The Timeless Vale

* Original
* Corrupted

The Timeless Vale is a location within the Feywild, famed for its seeming exaggerated divorcement from the passage of time, even by the standards of the Plane of the Fey.

## Description

All of the Feywild seems to be at least somewhat uncaring of the passage of time as tethered to that of the Material Plane, a feature common elsewhere across the Planes. This is perhaps most evident with the existence of the four distinct regions of the Feywild, that of Morningtide, where the sun looms always rising at the horizon, Everbright always at high noon, Twiblight shrouded in the lengthening shadows of sundown, and the perpetual gloom of Everdark, always shrouded in the Canvas of Night. Likewise, travellers to the Plane, such as those residing in the roaming city of Cal Araenora may find that mere seconds have passed when they return to the Material Plane, or it may instead be years. The Timeless Vale serves as an additional confusing curiosity to an already muddling domain.

The Timeless Vale is located within the Everbright, and so the sun hangs high and bright in the sky overhead, unmoving. And yet, the Timeless Vale itself exists in its entirety as such too. Everything within the Vale is vibrant, living, and yet static and dormant. Clouds loom overhead in some parts of the location, but their rain lingers suspended in air, droplets catching the light of the overhead sun as they fall - or rather float unmoving in the air. If one was to attempt to pick up a stone and throw it, the moment it departed the individual's grasp it would instantly stop in place, not dropping to the soil, but rather now forever caught hovering, unless interacted with again. Such seems to be the way of the Timeless Vale, it only changes when interacted with, the passage of travellers leaving footprints in the dirt, but the splash of puddle underfoot thrown into an eternal unwavering ripple. A discarded apple core would rest where it was left, never rotting, nor ever germinating - and thus begging the question of how the trees, shrubs, weather and entirety of the region came to be in the first place, instead of just a void of nothing.

Upon departing the Timeless Vale, a traveller will find it is as if no time has passed at all relative the Feywild around it, and as such is sometimes frequented by residents of the Plane to refine a particular skill or trait, knowing that they need worry not for the time taken refining such matters. Conversely, some creatures are banished to the location, serving sentences of thousands of years that may pass in the blink of an eye to those not within it, as well as presenting a risk to those that travel to the region alone or otherwise unprepared.

## History

The Timeless Vale was frequently utilised by the Wellspring Mare to aid those given in their care, to the extent that the Vale had effectively become their domain. After their death, it was subsequently found that the Timeless Vale and the surrounding lands had been drawn into the Everdark, and a dark spire constructed at its heart.

> *"Once a place of light, brightness ever overhead, the Timeless Vale now haunts in shadow.*
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> *A pervasive and cloying haze lingers at the edges of the valley, grey in colour with the faintest hint of lilac-purple, mauve and scarlet trailing throughout. Trees, always gnarled and twisted, undeniably, but once covered in moss, foliage, and a verdant canopy overhead, now lie broken, shattered, the branches and leaves set unmoving and unyielding in the air, lying at the end of their momentum, never to fall to the ground below. One tree immediately to your left, a tall pine once sixty, perhaps seventy feet tall lingers severed partway up its trunk, teetering in a state of collapse forever more, unable to reach the soil and stone.*
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> *And soil and stone indeed. The Vale had always had groves, pools of cool water with shallow edges and deep centres, the surface thrown into a ripple that never shifted until another stone was cast through its surface, another hand pushed past to splash - leaving droplets floating where they fell from the cupped palm. Now though, pulsing deep like peering into the cross-section of a vast artery, meshed and fibrous, the clear waters muddied in brown and scarlet.*
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> *Through it all, the steep sides of the valley loom. Once they had seemed like walls to hold back the weight of the world beyond, an isolated space in which one might come to heal, to learn, to begin to forge anew after a breakage. And now, they take a different quality, like the confines of a cell, one without seemed door or lock or key, simply a vast pit with edges unscalable. An outcropping, the stone black, angular, atop which a series of spires carved from the very same, the edges near organic in their form, as if it had always been, or had instead grown from the inorganic surface instead of being constructed. Around the towers beasts wrought of shadow and gloom circle, their shrieks and calls heard clear and shrill, while the rest of the castle seems to remain steadfast and still.*
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> *Save one.*
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> *From the highest spire comes the light that dimly bathes the dale in accursed faerie light, its tip split open like the buds of a flower, a sphere of energy like billowing flame trailing wisps of the very same haze that surrounds you upwards. With it your eyes drift, and yet find nothing. Nothing in the purest sense - a sheet of black, faintly spiralling as a vast vortex, from which shadow seems to spill like condensing fog. A few hundred feet wide it reaches, beyond the confines of the castle, like a vast pool in the most haunting of senses. Simply to gaze upon for a few lingering moments sends your mind aflurry in a state of despair, cycling between waves of dread, of a certain death looming, of delusion, of a baffling presence, entity, occurrence in a place that defies normal conventions, of apathy, the insignificance of your efforts to make any meaningful difference to such scope, such scale.*
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> *A darkness designed to drown light, and those that would try to hold it high, or hold it close. A darkness into which even creatures of the night might fear to tread.*
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> *And now, you find yourself at the precipice, the next step before you.*"
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An adventuring party from Amber Run, aided by the individuals Enor, Gwynrir and Isra Ssalla, travelled to the Timeless Vale, eventually collectively coming across the desolation at its heart, and moved to assault it with aid called in from Erastus, Sir of Silverbell Keep. Holding back the defenders for numerous rounds with assistance from flocks of Kavouri thousands strong and a trio of Sokan, the party managed to buy enough time for the assumed Archfey to evoke an potent incantation of epic scale, seemingly siphoning off the last of his divine life force and energy to simultaneously reset the Timeless Vale and its surroundings to rid them of their corruption, destroy the Agony's Feast, and sever the connection to the Shadowfell in one blinding flash of light.

Upon waking in the gentle, cool but unmoving waters of the Timeless Vale, the adventurers noted that the Spire of Beckoning had been subsequently eradicated, or elsewise cast back into the Plane of Shadow. Life once more occupied the region, wrens darting through the branches, shrews scurrying through the undergrowth and diving beetles launching themselves into the water's depths. With the Timeless Vale restored, the party were quick to note a new vibrant growth, a small sproutling brimming with primal fey magic. After acknowledging that this most likely represented the early stages of the potential for a new Archfey to bloom and grow, in an act of fitful mischief, Gwynrir collected up the plant and vanished - much to the eventual amusement of Morgaelei and Ilena, who revealed Gwynrir to be a favoured son of the ever ambitious Aenarion Quelenneth Velenthir.