-wire macramé, cloth-of-gold tapestries, and reflective white marble floors. 

The chamber is dominated by a singular, immobile instrument, driven by steel and brass clockwork. It’s a huge automatic glass harmonica, turning away, producing a constant ethereal tone. When Vidya is in the room, she consistently approaches the wide bank of ivory keys and brass levers to adjust the tone for optimality in conversation (or even combat, if you attack her). Damaging Vidya’s glass harmonica will make you her foe for life, a faux pas par excellence. You see, the glasswork was so precise, she had to resort to the spirit Glasswork, a minor Solar spirit, who charged through the nose. 

Various musical instruments are scattered throughout the remainder of the room on shelves and racks:

• A huge metal flute (could be used as a medium weapon), which hovers horizontally under its own power when not held. Has a very wide range of tones. 

• A pair of music-swords - these are medium single-edged steel blades with capacious handguards, that whistle eerily when swung in certain ways, and ring resonantly when parrying each other. A duel (to the death, or for demonstration) can thus become a song. 

• A cazrin carnyx, eight feet tall. This lightning-born metal is the essence of strident power. It’s best known for spirit-wounding swords, but it has been shaped here into a tall crow-headed pipe. The carnyx produces a violently loud, ear-splitting, thunderous blast when blown. It’s not particularly tuneful. If someone blows it right next to your ear you’ll probably get a migraine, or maybe throw up on the spot. 

• A steel-framed harp with razor-sharp strings, studded with 100T of diamonds. Human fingers cannot play it without being sliced to bits. 

• A self-driven keyboard-operated device put together by Vidya on a whim. The keys are fine ivory, and the body of the thing is brass. A trio of goofy flaring pipes project from one end. Once wound up, the machine “breathes”, filling a leather bag inside itself, then coughs out awkward tooting notes at the keys’ urging. Vidya has grown to loathe the thing and will take any excuse to pawn it off on anyone who seems even vaguely interested. 

• A wide set of brass panpipes. Rather too small for Vidya, they’re a sort of child’s distraction toy for curious human troubadours who insist on trying to play a stellar instrument. 

• A large pearl-decorated lute, made of dark wood and lustrous bluish material of unclear origin. Just under the headstock, a length of translucent shimmering snakeskin is tied off. This is a Lunar Minstrel’s instrument, kept by Vidya for the unlikely emergency where she is called to play lullabies for the great Lunar serpent. 

TOP FLOOR

1. OBSERVATORY

All beautiful glass and spindles of crystal, cold like the peak of a mountain - the ice and air that rushes through would make an unaware visitor mistake this armature for open space. It spiders up into the peak of the Crystal Castle, shot through with light and lucidity. The floor is vast, dark, opaque and reflective, showing a faint image of the sky above. 

What a sky! No cloud dares linger above to block the clear view of the FIRMAMENT - all the suspended constellations of the Stars, and the many-faced Moon and burning Sun, and the black Void that churns. This is a view of pure wonder to even a hardened cynic (or of rage, to a hardened Omnicide). 

Seeking attempts made from the Observatory have +3 to their roll, or +5 for Stellar spirits.

2. UPPERMOST RAMPARTS

Icy winds scour this outer battlement at all times, and there is nearly always snow falling upon it. It is light in the warmer parts of the year, but in Winter, it becomes a total whiteout, a consuming and obscuring blizzard. 

Situated at the northwestern corner of these ramparts is a gigantic thing recognisable as a cannon, with a short, broad rifled barrel. It sits upon a wheeled carriage next to a rack of odd cannonballs. This is a highly experimental, valuable and dangerous prototype of a new kind of mortar, developed as a seasonal project by the militant Stellar lord Cold Voyager Stronghold, a member of the Complexity party. It can launch explosive shells anywhere in the Castle’s valley, but is very much not a stable design yet, and has a 1-in-20 chance of catastrophically exploding every time it’s fired. 

3. NIRUPAMA’S OFFICE

Bouquets of simple clockwork flowers that open at night, and hundreds of clocks with brightly glowing faces casting beams of light into the room. Fine chains, tiny bells, kinetic sculptures and windvanes. Open sections admit the freezing glacial winds.  The walls and machines are light and transparent, perfectly balanced, kept in a singular equilibrium. Of course, Nirupama can always tell when someone has been in here. 

There is a desk, a chair, a few strange hovering spiral steel bookcases, and two curious things: a beam of light and a block of glass, either side of the desk. 

In the beam of light, hovering, are copies of many, many keys, not all of which open doors within the Crystal Castle. Among them, wide-bodied and made of heavy cold steel, is the sole key to the ENGINE MAINTENANCE hatch. 

Sealed inside a solid block of glass is an extremely potent version of the castle’s unfreezing solution. The bottle is reinforced black crystal, banded with blue steel. This single bottle - drop by drop - could unfreeze every prisoner in the Castle, and have some left over. If you shattered it at the head of the glacier below the castle, it would transform over the course of an hour into a deadly flood that would turn the narrow mountain valleys into raging torrents and consume Xelar County, potentially killing thousands. If used carefully, it could slowly melt the glacier, creating a brand new tributary of the River Lithan - it would wind down from the mountains, and go a long way to alleviating the drought caused by the Sun King’s suppression of that river. 

4. THRONE ROOM 

Situated upon a revolving armoured daïs, which can be turned by engine-powered gears to face any of the chamber’s massive windows, there sits a throne sized for a giant, carved out of a huge single piece of black crystal, banded with shining white and muted rainbows. Situated upon the seat of that throne is a second, removable one, made of interlocked pieces of steel. The smaller throne is sized for Nirupama, the larger for Lady Winter, or Lady Standstill, as is appropriate. Perhaps someday it will be sat by Lord Divination, oldest of all the spirits of the Stars, - after all, it is expected that he will travel widely in the prophesied final age of Creation. 

5. TEMPLE TO DIVINATION

A vast, mostly empty room, dark save for the light from the high windows and the statue within. This is a sacred space for the castle’s inhabitants. Noise and disrespect in here is a universal faux-pas. 

The statue is thirty feet tall, made of pure sacred steel, grey as the fog, white as the snow, blue as the thunderbolt. It shimmers brightly in the light of the distant luminaries. It depicts a huge, robed figure, with a head constructed of indestructible sacred-steel wireframe and hundreds of arms spilling from his shoulders, becoming more and more indistinct wireframe as they trail out behind him like vast wings. Many of the hands hold open books that shine like lanterns and cast white beams onto the distant crystal rafters. A “halo” of quills orbits above his head, but in his right hand, he holds a bizarrely simple stylus, worked as if carved from bone. 

Upon the statue’s plinth are inscribed glowing words: 

Praise to Divination, Scribe of God!