The Archives of the Rill Elves sound fascinating (I'm a librarian in training)! What can you tell me about them? Are they open to the public? Who runs/manages them? Tell me all the cool stuff!
hi!! happy wbw, sorry this is so late!!! <3
the archives of Tal'Ren are one of my favorite things in all of sieril, even including the whiptails and the glowing cypresses, so thank you for asking about them!!!
Please excuse my handwriting on the map, but here's the floorplan for Tal'Ren:
As you can see, the Archives span all four floors of Tal'Ren! For scale, each of those bigger purple rooms along the bottom of each floor is about the size of a multi-generational family home.
The Archives are free to access for anyone who wants to, so long as they treat the older documents with delicacy and respect. For the most part, they're a painstakingly-accurate trove of every correspondence Eternal Veratrum has received or sent during her reign, down to exact copies of the oldest ones that have succumbed to the humidity and light. Veratrum oversees all of the replicating, because she knows every one like the back of her own hand, and likes to make sure nothing is lost to time. A vast majority of the people in Tal’Ren are related to at least one Archivist, too.
Aside from letters and well-wishes, Veratrum also keeps a collection of her favorite books sorted by decade, as well as works from the greats of each half-century. There’s guides for pretty much any skill you can think of, and philosophies of the masters of any kind of fighting you can imagine.
Veratrum has read them all, and continues to expand her collection. She’s the one who founded the Archive, back when she was first crowned, and back when it was only one floor. She hopes to someday have the wealth of all knowledge there, as far as she can keep up with new developments :)
happy wbw :’) do you think could you give like a mini history of how tal’ren, avarice and glitter glaze were founded? what are the main features of the city that it’s residents are proud of (and what you are, if it’s different from the citizens lol)?
hello!!! yes of course, and sorry this ask took a while to get to!!! <3<3<3
i have A Lot in the glittergale tag as of today, so if you want wayyy more depth on it than i was expecting to go into, feel free to check that out :D
also: this got Quite Long, but I tried to keep it in a bit of a narrative tone, so hopefully you enjoy everything behind the cut!! i tried to go in depth on everything, though glittergale got a bit cut off because ive talked so much about it today :)
but!!! the founding of Tal'Ren, Avatica, and Glittergale, coming right up!!!
Tal'Ren
Once upon a time, Sieril was a very peaceful and prosperous land, with a capital city that stretched for miles just off of the Dir’Kal mountains.The Sharali and Rill Ehlves lived side by side, intermingled in urban centers, and were some of the most fortunate people in the world.
And then the Rillian Decay happened. All of the cities of old have fallen into ruin, the Sharali suffered an apocalyptic plague that nearly wiped them out, and the wilds have reclaimed the wonders of the Rill Ehlves of old. Only a few scattered towns and cities cling to the edges of the bayou and the geyser country, while the temperate rainforest wilds are completely uninhabited, and the Sharali are stuck in the northern swamps.
Tal’Ren was the first safe haven outpost after the Decay, and it’s slowly been built up over the last two thousand years. It’s not quite a city, as it’s all in one fort, and just a few thousand people live within, but it’s the biggest settlement that far inland, now. And it’s important enough to the Rill that it’s become the default seat of power for the Rillmother.
The thing of most pride there would have to be the Archives, in world, which I’ll delve into in a later ask. Though as the author, I also really like the indoor gardens that are the center for the community. They make what could’ve been a very dreary and depressing hideaway into a lively, colorful haven.
Avatica
Avatica is a city nearly five thousand years old, and though that seems like a long time, it’s in a land of much older civilizations. And, well... Humans didn’t originate anywhere on the current Ehlverse map. They came from a continent known as Eqia, that spanned a large portion of the massive ocean between western Sieril and the eastern Maelands.
A decay struck Eqia about five thousand years ago, in the Decay that came before the Growth of the Common Tongue. The entire continent disappeared, as well as thousands of years of Human history, and any other peoples that may or may not have lived there, too. What few people were in the Maelands at the time built up a ramshackle town to call home on the edges of the Melkan prairie, overlooking the bay they had first stepped foot in, and resigned themselves to a life in a land practically unknown to them.
It’s turned out alright, so far. The crowning achievement of the city is probably the Avatica University of Alchemy, which is the best college to attend if you want to become an Alchemist, Enchanter, or Runesman. Back before the Eternal Three, the fort at it’s center would probably have been more important to them, but with the rise of Alchemy, the government switch to a democracy rather than monarchy, and the Human Eternal himself taking more pride in the university, it’s an easy choice.
Glittergale
Glittergale is it’s own masterpiece, in the eyes of the Dwarves. As one of those most ancient cities of the Maelands, it’s people have had plenty of time to transform it into one of the wonders of Ehl.
Long ago, a small colony of Dwarves were mining into a mountain on the edges of Nimia, when they stumbled upon a giant geode, and the glowing crystals within. This geode was so huge, when other Dwarves started flocking to see it, they decided to found a city within it’s walls of calcite - and, eventually, the city spilled out into the rest of the mountain. And onto the top of the mountain. And into the river beyond, as it widened and met the ocean.
Eventually, the mountain it began in was gradually mined away, so the city that spanned it’s entirety on the outside was held up by the pillars and city of the inside. All centered around the geode, which had since been sculpted into a gorgeous, glowing palace. The river’s natural widening became more and more custom-made for the Dwarves, as they instituted a delta of docks and floating markets and tide-lifted buildings.
The most amazing thing about Glittergale is Glittergale itself, and all who visit are sure to remember that.
