Levens
Template:Short description Template:Infobox sphere
Levens is the capital sphere of Gethinisharr and the seat of its royal house, distinguished among all the spheres of the Sëriq̃in River by the great island-valleys that hang above its surface — the Aether Thrones, called the crowns by those who live beneath them. The same field that holds the crowns aloft twists the weight and balance of ferrous metal, so that steel stutters mid-swing and trembles in the hand; by ancient decree all arms borne on Levens are of bronze. Nowhere else on the River is the distance between a nobility and its commons made so literal: the highborn dwell in the drifting heights, and the villages below are smoke-marks too small to see from the galleries.
Overview[edit]
Levens is the ceremonial and military heart of Gethinisharr, the sphere from which the Rawkin kings rule and upon which the kingdom's prestige almost entirely rests. Its surface is a country of glens, river valleys, and villages, red-gritted and unremarkable; its distinction lies overhead, in the drifting island-valleys that carry the whole of the realm's high nobility.
The sphere is widely held to be unconquerable. An invading host cannot bring its steel, and cannot reach the crowns at all without the Throne nexus. This belief has never been tested, and the confidence it produces is the sphere's most serious weakness.
The Field and the Bronze Decree[edit]
The distinguishing physical condition of Levens is a strange field — held by common understanding to be the same force that keeps the crowns suspended — which distorts the weight and balance of ferrous metals. Steel blades stutter mid-swing, pull wrong against invisible tides, or tremble in the grip as though resisting the strike. To fight with steel on Levens is to fight a second opponent.
The condition does not affect the weight of bodies. Warriors from heavier spheres such as Ju'kov find the sphere's pull lighter than their own, but must abandon the weapons they trained with — a double adaptation that makes competition on Levens a test of versatility rather than of strength.
By the Bronze Decree of Levens, all weapons borne in the tourney are forged of bronze, honed to a lethal edge and reinforced with horn, lacquer, or bone. Armor follows: scaled and lamellar, fish-scale cuirasses lacquered in house colors, broad outward-curling pauldrons, forward-swept helm ridges — patterned after the ancient styles of the riverlords of Aruveth and the sun-bound dynasts of Varnashan. Here finesse matters more than force, and it is said the world itself chooses the victor.
Steel that resists the field is not merely rare but unheard of. Its appearance is treated as evidence of something outside the ordinary order of the River.
The Doctrine of the Confused Natures[edit]
The prevailing scholarly account across the River holds that the four natures are disordered upon Levens, each having taken the property of another. The doctrine is recited in a fixed inverted form, and is repeated by Queen Bayar at the brink of one of the crowns:
The doctrine's chief virtue is that it accounts for three separate observations at once — the failure of steel, the suspension of the crowns, and the thinness of the air upon them — by a single cause. Its chief error is the same: it assumes one force where there are two.
A common corollary among smiths and soldiers holds that finer steel sinks more than crude, since a well-forged blade is felt to misbehave worse than a rough garrison weapon. This is a false inference drawn from a true observation, though it is near-universally believed and is repeated in armorers' guild instruction across several spheres.
The Fendril King rejected the doctrine entirely, holding that no engine bears the isles at all: that they float because the nobility wills it so, disdain made flesh, and that the law of Levens is neither physics nor gods but distance.
Out-of-universe: the actual mechanism[edit]
No character in the setting has access to the following. It is recorded here for authorial consistency only.
The behaviour of metals on Levens is a consequence of crystal lattice structure, not of weight. Iron atoms sit in a body-centred arrangement at a spacing that permits the unpaired electrons of adjacent atoms to lock their spins into alignment across whole regions of a blade, making iron and its alloys responsive to an ambient field. Copper's lattice is face-centred and its outer electron shell is full; there are no unpaired spins to align. Tin behaves likewise. Bronze is therefore not resistant to the field — it is invisible to it. A secondary drag effect exists for any conductor moving through a field, but alloying tin into copper disrupts the electron paths badly enough that bronze conducts far worse than pure copper, rendering even that negligible.
The sensation that a steel blade fights its wielder, rather than merely weighing more, arises because a magnetised iron lattice physically changes dimension as the field through it varies. A blade swung across a gradient stretches, torques, and rings at its own frequency, and the response lags behind the motion because the magnetic domains do not reorient instantly. The blade's behaviour therefore depends on the direction it was last swung.
The carbon that makes steel good steel sits wedged in the gaps of the iron lattice, and those wedged atoms pin the domain walls in place. Fine high-carbon steel is consequently magnetically hard: it resists reorienting, then responds late and inconsistently. Crude low-carbon iron is magnetically soft: it is gripped more strongly overall and drifts steadily toward the pull, but settles at once and behaves the same way twice. The crude blade drags; the fine blade stutters. A warrior can learn to fight a current in a season, but cannot compensate for something that is never the same twice — which is the observation behind the popular belief that finer steel sinks more.
The field that ruins swordplay is a standing residue pervading the sphere. The mechanism that suspends the crowns is concentrated within the crowns themselves and is orders of magnitude stronger; a field capable of lifting stone would tear a blade from a man's hands entirely. The magisters' identification of the two as one force is wrong, and will never be discovered to be wrong.
The blade borne by the Fendril King is ordinary steel whose lattice has been arranged in the face-centred configuration rather than the body-centred, which renders iron non-responsive to the field. This requires alloying elements and a thermal history that no forge on the River could produce or would think to attempt. The weapon is not exotic matter and not sorcery — it is iron persuaded to stand the wrong way, by a maker who understood why Levens does what it does. See The Symbol of No Mouth.
The Aether Thrones[edit]
The Aether Thrones are vast island-valleys cleaved from the surface of Levens in some forgotten age and set adrift above it, drifting slower than cloud, trailing hanging roots and veiled waterfalls. In common speech they are the crowns. To hold one is to stand among the highest nobility of Gethinisharr; their holders are styled Thronelords or Aether Lords.
Each crown contains a fragment or conduit of an ancient nexus-gate system — distinct from the sterf network in that it moves men within a sphere rather than between spheres, permitting the instantaneous relocation of armies, courts, or royal persons across a continent.
The air upon the crowns is thin. Visitors notice that every breath tastes lacking; the native-born do not notice at all, since to them it is simply life. No account of how the crowns came to be suspended commands agreement; see the Doctrine of the Confused Natures above.
Aeryth Yaruun[edit]
Aeryth Yaruun is the greatest of the named crowns and the site of the Aethercall tourney. Its stewardship falls to Lord Mallin Crey. Its arena stands ringed by carved balustrades and gold-trimmed banners; from the eastern edge of the stands, Bræmarc Hold can be seen shimmering in the distance across the gulf. The outer rim of the crown is marked only by a ceremonial line of posts and rope; beyond it lies open stone, and beneath that nothing at all.
The Eirhelm[edit]
The Eirhelm is the high hall of Aeryth Yaruun, perched above the throne-bridge — the site of the great feasts and of the private chambers where the monarchs conduct their business. Beneath it run servants' corridors leading to the marshal's quarters and the stables; beyond it lie open fields, the mews where the yarvets roost during the tourney, and the tourney grounds themselves. Yarvets are commonly said to roost in the Eirhelm's own rafters.
Geography and Settlement[edit]
The surface of Levens is a country of glens, river valleys, and scattered villages, its soil marked by a distinctive red grit that clings to boots, cloaks, and sealed parchment alike. Three moons ride its night sky. Cliffside hollows in the southern reaches are the breeding grounds of the rarest yarvet broods.
Seen from the crowns, the whole of it reduces to smudges of smoke and slate — alleys invisible, people forgotten.
Bræmarc Hold[edit]
Bræmarc Hold is the royal seat: a mountain-bound colossus of stone and light, its peaks catching the sun like the teeth of a sleeping god. It is visible from the arena stands of Aeryth Yaruun and serves as the chamber of state where the most consequential business of the summit is conducted.
The lands below[edit]
Levens is said to hide its poor more completely than any other sphere. The villages of the glens supply the crowns and receive little in return, and it is a recurring charge against the Gethin nobility that they take pride in pretending the ground itself is beneath them.
Ecology[edit]
The Yarvet[edit]
The Yarvet are the great birds of Levens and are native to no other sphere. Unlike most birds of prey they are not solitary hunters: they hunt in groups and can only flourish as part of a flock, one flying high while the others drive prey from below. A yarvet that does not lead does not survive — not all at once, but with every wingbeat spent trying to be something smaller.
Yarvets are considerably larger than common hunting hawks, with wingspans exceeding a man's outstretched arms, and are commonly dappled in copper and stone-grey. The rarest breed is the ghost pullet, whose feathers hold a pale light visible only under moonlight, never sun. Ghost pullets hatch in the cliffside hollows of southern Levens and are prized as noble gifts across the River; birds of a single brood may be recognised by their nesting signal, a slow blink of the left eye first.
Yarvets are hostile to the Ramsu, the winged mounts of San Ema. A rider arriving on Levens astride one is set upon in the air, the beast torn open and devoured, its carcass left to fall to the surface.
Terms of yarvet husbandry follow the older vocabulary of the mews: pullet for a young female, formel, tiercel, eyass, intermewed, lure-wise.
The Aethercall of Yaruun[edit]
The Aethercall is the tourney convened upon Aeryth Yaruun by King Pritchard Rawkin in honor of Prince Arwell's reclamation of Zarune's Mouth, held in accordance with the rites once hallowed at Ezzenval Tharu and deliberately set against the Nervak spring tourney on Ju'kov. It spans three days.
The Rude List[edit]
The first day belongs entirely to the Rude List — the untitled, the bannerless, the unknown. The name began as a courtly jest (the rude tally, the mud ledger) and was taken up as a badge by those it was meant to diminish. The day runs in three rounds — morning, afternoon, and eve — each crowning its own victor, from whom a single champion rises to face the noble challengers on the final day. The list is not divided by training, experience, or rank.
Contests include mounted tilts atop Atuza, the barehanded duels of the Madhushan monks, and the blood-duels of the warriors of Bronthair, for whom death in the ring is a rite rather than a misfortune.
In Book I[edit]
Levens is the setting of much of Book I, Section One. The Nervak delegation arrives under Ezmalik Erikan, escorting Soravyn and Niryath in the Malik's stead. At the Eirhelm feast, King Donchad of Canmore provokes King Pritchard into a confrontation that nearly becomes a diplomatic rupture, defused by Prince Wyn and ended by Prince Emani's intervention.
The Rude List opens, Queen Bayar of Ganbatarr enters it, and the Fendril King arrives bearing a blade of steel that ignores the field of Levens entirely — its maker's mark answering to the Symbol of No Mouth. The sight breaks the composure of Selûneth Yarulai-tha, who turns the summit from festival to containment. The section closes with the death duel between Bayar and the Fendril King.
News of the challenger travels by rider from Levens to Almashi, where the scroll — still dusted with the sphere's red grit — reaches Malik Rhyvân and reframes the Starless threat as something that can bleed.
Later History[edit]
Levens would in a later age be renamed Highclere. The Aether Thrones fell silent after the destruction of the nobility that held them; the crowns stood empty and unreachable, and the armies of Gethinisharr were bound to the ground and to the sterfs like any commoner. The seats were reached again only generations afterward, and the sphere took the name of the house that reached them. Under the Gladstones, the ancient division persisted in harsher form: the highborn dwelling in the sky cities, the people of the glens below left to scavenge and toil.
Scholars, mystics, and dissenting factions continue to use the older names. The choice between Levens and Highclere is rarely a neutral one.