Velathra

Velathra is a small, long lost city on the Northern Coast of Caldera, in the Frozen Plains of the Elvhen. It was once an advanced civilization of Winter Eladrin elves, nearly 2000 years ago.

The language of the city is Ancient Eladrin, a language that may be the root of Elvish and Sylvan and can be roughly translated by speakers of both.

## **Geography**

Situated on in the Frozen Plains of the Elvhen, Velathra is built into the ground on a huge glacial field. From the top, it looks almost like ice floats on the ocean. The city is structured like a snowflake when looking down at it from above.

## **Governance**

Velathra is governed by three Eladrin, each of whom wields one of the Silver Staffs. At the time it fell the city was run by a Coronal (monarch) called Corraena, a Feferi (sorceress) called Celena and an Ohtar (general) called Amaris.

## **Economy**

The economy of Mirrortail has been growing after a period of stagnation, due to ship technology improving and trade becoming easier. A large portion of it is fuelled by the trade done by the East Caldera Company, who operate out of Mirrortail as their main base and are owned by the monarchy.

There is a large class gap in the city, with most of the city being home to the wealthy, and the poor consisting of mostly dockworkers and small traders, living around the docks themselves or in huge communal floating barges.

## **Locations**

#### **Luvese Plaza**

The central plaza of Velathra, home to the Galad'uk tree and the Staircase to the Court of Stars. Described as a circular plaza of silvery grey flagstones with a twisting white tree growing at its centre. The area is illuminated with glowing orbs of blue-ish arcane light that seem to bob and dance slowly through the air, throwing a calming glow over the area and seemingly keeping it safe from the shambling Coldlight Walkers around it. Around the edge of the circle stand six statues, though only two have survived.

In the centre of the plaza is the Galad'Uk, an immense tree with gnarled and knotted bark, it’s winding branches devoid of leaves and overhanging the structure that spirals around it. The bark on it is white, almost silver even, and luminous in the light. Around it, a hooded staircase has been built in the same brilliant white, so intricately crafted that it almost looks like it has grown from the ground in the same manner as the tree itself.

#### **The Great Gate**

Carved into the ice below the city and fortified with stone rests an imposing gate of brilliant white, shimmering softly with blues and silvers that dance across the surface like water reflecting from a pool. The gate is 40ft tall and 20ft across, and sits in a huge cavern of ice a hundred foot below the city streets. Right in the heart of the cavern, you can see the frozen and twisting roots of the great white tree above hanging from the ceiling. On the cavern floor beneath the tree, a statue of Sehanine stands with its hand raised towards it.

The doors of the gate bear, in perfect symmetry from top to bottom, the cycles of the moon are engraved into the cold ancient stone, with the central phase - the full moon - as the handle to pull it open.

Arching around the frame is an inscription in Ancient Eladrin:

'*Andon nna Nalamah Oromar - Artaure o’in Isilmé Amil*' which translates to Great Gate to the Echoing Halls - Domain of the Moon Mother.

#### **The Luvesetaeum**

A divination tower in Velathra. A tall spire that leads up to a glass dome. There is no entrance within the lowest 30ft of the tower, but there is a platform with a door thirty feet up and a staircase that winds around the exterior of the building from there. The exterior walls are flat and featureless but are painted with many symbols of divination and with constellations seen in the night sky above the city.

#### **Lindelé-mar**

The 'House of Song', a music hall for the Eladrin built with perfect acoustics where they recorded their history on an arcane device reminiscent of a gramophone. Described as a cathedral-scale building of pale grey stone.

#### **The Gardens of Rest**

An exotic garden of feywild plants in an arcane temperature-controlled glass dome. This area is hot and overgrown, untended for two millennia. In the centre is a pillar that emits restorative magic, and there is an isolated hot spring called Lover's Glade - the flowers in this area are aphrodisiacal and when mixed into the hot spring, cause people to have loose tongues.

#### **Windsong House**

A perfectly preserved arcane research building, in the exact condition it stood in 2000 years earlier, complete with a still crackling fire. Inside the Eladrin were researching the Twilight Quartz and methods of trapping elementals in such a fashion as to use them to fuel technology and cast elemental magic. It also contains an arcanely sealed vault with the armor of champion Eldír Silvertongue.

#### **Parma Oromar**

Literally translating to 'Hall of Books', this was the library of Velathra, which contained a thousand books on history, most of which had crumbled over time. The library also had animated statues of all the leaders of Velathra and a gargoyle that guarded an additional secret room.

#### **Luvese’to**

Translating to the Moonlit Citadel, this was the palace of Velathra. A sprawling, crescent moon shaped citadel building sitting behind tarnished silver gates. It is decked out in silvery splendour and painstakingly intricate celestial-inspired architecture, looking both like a palace and a tower of ice all at once.

The approach is up a long, grey gravel path flanked by statues of Eladrin in their winter robes, some with staffs, others with swords or bows, many with their hands raised to praise the moon. In the moonlight, fields of spectral jasmine glimmer around the citadel. It has three roof domes, the largest set in the middle of the building with coloured glass that throws dazzling colours over the snow around it in the moonlight. Right in front of the entrance in the centre of the crescent moon shape is a huge pool of water.

#### **Faith of the Radiant Lady**

A chamber of the Echoing Halls that requires faith in Sehanine to pass through, through trusting her enough to step into a moonbeam and become charged with radiant energy before passing through the following gate.

#### **The Luminous Pools**

Tiered pools of naturally formed chalky white ice, the water within them glittering like an aquamarine jewel. Rivulets pour from the higher pools down into the lower, so the echoing trickle and dripping of water fill the cavern, the sound bouncing and resonating. Clusters of twilight crystals emit a dim, violet light, reflecting off the pools and making them shimmer as though in the moonlight.

#### **The Whispering Cavern**

Another cavernous room in the Echoing Halls, filled with hundreds of stalactites and stalagmites made of brittle crystal. Silence is required to cross it, which encourages quietness when passing onwards towards the tombs and the temple.

#### **Underground Temple of Sehanine**

A great domed roof of stained glass sent shimmering patterns of all shades and colours dancing about in an ethereal glow around this central cavern of the Echoing Halls. Circling rows of stone seating curved around a central altar with a plinth for a speaker. This cavern has depictions of Sehanine etched into the walls as they soar up to the dome above. The ceiling itself has a mechanism and twists open like a giant lens into the petals of a flower, allowing moonlight to pour in onto the speaker.

#### **Crypts and Tombs**

Within this chamber stand six pillars of old stone stretching into the ceiling and decorated with embellishments of copper, now tarnished with a layer of verdigris. The walls are stacked with burial vaults. In the rear centre is a statue of a female eladrin wearing crown of a crescent moon. Her expression is carved into one of both sorrow and joy, smiling through her tears as she offers a hand towards you, "ready to welcome you into the cold embrace of eternity."

## **Rumors**

There are a number of rumors about Velathra in circulation, mostly in the small hamlet of Glasshaven.

***Rumor:*** There is a statue there that grants wishes or perhaps is poisonous

*Truth:* There are multiple arcane statues in the city's central plaza, one of which supposedly grants wishes, and another of which produces a random potion or poison every 24 hours.

***Rumor:*** The people who live there have achieved immortality and live forever which is why they are hidden away. They have the secrets in their archives and anyone who goes there might learn them.

*Truth:* The city has a connection to the Court of Stars, a timeless realm of Eladrin. There was also a Potion of Longevity stashed in a secret room in the Moonlit Citadel, which de-ages the user.

***Rumor:*** There is a gate to a magical realm inside the city.

*Truth:* The top of the Stairway to the Stars leads to the Court of Stars if the right person can open it.

***Rumor:*** The city is made of pure moonlight and can only be seen at night.

*Truth:* At night, the icy material the city is built of glows in the moonlight.

***Rumor:*** The city only shows up every 100 years or so because it moves around of its own accord.

*Truth:* Unknown.

***Rumor:*** It isn’t a city at all but instead a giant creature with many legs that roams around the Frozen Plains.

*Truth:* This isn't true, but may have been a misconstrued suggestion based on the fact the city was built over a graveyard of creatures frozen into the ice by the Eladrin.

***Rumor:*** The city is guarded by a monstrosity.

*Truth:* An ancient evil lurked under the city for two millennia.

***Rumor:*** The city has a secret passage to the Underdark.

*Truth:* Less a passage, and more an accidental opening, but the caves under the city did lead to the Underdark.

***Rumor:*** It disappeared because the queen died and all the citizens fell into such deep mourning that they willed the city out of existence, but it appears on the anniversary of her death every 100 years.

*Truth:* The city fell to the will of the Sauralul and the *Waking Dream* spell, which caused the death of the Queen and the other citizens fled.