Odalisque of the Adamant Soul Dungeon

The Adamant Soul Dungeon is located in the high mountains of Tir an Bas, the Land of the Frozen Wastes, where the tundra rolls into the unforgiving and broken foothills that foreshadow Tir Artach, the mountains at the roof of the world. Thousands of years ago, this region was not so cold and ruinous as it is today. While still certainly a wintery land, it was locked in perpetual winter. This is one of the things that are changing in Cridhedun, the weather in Tir an Scathanna and Tir an Bas are both becoming colder. While the frozen wastes are adapting and enduring, the Land of Shadows is finding the onset of elemental winter something hard to manage. The vast majority of monstrous races that live in the land of Shadows tend to be more towards wearing very little clothing, or relying entirely on their own hides to survive, coupled with the Scathanna typically ignoring weather and lounging in a perpetual geothermal volcanic sweltering permanent Summer.

Entrance and Guardian:

The Adamant Soul Dungeon is really the abandoned realm of Alcarinien, once a magnificent city-state of the High Orieds, also known disparagingly as gnomes, the gnomon, or the stone elves. A branch of High Elves, the orieds favored stonecraft and caves above forests and woodcraft, and accorded among their numbers the greatest smiths, artificers, jewelers, high arcana magicians, and less favorably, xenophobic warlords with few if any peers. The orieds trace their lineage all the way back to Great Caladant and Elmenduil, the First Land. They did not participate in the return to the First Land and its subsequent destruction. Instead, the Oried sought out wives and husbands from: the EALAR, or spirits of the land and nature, EHO, or spirits of night, shadow, and sky, and MELENAVE, the spirits of the ancient races. 

Celefinewen was the last official princess of Alcarinien, and eschewed becoming the last queen to rather oversee the ERUMA KYERMORTA, the massive and powerful ritual that saw the Oried leave Cridhedun en masse. She was not accorded in the fashion of the ancient princesses and queens, but in the naive and pugnacious manner of the Galadhremmen, those elves who were born of mixed bloods. While this term was most commonly used as a pejorative for half-elves, in her case it was the original meaning, an elf born of sylvan and oried elfin parentage. As an elf, she was accorded as being short, her ears longer and more knife-like than most elves

But why does any of this matter?

Alcarinien is located in an enclosed vale, and there is only one way in or out that doesn't involve flight, extreme mountaineering, or challenges through the honeycombed rocky flesh of Cridhedun. The Vale was once protected by a concealed wall, hidden with magic and a forest. There were towers, sentries, challenges, and all the rest. Now, all that remains is the Colossus of Celefinewen. The statue of the Last Princess stands, a colossus of flawless white marble, guarding the Vale of Alacarinien. The Last Princess stands nearly 200 feet tall, her legs spread in a bracing stance, and her hands holding aloft a staff capped with a dungeon sapphire sixteen feet across.

Lesser Obscurement of Alcarinien

The Adamant Vale has a perpetual shroud of fog that conceals the towering figure of Celefinewen, the great gates and the walls. This is its most effective defense as the Adamant Vale and Alcarinien are not far from the Hyulmar Road. Also known as the coal road, this is a heavily traveled road in Tir an Bas as it is the main artery of trade from the mining towns in the mountains to the cities of the Frozen Wastes. The main good carried is coal, that they use for smithing and keeping their fortresses heated. The miners, wagoneers, and the rest of the traffic on the road have no idea they pass less than a league from the gates of a nearly forgotten High Elfin fortress city.

Warding of Alcarinien - Greater Obfuscation

Centered on the Staff of the Last Princess, the Warding of Alcarinien prevents all scrying, teleportation, and other magical means of reaching or seeing the Fortress City of Alcarinien. This is a full barrier, and attempts to scry outside or teleport out of the city are equally blocked by this power. The Orieds did not give two wet shits about the world outside of their vale.

Judgment of Celefinewen - Greater Evocation

The Judgement of Celefinewen is the second most powerful evocation spell created in Alcarinien. In the many centuries since the quiet recusing of the Elfin enclave, this spell has propagated out into the greater DungeonVerse, in a limited fashion. The mental, physical, and spiritual demands of casting this spell are enormous and most magi can at best only ever hope to be part of a greater casting circle participating in casting this spell. When something activates the Judgement, the great crystal sphere flashes with hyperlight, and then there is a sight obliterating brightness, and then for half a minute, the world ceases to exist. Everything in the narrow cone/ray is subjected to horrific amounts of supra-elemental damage,  apocalyptic levels of essence radiation, and then a sort of mana shock. After being subjected to such tremendous magical force, an object suddenly removed from this energy could explode. The closest material similarity is taking a piece of glass out of a kiln and dropping it in cold water and watching it explode. Even things that are not hit by the hideous beam attack can suffer blindness, mana poisoning, mana shock, or mana burn as the beam actually activates their internal mana and turning it into more of itself.

The official name of this magical attack is Ultima.

These two spells, combined with the remote and easily missed location of Alcarinien are its main defense. Finding the place is hard enough, and then the Guardian Statue has to be passed. It is not a golem or animated, it is functionally a humanoid-shaped obelisk with horrific spell powers. What has been observed is that lawful and chaotic evil entities of a sufficient level trigger the Ultima attack. The Warding has a constant and permanent effect. Should a band find the vale, and not trigger the defensive magics have to pass under the statue of Celefinewen.

Did you look up as you walked under the massive statue of the Last Elfin Princess, to peek up her skirt?

The Gates of Alcarinien

In more traditional fashion, Alcarinien has a proper curtain wall that closes off the vale. There is a single great gate system, and it is guarded by four towers. These towers would have been manned by oried archers. By the end of the time of Alcarinien, these archers were equipped with mythril arbalests, and their crossbow quarrels were tipped with admantatine steel. The towers are now empty. The gate is likewise made of admanatine steel, and thankfully so are all the mechanisms that move it. Opening the gate requires either the knowledge of the Words of Power to invoke it to open, or two people have to cross over the thirty foot tall curtain wall and access the gate mechanism controls and open it manually.

There are murals painted on the curtain walls, depicting the great heroes, great beauties, and great deeds of the Oried who called the vale home.

The Pel Galen extends from the curtain wall down into the vale for three leagues. It was once the Great Green where the oried grew their grain, Glibloss. This richly colored grain is related to wheat, but distantly. It had a vivid red color in the husk, and ground down into a reddish-pink flour. The bread of Alcarinien was noted for its pink hue, and Alcarinien pastries were so popular that they are recorded in several epics and sagas from the time of the city, but in other countries, and most anything that refers to Rose Honey Bread is speaking of Alcarinien glibloss sourced flour. These fields have long since grown over and become the most protected forest in the region.

The Fastness of Alcarinien Gilmagontaur

The city of Alcarinien was one a shining beacon, its buildings all constructed of calagondrum, a sort of marble noted for reflecting starlight and glowing in the light of the moon. The individual houses are all great mansions and palaces. They are separated by walkways and passages wide enough for a single wagon to pass through, and are meticulously clean, even centuries after the departure of the Oried. The individual houses are empty of possessions, there are no treasures, no art, not a stick or stone of remaining furniture.

The city has regularly placed open areas, now overgrown with trees, and fountains, likewise now overgrown with water plants.

Beyond the city itself there is another overgrown green space, but the trees here show that they were once fruit trees. This was where the orchards and vineyards of the orieds were. Like with the rose honey grain, they had cultivated fruiting trees and fruit no one has seen in hundreds of years. Many of the trees produced magical fruit, and were counted among the treasures of the Oried. There is a clearing in the center where a stump as big as a castle tower remains, the wood a pale silvery white, except where it is burnt. This was the last mournful act of the Oried during the departure. They were unable to take the Culvelice with them, their great living tree tower. Rather than see it left behind, or fallen into the hands of their enemies, they called down a great shaft of divine lightning and shattered the Silverload tree into splinters, and took even the splinters with them, only leaving the stump behind.

The Castle of Gilmontaur gleams eternal in the fog-filtered light of the sun.

This proud fortress remembers ages before the sun, when other things lit the heavens, and there was no concept of night and day. It was built in a different age, and its walls were not constructed to repel armies, they were raised to keep the great beasts at bay, and protect the Oried from the depredation of dragons and winged horrors. In this, it was a great success. No foe availed themselves against the walls. The vale was watered with the blood of beast gods. Semi-divine monsters and demigods threw themselves against the Oried and time and time again they were thrown back, slaughtered, their blood falling like rain.

Gilmontaur is grand on a scale that makes Terrasquestone feel quaint. 

It is also all but empty.

The outer wall is sixty feet thick at the base/ There are several concealed man sized doors that lead to tunnels through the wall, and there is a single gate complex that would have remained open unless the castle itself were threatened. It doesn't have a portcullis or even door. The actual gate is a massive shield shaped piece of stone that a complicated mechanism lowers into place and then pulls into its settings, sealing the wall. The seams are so tight that a dagger cannot be slipped between the gatestone and the wall. The gate is closed, and the mechanism has been disabled, meaning adventurers will have to find their way through the fruiting forest to find one of the man-sized doors. They also have seam-fit stone doors, but these are movable with effort, magic, or access to one of the ancient Words of Passage from the Oried language.

Inside the wall, the general layout of the castle is functionally very normal, and almost bland. Except for the colossal scale of it, and the fact that it is all made of cyclopean blocks of the glimmering calagondrum. There is a second internal wall that protects the central complex of the castle, a collection of towers, the great hall, and the Celestial Amphitheater.

The Celestial Amphitheater is not empty. Orbs of light roughly the size of a man slowly drift in orbits around the amphitheater. These living lights do congregate in the area, but rarely do wander out, as if exploring a place they barely remember. The most common are golden orbs, though there also orbs that seem to devour the light around them and leak out shadows, glimmering silvery-white orbs, luminous light green orbs, and pale blue orbs that crackle with concealed power. These are all bound elementals the Oried left behind to mind their great city, should they ever decide to return.

The radiant orbs are Light Elementals and are the bright defenders and can attack with scorching ray attacks, body slam and inflict horrible burns. They keep the place clean from debris, burning away anything that shouldn't be left as litter. This includes corpses.

The dark orbs are Dark Elementals and are the secret protectors and have a huge array of magical senses and respond to threats with essence draining attacks, and causing status ailments, most commonly causing magical blindness, confusion, and weakness.

The gleaming orbs are Stone Elementals and keep all the calagondrum in good shape and clean.

The green orbs are Wind Elementals and they maintain the grounds and the forests. They keep the deadfalls cleaned up, heal or remove sick trees, and keep the new growth from choking out the old, but not with the same degree of artistry and control as the oried employed.

The Adamant Soul

The Adamant Soul is not an ideal or metaphor, it is a telamon warrior (male statue) made of gleaming Adamantine Steel. It is wearing the heavy baroque armor of the late period of Alcarinien 'Crusader' pattern plate armor. The Adamant Soul was once the avatar of the dungeon that the Oried captured and brought to Alcarinien. After capturing an earth-aspected core, the Oried used it to organize and build Gilmontaur, and Alcarinien, and even the great Odalisque of Celefinewen. This capture ended up becoming mutually beneficial, and the core created the Adamant Soul avatar as an emissary for the oried and then left it behind as a final guardian. The core also left with the Oried when they departed the DungeonVerse.

The remaining telamon can fight with its paired elven-style longswords with extreme proficiency, has both an enormous pool of health, and is nearly impossible to damage. Fighting it requires high-level magic items, powerful magic spells, or the ability to speak the Oried language to parlay with it. There is no parlay for chaotic or evil-aligned characters, those are fight on sight for the telamon. The Adamant Soul has been composing poetry and music for hundreds of years, recording it on the walls around the amphitheater in small, neat script. It is not lonely, being an artificial construct, but it does enjoy cultured, educated guests and is curious about the world beyond the vale.

If defeated or successfully RP'ed there is a passage at the rear of the amphitheater that leads to a final grove, the center and heart of the Dungeon of the Adamant Soul, the alcazar where the core once resided. The area has a circle of trees, all seeming very neat and on the young side, and they shine. These are not just trees of the ancient world, but they have been changed by what remains. The alcazar is celestial lense, and has turned all the trees into living precious metals.

Treasures of the Vale of the Adamant Soul

The wealth of Alcarinien is measured in two things, knowledge and arcane materials.

The Grand Library at Alcarinien was duplicated, so copies of all the texts and scrolls it contained remain behind. The originals are all gone with the Oried, but the lore remaining is vast beyond imagining, and going through the library is the work of lifetimes. Each section of the library is locked behind magical riddles, and the books and scrolls contained cannot be removed. In theory, only those worthy and capable of handling the arcana contained within each section can enter each section. This doesn't prevent the answers to riddles being traded, but then that leads to an incompetent would-be wizard turning themselves into pink mist, or a mindless menial servant of the library.

The orrery at Alcarinien is the finest model of the DungeonVerse and its celestial vessels and can be used in casting elaborate divination spells.

The observatory at Alcarinien was designed for seeing anything and has the best scrying pool ever crafted. Its power use is high and can quickly drain an unprepared user, but very few things can occlude themselves from scrying at this level of power.

Adamantine Steel is used to make 'Diamond Gear' like Diamond Swords, Diamond Shields, Diamond Armor, etc. The metal has a lustrous finish with a faint blue-white shimmer. It is likely the highest grade of dungeon steel that exists and it is vastly superior to all mundane steel alloys, equal to most magical silver alloys, and even magical gold alloys are hit and miss on performance versus adamantine steel. The material is hideously difficult to work with, as reaching the temperatures required to work it, the technique to shape it, and most importantly the process of quenching and tempering the material are fraught with failure. Too hot and it can start to sublimate, not hot enough and its unworkable. Hammered and forged wrong it can splinter. Quenched wrong and it can shatter or even explode.

Crystalline Steel is used to make 'Crystal Gear' like Crystal Swords, Crystal Shields, Crystal Armor, etc. This is a transitive material that is both metallic and non-metallic in nature, and handles more like molten glass when being worked. It has to be cast as much as forged, meaning the skill required to work it is ridiculous and someone like an immortal narcissistic perfectionist like an oried would have the time, patience, and skill to figure it out. The gear made from this material is semi-translucent like crystal, but rings and performs like high-quality steel. While this makes fine weapons and armor, it is best suited for magical enchantment, so the oried made spell items, mage armor, and accessories out of the material.

Orchards of Alcarinien contain -

Birch berry - this medium sized plum shaped fruit has a smooth blue skin and tapers down to a definite point. The skin itself is relatively thin and the fruit bruises easily. It has a minty flavor, and reinvigorates the consumer. Too many birch berries can cause insomnia, paranoia, irregular heartbeat, and tremors.

Momon - this medium sized peach shaped fruit has a fuzzy light orange skin speckled with lighter colored spots. The skin is thick, the fuzzy is somewhat adhesive in nature, and the flavor is cloying sweet and chalky. They are an effective counter for non-magical poisonings. A tonic made from momons can be distilled down into a general antidote potion, where it loses the chalky flavor.

Micle - this large mango/pawpaw light fruit has a tight shiny green skin and is packed full of large fleshy seeds. These seeds have a very dry taste, and make everything consumed with them taste stronger, especially sweets. While useful in gourmet concoctions, eating the fruit by itself can improve mental clarity and focus. This is highly valuable to magic casters, and accordingly they command a high price. Micle leaves can be brewed into a focus enhancing tea, the bark makes a potent painkiller.

Colbur - this small spherical fruit has fleshy nubs all over it. Inside the green skin, it has striking pink flesh and small seeds. The taste is a mixture of bitter and sour, and a strongly acquired taste. It can be used for a variety of purposes, but it is shown to ward off dark and ghost type monsters, and can counter their influence. Eating a colbur can grant a small degree of resistance to said creatures. Colbur wine has a distinctive bright pink color and sharp flavor.

Tanga or Green Flame Berry - this medium sized irregular shaped lumpy fruit has a texture between a gourd and a stone fruit and has as a surprise a sudden and shocking amount of spice, on par with a really hot pepper. Tanga fruit repels insects, and salves made from it likewise are effacious for warding away even monstrous insects. Orieds used it to protect their orchards, for adventuring purposes, and making a sort of spicy curry. 

Ubu - this small yellow tomato like fruit grows in long strands from its host tree. The fruits have a good flavor, and were used to make oried friendship wine. This wine, much like the fruit itself, has a disarming effect. People who consume it together have a much easier time getting along and becoming friends, functionally increasing charisma.

Lum - this medium sized pastel green citrus fruit has a smooth skin and is eaten without being peeled. It has a mellow flavor, and can best be described as being fruit punch flavored. It has curative effects when eaten raw, and is a prime ingredient for making curative tonics, and lum wine is often given out as a general cure-all. Its good for what ails you, and can help with everything from aches and pains to removing inflicted status ailments.