This artifact is the oldest of any in the Triempery Revelations and is the only one not to have originated with Leur or the Three. It is known by many names, among them Vllyr’s Crown, the Undying Crown, the Hegemon’s Crown, the Diadem of the Devaryati, and Nammuor’s Diadem.
Appearance
The Undying Crown (Hegemon’s Crown) held an enormous center jewel of blood red. This jewel was set in an Aryati enhancer of powerful green lr gems bracketed by dark metal. The center jewel was said to be fulgent and resemble a compound eye.
During Exile, the Undying Crown became known as the Diadem of the Devaryati and underwent a subtle change in appearance. Upon becoming exhausted, the high level green lr gems in the frame could not be reproduced and were replaced by less powerful lr gems of red or gold.
Upon Return, the Diadem was assumed to be lost. It reappeared more than a millennium later under the Sorcerer Nammuor and its appearance altered yet again. The center jewel remained but is now bracketed by lifeforce-binding crystals—long, red lr matrices filled with blood and arcane energy.
Origin.
The center gem of the Diadem is a remnant of the god Vllyr, who inhabited a space outside of Time and was unaware of Leur or their Creation until awakened to them by the Aryati. Itself unchanging, Vllyr abhorred the existence of Leur, creators of Time and Change. Leur’s Creation—the place where Life began and from which it spread—became the focus of Vllyr’s enmity. Vllyr first attacked remote Aryati bases and planets. Aryati attacks on Vllyr had little effect until the Aryati device-wielder Amynas and his Leur companion used a Leur-created arcane sword to dismantle Vllyr. Because Vllyr did not possess the nature to regenerate or heal—both of which are functions of Change—the god was effectively slain.
The Leur warned the Aryati not to tamper with the god’s remains but greed moved them to collect pieces for use in their devices. Vllyr’s immortal milky green exoskeleton, a nearly indestructible material known as tullun, they milled into wondrous shapes and uses; because it could be honed to sharper edges than any other material, the Aryati fashioned tullun into blades of many kinds.
The Aryati also salvaged a “jewel” encased in a shattered shard of Vllyr’s braincase. This jewel enraptured the Aryati with its beauty and subliminal promises of immortal power. The jewel was in fact Vllyr’s intact eye—immortal and unchanging—the only one of the god’s seven eyes to escape destruction. Unaware that the jewel contained a diminished but malignant shred of Vllyr’s sentience, the Aryati set this trophy piece into the Undying Crown of their ruler, the Hegemon Pankratos. No longer a god, Vllyr remained a force of darkness, vengeance, and ruin.
Vllyr’s emanations began to enthrall the Pankratos. The Undying Crown became Pankrato’s obsession, and he enhanced the power sources which fed the device through ever more powerful lr gems spawned from core arrays. Using the Crown, Pankratos waged war against the Creation’s remaining non-Aryati peoples; those not eradicated by these attacks fled into a time path opened to them by Leur. Deus Kratos, heir-clone of the Hegemon, and his followers attacked Pankratos and Deus seized the Undying Crown. Enraged that another should wear the Crown, the Vllyr-maddened Pankratos took up the Sword of Leur, the weapon which had dismantled Vllyr, and plunged it into the core array of the immortal city of Mulsor. Sundering of the core’s shielding released energy sufficient to shatter the Creation and also destroyed the Sword of Leur.
Deus, however, used the Undying Crown to generate a portal to the other time path and fled with his followers, taking the Crown with him.
The Diadem of the Devaryati
Among those who had fled into the Leur-created Thessalan time path were Amynas and his Leur companion, Lokenalys. They were among the few who knew the origin of the Undying Crown’s “jewel” and realized the danger it presented. They soon determined that the Creation had not been wholly destroyed but that the exiles—themselves included—were trapped in a static past. The Aryati had resumed making devices and were acting as gods to the native population or hunting down other exiles.
Through Deus, the Undying Crown (now called the Diadem of the Devaryati) knew of Amynas—himself a clone of the Hegemon—and Lokenalys, the sole Leur to still manifest as a lifeform. The Diadem fed Deus’ fears of the pair and he sought to imprison or slay them. The adventures of Amynas and Leur and the discovery of the Second Creation are written elsewhere, but when they returned to battle Deus and the Aryati they were accompanied by the Three.
A physical union between Amynas and the Leur had produced immortal offspring—and they were armed with a new sword forged by their fathers.
Though less powerful than the Sword of Leur, in the hands of Amarantos the Sword of Amynas succeeded in shielding against energy cast by Deus using the Diadem. Derlon used the Sword to generate energy blades that sundered the Aryati stronghold of Oupalos. Amynas himself delivered the death blow to Deus. Though still malignant and radiating evil, the Diadem was rendered inactive by the death of its host.
Fate of the Diadem
Following the events surrounding the destruction of the “gods” in Thessala and the Return of the Exiles, custody of the Diadem fell to the Three. To prevent Vllyr from acquiring another host, they sealed the Diadem in a deathstone box secured by a Leur bloodlock and by this means transported it to the Second Creation. Cibulitus mentions the Diadem being kept for a time at Stauberg and that obtaining it was one of the goals of the surviving Aryati returnees during the Winter War. However, following the transformations of Ergeiron into the Wall and Derlon into the Rill, the fate of the Diadem became unknown. The Wall would not tell where what had become of it… and the Rill could not tell.
For many centuries the consensus among scholars was that the Diadem of the Devaryati was destroyed by the Three before Ergeiron and Derlon transformed, most likely by using the Sword of Amynas.
In fact, the Diadem could not be destroyed and had been hidden. Its reappearance is recounted in Sordaneon.