Al'terra (Artifacts, Museums, and Archives)

## Artifacts

There are artifacts that are treasured and vlaued to Al'terra - a lot of these will be well known in the history to Al'terrians if not outright seen for themselves

8 Cups - 8 silver cups from an early ritual of diplomacy between the original 8 nations, now a momument to remind Al'terra and its allies that peace is always possible

The Garden Helm - A golden helmet covered in flowered patterns, from the War of the Golden Plains

Terren's Shell - A huge tortoise shell that used to perform ancient witchcraft, a non-religious pre-cursor to modern medicine, to remember Anctius

The Coil - a large, carefully coiled braid of rope or twine that can't easily be described as it is threaded with beads, a traditional and very important peace gift of South Septavia

The Queen's Tresp - The jewelled, beautiful tresp from the hundredth queen of the realm

Phoenix Visage - The massive fiery skull of a mythical phoenix, linked to ancient legends about phoenixes living and dieing in volcanoes

'that cursed thing' - A gigantic dog skin - likely of that of a Newfoundland dog - that is huge sacredly in a museum as a memory against the savage kind. Although it is hated, no one is allowed to bother or disrespect it, as it is a relic - youngsters especially would rather spit on this piece.

Battle of Hedgeford - a famous painting depicting a battle that had a grisly end, is gigantic

The First Set - a carved, basic wooden board with simple stick pieces for players. No one knows if this belonged to an ancient person or the first made board.

Miistress Elisha's Claws - a beautiful etched and sketched claws of a famous warrior, a deadly claw smith as well user

The old flags - oly interactions of the Al'terra flags, considered important and sacred but not religiously so.

The Red Satchel - the red satchel that brought the news of the Nolvac that brought about a terrificly bad war. This was the fastest runner whose news prevented people from dying as much as they already did.

Dark Pouch - A well crafted reminder of the importance of herbs used in the temple proceedings, usually carry a specifial blend of herbs.

Paradise Tears - a huge bismuth crystal, not of any use or magic ability, but thought by some to be the smallest glimpse of what might be paradise.

Silver Orb - a glass orb contianing mercury or some silvery substance, the much more poisonois predecessor

The Founder's Shiled - ahuge golden tower style shield, last used in ancient times before claws and armour were developed and this style of design was no longer used

The Annul - the leatherbound original history of Al'terra, never to be written out of falsehood, the truest copy

A Darkest Claw - a gigantic lobster claw, the original inspiration for the claws that the Jin-Ti used.

An Antesallam Fossil - an awesome, gigantic fish skeleton from a beast no one has seen since the excavation of the fossil

The Horns - a set of silver antelope horns that is some sort of relic that is not known with histoy  that no one is aware of.

The Quillian - a set of quills from several rare birds that penned important prophecies in three hundred years past.

Deathsmith - an ancient, now rotting blade of Seziam, Al'terra's longest reigning Queen.

The Pips - a bunch of seeds of a beautiful mildly healing flower, but unable to be planted.

Hallow's Bell - a huge, famous bell for ringing during a war time of desperate time on the North coast

The Allor Three - three wax figurines,  one slightly melted, a political satire piece that weren't appreciated but the public enjoyed it, so it's been preserved as an art relic.

\*\*\* Non-Al'terrian artifacts are loaned to Al'terra, but are not claimed which seems like an inconsistency.

## Rankings of Institutes

Al'terra's love of knowledge means that all sorts of knowledge are kept in various places. Here are a list of classes of institutes, what they hold, and where you might hold them. By law all of these have to be free, though you can be given bans on them for bad behaviour. Many books and replicas of art can be purchased, and while all these institutes include these, the rarer versions. **All institutions present information in three forms - Common, Al'terran, and Old Lion's Tongue**

Library - The largest of all the kinds of institutes, holding purely written works that are either fiction, or factual works that are derivative of other works. Most works are not allowed out of libraries.

Hall - More prevalently holds works of fiction, experiment, and things that would be considered pleasure-reading (including comics, mangas, magazines, etc).

Archive - Archives hold non-fiction, facual works such as government records, informaiton ergarding taxes, laws, reports, counts, and inventories. They are typically housed alongside government and baerucratic spaces.

Book repository - Respositories contain popular, important works that can be removed for short periods of time, more storage than for public use - can also contain important artistic pieces in between times they re displayed or otherwise properly used.

Atheneum - 'Loud libraries' or places that host literary activitiies - book clubs, poetry readings, study groups, etc. They do have literary resources, just not many as a full libary

Bibliotheca - Contains published works of the tincane (scientific papers and journals), fviya (spellbooks, charm reports), and Jin-Ti (strategy guides, maps up to war spec). These are only found on the board but are otherwise welome to all and are typically used by peers to enhanced the quality of their study.

Annals - Personal, Professional, and Detached works of history with specific Al'terrian bias

Chronicles - Broad history of the continent and world, only found on the Board as it is thought that the common, while not lied to, perhaps should not be told the whole truth...

Documents - Any of the various 'documents' tend to be quite  reflective of things that help people, forms, books of learning, also people who help the betterment - much more useful, vocational. School children would come here, as do masters of their craft to educate.

Collection - Small but very focused, in depth looks at a particular topic usually encompassing writing, artifacts, and art, such as the Currency Collection which gives the history of all coins in the realm, examples, jouranls, uses, pictures. These collections are all over Al'terra and people do travel specifically to them.They are updated on the regulat

Writings - Histroical personal documents, such as recovered personal letters, jouransl, diaries, all forms of magazines and newspapers. These are not usually so much and can often be quite small, focused groups.

Records - This is where you cang et various information regarding yourself - legal records, birth certifactes, as well as board reading and standard reading materials. It is not recommended these are looked at by non-readers, and anything beyond basic books are forbidden unless a reader can prove themselves here

Vault - Vaults contain physical treasures and artifacts of the realm, usually things that are current, such as ritual pieces in the Rhioss, temples items from high holidays, etc. These are wel guarded but welcomed to the public. Some are only open certain seasons or holidays.

Gallery - Small visual displays of art that cannot be touched but only appreciated within its contexts

Treasury - Artifacts, relics, and stolen goods from other realms, taken as the prizes and spoils of war. These are displayed almost arrogent, smugly.

Museums - These are the largest, most expansive displays of history, using all the contextual clues Al'terra has to offer. The offical one for Al'terra of course is in Tantus but there are other displays elsewhere that are beautiful.