The Slatehaven Collection

The Slatehaven Monolith

The monolith is a single piece of artificial stone forty feet tall, sixty feet wide, and thirty feet thick. The stone was created by a pulse of wild magic and entombed at least four individual beings/creatures. These beings were in the process of fighting when they were flash-fossilized approximately 1100 years before the current era. The upper half of the monolith contains the remains of a human male and a gold dragon. The man is clad in late Imperial pattern armor matching the Imperial Winged Guard, and the species of the dragon has been determined by examining the protruding facial and cranial structures. The lower portion contains the remains of an alicorn (pegasus-unicorn, or pegacorn) being ridden by a woman in half-plate armor pressed over a formal gown contemporary to Imperial Royal fashion.

The woman has a lantern-capped staff raised between herself and the dragon, and this seems to be the focal point of the flash-fossilization.

Discovery

The monolith was discovered, not surprisingly, in Slatehaven. It was found by accident, a series of violent storms had caused a landslide, exposing the ruins of an Old Imperial fortification. It was almost completely inaccessible, as it was filled with a rocky matrix. This was puzzling because some things were found exposed, but turned to stone. Candles, wall sconces, furled banners, and a number of skeletons, eroding under the long march of time. A second landslide released a large boulder which struck an exposed scarp of stone in the old courtyard, splitting it in half. Inside the petrified bodies were found, caught in their last terrible seconds of conflict.

Excavation

Efforts were made to dig out the imperial fort to find what remained inside. Magic was heavily involved in removing the stone, which was slightly easier to break apart than the natural stone. Rooms were cleared and many corpses were recovered, all having died in terrible agony and horrific conditions. It was determined that the fort was the site of a major battle during the Nightmare War that ended the Old Empire. Only the rocky matrix containing the combatants was resistant to being broken down. The lantern staff held by the woman seemed to be the source of the stone.

Relics and Replicas

The Slatehaven Tapestry was created by Tarasceen artists to record this conflict between what many assumed to have been a legendary conflict. The man is depicted in full gold armor, white wings cresting his gold helmet. Likewise, the dragon is picked out in thread of gold, creating a gleaming icon of power. The woman on the alicorn are done in a mixture of thread of silver and small crystals. Where the dragon and knight shine, the lady and the alicorn catch and throw even the dimmest of light back in prismatic color. The first was sent to the Hall of Gifts in Terrasquestone, and several more were made, of differing sizes and qualities. The largest tapestry depicts the man and woman as they appear, exposed bone and all their gear rendered the gray stone, the same as their mounts. It was sent to Castle Armathaine in the Castledom where it hangs as a somber reminder that no excess of power can save that which is doomed.

The Idreliad bas relief is a half-scale replica of the monolith that the artist Anais Idrelaid created from a large piece of marble.  She presents a cleaner version of the monolith with the humans restored to the appearance of life.

The Treledias Garden depicts the combatants from the monolith as individual statues freestanding in the gardens at Queensborough Hall. The knight and lady are lifesize, facing each other, but their faces are made in the likeness of popular and well-liked local nobility. The dragon is quarter-scale, and the Alicorn is half-scale, and are facing each other across a reflecting pond.

There are too many paintings, prints, and murals of the monolith to bother listing.

The Accident

The crew of arcanists, diggers, and scribes working on the fort excavation decided to start taking the monolith apart. If this was indeed a true relic of the Old Empire, both figures likely possessed powerful magic items and possibly even relics. These could be restored with Earthpower, removing the fossilization and returning them to their original composition. While difficult and time-consuming, it was entirely feasible, and it had already been used on a number of items within the fort, and in other places. The attempt was made to remove the lantern staff from the lady's grasp, thinking that if it could be removed, it might release the stone matrix and in a single act, complete the excavations and clear the fortress of its baleful grasp.

The staff exploded.

Half of the people present were slain, most being flashed into stone and shattered. Several others survived, but with parts of their body turned to stone. The monolith was cracked in half, splitting along a boundary in the stone between the two paired combatants. In the aftermath, it was decided to move the pieces of the monolith to new locations. The lady and the alicorn were to be sent to Terrasquestone, while the knight and the dragon were to go to Armathaine. The process was slow and difficult, constantly beset with problems and complications. The knight and dragon were lost when the barge they were loaded onto sank in the river, leaving the stone some thirty feet underwater and hopelessly mired in river sediment. The lady and alicorn made the trip to Terrasquestone but were not installed in the Hall of Gifts as there was no way to get something so large into the hall without disassembling entirely too much of the castle itself. It was installed in the Lady's Garden near the Dawn Gate of the inner wall.

Mysteries

Who were the combatants?

Why were they fighting each other with such reckless abandon?

Metallic dragons don't exist in Cridhedun outside of myth, so where did the gold dragon come from?

Alicorns don't exist in Cridhedun outside of myth, so where did the Alicorn come from?

Metallic dragons and alicorns are accorded to be good aligned creatures, so why would they fight each other?