VEL-KHAR-BEL-VEL

The Thane's Tier  ·  Vel-Khar Summit  ·  Seat of the Thane of Kharak-Bel  ·  Kharak-Bel-Khar

“Skarra Vel-Khar sent me one message, through Bera Khar-Thul, over the course of our correspondence. The message described her meeting with the Joturvolk representative as instructive in both directions. I have been thinking about those four words since I received them. In particular I have been thinking about what the Joturvolk found instructive about meeting Skarra, which is a question I cannot answer without knowing what Skarra told them. I would very much like to know what Skarra told them.”

— G.C.P.S.A., Descriptio Aethermarchae, 1197 A.P.

The Vel-Khar-Bel-Vel is the summit level of Kharak-Bel's atrium -- Skarra Vel-Khar's governing tier, thirty years into a Thaneship that was inherited young and conducted with the focused attention of someone who understood from the beginning what the hold's position required of them. Varro knows none of this from direct observation. He knows it from Bera Khar-Thul's account of inter-hold politics and the one message Skarra sent through her. The message was four words. They were precise enough that Varro has been working out their implications for two years.

Demographics

The tier's permanent population is dominated by Skarra's research archivists -- the specialists who manage the giant oral archive research project and maintain the cipher sections of the intelligence record. The household staff are fewer than at comparable holds of Kharak-Bel's size; Skarra has redirected resources toward the research function that she considers the tier's most strategically significant activity. The Thanus Magnus at Thalgrimm receives the quarterly intelligence summary from here that covers the northern approaches and the giant contact record. He reads it promptly and responds to it infrequently, which Skarra has learned to interpret as a specific register of acknowledgement.

Points of interest

The giant oral archive research section occupies the tier's most secured chambers -- a suite of rooms where thirty years of accumulated material from Skarra's gem-for-information exchange with the Joturvolk is stored, translated, cross-referenced, and analysed. The material covers twelve previous Pale Wanderer approaches, the three anomalies that distinguish the current approach from all previous arrival vectors, and the Verdrsplit Saga cycle's description of what the pre-Rift atmospheric conditions look like when they match what the Saga's keepers are currently observing. Access to this section is limited to Skarra and three senior research archivists.

The second communication to the Thanus Magnus -- the one whose silence in reply Skarra has been interpreting for six months -- was composed at the tier's working desk and sent through the Duum-Vel-Khar courier system. Its contents are in the cipher archive section. Skarra has begun a third communication. She has not yet decided whether to send it or to wait for someone other than the Thanus Magnus to ask the right question.

DM ONLY

The third communication Skarra is drafting is not addressed to the Thanus Magnus. It is addressed, tentatively, to Varro -- the only Roman scholar whose published work she has assessed as methodologically capable of understanding what the giant oral archive research implies. She has three drafts. The first is too technical for a Roman reader without Joturvolk oral archive context. The second is too vague to be actionable. The third begins: 'You asked, in your published monograph on Rift chronology, whether the interval between Permutatios is fixed or variable. The interval is variable. I can tell you by how much, and what that means for the Thirteenth.' She has not sent it because she cannot determine, from Varro's published work alone, whether he is in a position to act on the information or merely to publish it. She needs to know which of these he is before she sends the letter. She has no Roman contact who can tell her.

Architecture

Three centuries of Vel-Khar governance has not produced the twelve-century accumulated weight of Thalgrimm's tier or the eight centuries of Karneth's. The stonework is accomplished -- Kharak-Bel's founding generation were experienced engineers -- but the rune-walls carry three centuries of dynastic record rather than twelve, and the gem-garden cultivation in the tier's reception chambers features the blue-white crystal formations that are the hold's geological characteristic at an earlier stage of their designed development. The tier looks, by Bera's account, like a hold that knows what it intends to become and has not yet had the time to become it fully. She does not mean this as criticism.

Geography

The Thane's Tier at Kharak-Bel sits at the summit of the hold's atrium, its position giving it the greatest exposure to the cold that the northern spur's geology retains -- the tier requires the highest gas output of any comparable level in the seven holds, the mountain's thermal character making the summit level the coldest space in an already cold hold. Skarra's working rooms are the most heavily heated spaces in the tier. The research archive adjacent to them is maintained at a lower temperature by deliberate calibration, the stone tablet records performing better in cold conditions than in warmth.

Type

District

Population

~85 permanent household staff and research archivists.

Owner/Ruler

Skarra Vel-Khar