Waypoint network of Idir

Every one of Idir’s curse-keeps holds the same room: a circular chamber, a short corridor to a door, and a table carrying a map of the region with a stone set into it for each of the other keeps. The stones lift. The party had used those maps to place keeps they had not yet reached, and the maps were the least of what the room was for. The keeps are the old endpoints of a land that was one thing before it was seven, and the chambers are the doors.

They were woken at the Twisted Grove, in the hour after three curses fell. Vëné had to peel away a portion of herself to answer what Nancáro had already spent, and asked where it should go. She offered the waypoints or the soil of Idir itself, seeded with verdance and the quiet that comes with it; the party put up claims of their own besides, and then all three of them named the waypoints first. She knelt, breathed a piece of herself into the ground, and the waypoints took it. A beam of light went up out of the Grove, and out of far-off points to the west, northeast, southeast and east, each one a keep the party already had marked. Most of the old endpoints were relinked and not all of them, because Nancáro would allow her most and not all; the rest can be done when someone is ready to do them.

How a Door Is Answered

It takes two people, one standing in each chamber, and each of them lifts the two stones for the pair, the one they are in and the one they want. A stone raised at one end rises a little at the other, so a far room can answer without a word crossing between them and without either party knowing for certain who is there. With the door shut and the pair matched, the connection stands and the door opens onto the other chamber. The first time it was done, Wraithblade Keep and the room under Haudh-Gwenn were joined by ten feet of corridor with both groups staring at each other down it. Nothing is spent, and nothing limits how often.

From one side alone a single person can lift both stones and force the link without anyone answering. That costs a considerable amount of yourself, and it is what it cost Nancáro.

What Each Lift Takes

The cold arrives with the stones. Breath is stolen and life pulled out of everyone standing in the chamber, horses included, while the two raised stones glow a deep shadowy purple. Hinta, already carrying what waking the calipers had taken out of her, was nearly dropped by the second lift and had a potion pushed into her chest before the cold settled; one of the horses came out of it barely alive. The Crown of Echoing Steel attuned itself to the chambers’ negative energy after the first lift and shielded whoever wore it from every lift after that.

Nobody had to be taught the working. Vëné’s essence is what feeds the network, she and her brother are linked, and each of the three carries a piece of him, so all three of them knew how it was done from the moment it was done.