Veilspire
| Veilspire | |
|---|---|
| State | Scorval Blight |
| Population | 85,000 |
| Landmarks | Memory-Veils; Nocturnal Markets; Cartomancer Vaults |
| Coordinates | |
Veilspire is the shard-forged capital of Scorval Blight, a city born of griefglass and unquiet memory at the jagged heart of the Blight. By day, its towers stand as blackened spines against the polar wind, their facets scattering Solivar’s light into cruel, violet rays. At dusk, the city convulses: walls soften into molten cascades, alleys flow like rivers of glass, and entire districts slump down basalt cliffs as though grieving. By the time Cyressel completes her second arc, the city has re-frozen into a labyrinth that no map, however recent, can still name.
Overview
Once a green littoral of pine forests and cliffside settlements, Veilspire now rises from a landscape shattered by resonance storms bleeding down from the Aethergrave’s northern bay. The city’s griefglass towers and shifting streets reflect Scorval’s larger truth: here, memory is brittle, identity is negotiable, and the land itself remembers every broken promise.
Every day follows a brutal rhythm. Solivar’s light cuts hard angles through griefglass, exposing scars in stone and people alike. As deepglow approaches, citizens brace for the nightly reshaping, securing goods, tracing safe routes, and whispering last-minute prayers to covenants or ancestors. When the city flows, those who misjudge their footing or their loyalties may wake in a street that no longer exists.
Memory-Veils
Veilspire’s most distinctive custom is the wearing of memory-veils: gauzy shrouds etched with the wearer’s strongest emotion from the previous day. These veils flutter violet in the wind, inked with sigils of grief, rage, resolve, or rare joy.
To go unveiled is considered reckless, even suicidal. Without a veil to anchor one’s sense of self, the city’s nightly rebirth may sear its patterns into an unprotected face, overwriting features and expressions as casually as a scribe scrapes clean a palimpsest. Stories circulate of travelers who entered the city smiling and, a week later, wore masks of sorrow they no longer remembered earning.
Nocturnal Markets
Only after deepglow do Veilspire’s nocturnal markets unfurl beneath storm-bleached awnings. Lanterns of soul-charcoal glow with whispers of last words; tarps are weighed down with reliquaries gnawed from resonance fissures, griefglass pigments that change with the artist’s mood, and shards that hum with echoes of forgotten vows.
Trade here is as much about risk as wealth. Merchants and raiders barter not only coin, but secrets and memories, trading away pain-heavy recollections for tools, weapons, and unstable treasures. Many stalls vanish by dawn, swallowed when the city’s streets melt and reform; only those who understand the flow can reliably return.
Cartomancers
Veilspire’s cartomancers are scribes made half-mad by echo exposure, carving living maps into griefglass slabs with their own blood-ink. Each map pulses faintly, showing alleys and towers as they were hours ago, not as they are now. At dawn, the slabs shudder and redraw themselves in jagged lines, erasing some paths and inventing others.
Travelers pay ruinous sums for a cartomancer who can lead them back to a specific doorway or market twice. Even so, there are no guarantees. It is said that if a cartomancer’s hand shakes while carving a street, the street itself later “shivers,” collapsing or twisting into an impossible angle.
Life in Veilspire
Living in Veilspire means accepting that nothing is permanent: homes, faces, loyalties, even the shape of the city. Oath-breakers from Gravenreach, exiled archivists from Lexharrow, and Fleaspark inventors discarded for excessive recklessness all find purchase here. Some join the covenants that rule griefglass scripture; others scrape out survival guiding caravans through resonance storms.
Hospitality is harsh but real. A traveler who arrives with a true story, a truth-token etched in bone or stone, and the humility to wear a veil may find shelter and guidance. Those who lie, feign joy in the face of the Blight, or mock its scars are quickly swallowed by alleys that do not lead back.
