Lexicon/HarborofStars
Harbor of Stars
From the writings of Foundation Apex, archivist to Ledaal Visaren of Tuchara:
In describing the Harbor of Stars, I can hardly better Decia Dakar’s description in her Journal of the Cascade Years. Therefore I present it here, unedited:
- “The city of Meru sprang like a faerie’s dream from the brow of the First Mountain. At the highest point in the city, there rose a spire of crystal and gold and living rosewood, at which skyships and celestial barges docked. These vessels traveled to the eight corners of Creation and even to the city of Yu-Shan beyond the sky. In the day, the skyships shone like jeweled fish of rainbow metal; in the night, they gleamed like constellations. As a result, the spire (and the neighborhood that surrounded it) became known as the Harbor of Stars.”
For the historian, the Harbor of Stars is best known as the site of the Eleven Celestial Murders. Most of our knowledge of these events comes from The Annals of the Falling Sun and Flawless Mirror’s History and Its Impact.
In the Accrual Period, that grim interval preceding the Overthrow, certain parties in the Solar Deliberative found themselves at odds with one or more factions in the Celestial Bureaucracy. Unable to press their agenda politically, and unwilling to brave the guardians of Heaven, these cowardly Anathema began a systematic campaign of assassination against their opponents. Over a period of weeks, several important gods were murdered as they stepped from their star-barges onto the docks of the Harbor of Stars.
The Celestial Bureaucracy launched a massive investigation, under the combined authority of the dragon Fakharu and the god Rahash-Nu, Daimyo of Justice. Responsibility was pinned on the Solar Anathema Orya Solis, a survivor of the Brotherhood of Certain Fates, who was believed to have been nursing a grudge since the Maiden and Shadow War over a thousand years earlier. Orya Solis fled the judgment of Heaven, and the case was closed at the behest of the Eight Immortalities Fellowship. That body’s complicity in the Eleven Celestial Murders was rumored, but never proven.
Flawless Mirror, who observed the murder of Al-Ghani, Lord of the Southern Flames, wrote that “No change of form nor enchanted disguise could conceal Quicksilver Scribe’s identity from me. She bore Grassblade as elegantly as the brush with which she painted her landscapes.” The Register of Enchanted Weapons of that era verifies that the Lunar Anathema Quicksilver Scribe owned Grassblade at that time. In his official report, the celestial censor Fakharu assigned responsibility for the murder to “the Lunar assassin Grassblade, using the living weapon known to all as her signature.” We may safely determine that Quicksilver Scribe was, in fact, the assassin Grassblade, and furthermore that she bore the weapon of the same name, no matter what my bumbling, benighted colleague Bal Terin may say to the contrary.
See Also:
- Brotherhood of Certain Fates
- Flawless Mirror
- Grassblade
- Journal of the Cascade Years
- Maiden and Shadow War, The
- Register of Enchanted Weapons
- Solis and Lunis
- Other H Entries
No signature? ;)\\ Awesome entry. I like what you did with Quicksilver Scribe, although I suspect my personal cosmology may end up contradicting it at some point. Le sigh ... :)\\ ~ Shataina
Good catch! And yeah, that can be a problem; I've generally avoided putting in stuff from my own game for that very reason. Though I expect that I'll be adding a Lexicon item or two, if something catches my fancy. - Quendalon
