The Chronicle¶
What the Crown teaches, what the Wardens know, and what the rest of us have pieced together.
The founding¶
Before Lyonspyre there was a kingdom whose name is spoken only in the Old Tongue, and nobody living is sure how to say it. Its people cut deep under the mountains and found a Gate that was already there, and behind it something that had been waiting to be found. The Wardens call it the Keeper Beyond the Gate. It does not break seals. It persuades the people holding them.
The old kingdom learned this late. Its coast drowned keeping the sea side of the Gate shut, and its heartland burned keeping the fire side shut. What was left of its people climbed to the highest ground they could find and built a spire with a fire on top, so that anyone looking up from the lowlands would know the Seals still held. They took the lion for a sigil, because a lion does not sleep with both eyes shut. The city is named for that fire. Lyonspyre: the lion's pyre.
The Crown and its Commissions¶
The Crown of Lyonspyre is a duty before it is a throne. Whoever holds it keeps the Seals, and the four Commissions are how a city of ordinary people does that work.
- The Warden's Commission sets Wardens over the Seals and pays for every creature put down beneath them. Veska the Warden is a Warden in the formal sense: an officer of a Seal.
- The Harbor Commission watches the drowned coast, because the sea side of the Gate was never fully shut, and the fleets that come out of the fog prove it.
- The Harvest Commission and the Artisans' Commission feed and arm the Wardens. Every bar of iron and every length of timber that reaches the Commissions is seal-work, whether the smith calls it that or not.
Crown Marks are seal-marks: the Crown's receipt that you did its work. Standing is your standing before the Crown. The Crown Ledger is the week's record of who held the line. The Crown Regalia are the old kingdom's gems, scattered when it fell, which is why there are six and why the Crown wants them back.
Hollowing¶
The Keeper cannot cross. What it can do is answer. Anyone who stands a Seal long enough begins to hear it, and what it says sounds like duty. A Warden who listens is hollowed: emptied from the inside and refilled with the Keeper's purpose, still standing guard, now guarding the Gate for the wrong side.
That is the word, and it is a specific one. In Lyonspyre a hollowed thing is not merely dead or mad. It is something that is still doing its job.
The four Seals¶
The Pit, the cracked seal. The shallowest, and the first to fail. The Crown never set a Warden over it, because a crack that only let rats through did not seem worth one. The Rat King is what that neglect bought, and Rat Island is where it first showed itself. The Crown has since revised its position on small cracks.
The Sunken Temple, the drowned seal. The old kingdom's cathedral, sunk on purpose to drown the sea side of the Gate. The wrecks off Dawnhaven belong to it. The Harbor Commission does not discuss what still holds court in the dark beneath the Tidal Crown, and the Seal holds, for now.
The Pale Cathedral, the oath Seal. The Crown's answer to the Temple: a second church, built above ground, with an Order sworn to ring the vesper bell and keep the threshold. The Order listened too long. When its last monk died the bell did not stop, because the Order had made something to keep ringing it: a reliquary given a Warden's oath and set in the Hollow Sanctuary to stand the threshold alone. It stands it still. The Hollow Saint is that Warden, hollowed by the thing it was set to keep out, and it is the first Seal to fail. The Crown is sending parties into the Sanctuary to relieve it. See the Pale Cathedral and raid encounters.
The Cinderdeep, the fire seal. The deepest, under the mountain, where the fire that burned the old kingdom still runs through the Emberway and the Molten Gallery. The fire is the Seal. Dustfall, far out in the desert, is where its ash lands, and the only place on the surface where you can watch the fire Seal working. It holds.
The towns¶
Lyonspyre is the high ground and the lit spire, seat of the Crown. The lion fountain is the oldest thing in it. Dawnhaven, on the east coast, is the first light after the drowning and the haven the boats found; the Harbor Commission keeps a second port there. Stonereach, in the north, cut the stone the Seals are made of, and its masons' marks are on the Cathedral and the Temple both. Thornmarch is a ranger town behind a living hedge on the edge of the Nadelwald, and the hedge is there for a reason. Dustfall is not a town but a shrine, a moongate standing alone in the dunes under the falling ash.
The Old Tongue¶
The forest is called the Nadelwald because that is what the old kingdom called it, and nobody has translated it since. You will find the Old Tongue on old stones, in old names, and in the mouths of things that should have stopped speaking a long time ago. If something in a Seal says a thing you cannot understand, that is the Old Tongue, and you are not meant to understand it.
What the Crown asks of you¶
Hold the Seals. Take the Commission's work, put down what comes up, bring back what the old kingdom lost, and when the Crown sends a party into the Sanctuary, be the one who relieves the Warden rather than the one who joins it.