### Type: Relic-Vault & Archive-Temple *(a chapter-house of the [[Vaultsingers Overview|Vaultsingers]] wearing the face of a church)* ### Location: [[Caford]], [[Falduhir]] — a sober stone hall near the city's heart, passed on the way in from [[The Pigskin]]. A loose, removable fence slat lets into the rear yard. --- ### Description: - From the street, a buttressed stone church, doors open to any who climb the steps. Inside there is no altar and no pew — the nave is a **hushed, library-like hall of reading desks and crowded shelves**, lit low and tended by **black-robed attendants** who regard newcomers with complete, practiced indifference. - The air is dry as old paper and faintly charged; sound falls away a pace past the doors, as though the room drinks it. Anyone who can feel magic senses **strong warding wrapped around the whole building**, and beneath it a distinct **necromantic pulse** throbbing from somewhere within — a heartbeat that should not be there. - Around the back, past the fence slat, the yard holds a **dark shelter of stacked boxes and heaped blankets**. A voice waits there in the dark, and it does not welcome visitors. --- ### Lore & Role in Caford — The Vault: - The church is a lie of omission. It is a **[[Vaultsingers Overview|Vaultsinger]] vault**: one node in the ancient order's desperate project to **preserve every magical secret in Baltun'ia before the [[Campaign Premise|ley lines are sealed for good]] and magic dies.** What looks like piety is triage — archivists banking knowledge against an extinction only they (and now the party) can see coming. - Where the Vaultsingers' great archives lie beneath [[Kordrumm]] and the old ruins, Caford's vault is a **forward collection point** — close to the mines, the trade roads, and the mountains where the ley lines run thin. Relics and records flow in; nothing meant for the vault flows back out. - The order's song-magic — the "singing" that gives them their name — **maintains the wards and quiets the hall.** To a magic-sense it hums like a held chord that never resolves. --- ### The Secret Beneath — the Pulse: - The necromantic throb is not raw death-magic. It is **[[Felix Tanner - Vault Singers' Church|Felix Tanner]]** — an ancient [[Automatons|Archivist-Class automaton]], a relic of the Ancients — serving of his own will as the **living core and conscience of the vault.** His arcane heart powers the wards and the preservation; because that heart *holds things past their natural end*, it reads to the living as necromancy. - Felix keeps the order **in check** and guards the deepest **ley-line secrets** jealously. He is the "hidden voice" in the rear yard, and he named the party's [[Gnomes|gnome]] before he ever saw one — his sensors are older and finer than any nose. - The vault covets **memory-storing relics** above all: the Ring the party pulled from the vault, bound to [[The Explorer]], and [[Oils - The Pigskin|Oils]]'s stone slate are precisely the artifacts this place exists to preserve. Offering the Ring may be the party's key past the archivists' indifference — or the fastest way to lose it. --- ### Ownership, Staff & Wards: - **Held by:** the [[Vaultsingers Overview|Vaultsingers]], through Felix and the order's Chorus of Scribes. - **Staff:** black-robed **archivists** (some, quite possibly, [[Automatons|automatons]] themselves), incurious toward visitors until a relic, a ward, or the wrong shelf is touched. - **Defenses:** the building-wide warding song (concealment, alarm, and worse for thieves); the vault-core itself as a last line; the rear yard is Felix's own ground and no one crosses it uninvited. --- ### Regular Visitors: - Scholars, relic-sellers, and the occasional desperate soul come to *deposit* something too dangerous to keep. Ordinary Cafordians think it an austere, unfriendly church and leave it be. --- ### Plot Hooks & Adventure Seeds: - **The way to Felix is sincerity, not a con.** He cannot be lied to and already rebuffed the "we're from the Church" line — he *is* the Church. Offering [[The Explorer]]'s Ring may open him where words won't. - **The stakes, revealed:** whoever earns the archivists' trust learns the drilling isn't mere theft or sabotage — it is the potential **end of magic**, and the reason a doomsday library exists at all. - **Kinship:** [[Automatons|automaton]] party members (and [[Oils - The Pigskin|Oils]]) may feel the pull of the Broken Choir here — Felix is kin, and old. - **A relic the party wants back:** if they surrender the Ring, bargaining or buying it back becomes its own thread — and a reason to keep returning to the vault. --- ### Notable NPCs: - **[[Felix Tanner - Vault Singers' Church|Felix Tanner]]**, the vault-core *(ancient [[Automatons|Automaton]], Archivist-Class)* → The "hidden voice" out back; the necromantic pulse itself. Keeper of ley-line secrets and the party's best living source on the [[Ashfall Squad]] and the flooded mine — if they earn it. - **The Archivists**, robed keepers *(mixed races, some automaton)* → Indifferent by design; a filter, not a welcome. They notice relics before they notice people.