The Rill Stone and the Wall Stone appear frequently in conjunction with the Entity-bound Highborn princes. Though often called devices or artifacts, these items are are most accurately relics because they are fashioned from or around body parts from their respective Entities.
The Wall Stone
The Wall Stone is made of the manubrium, or upper part of the breastbone, of Ergeiron, one of the three immortal sons of Amynas and The Leur. Before Ergeiron transformed into the Wall, he pulled out his breastbone and gave it to his sons, who later discovered it allowed them to communicate with their much-changed father.
The Wall Stone is worn around the neck and rests symbolically upon the wearer's breastbone. Inscribed and raised upon its surfaces are symbols of Time and the Leur principle of Intelligent Creation. The artifact glows with the same gentle luminescence of the Wall of which it is a part. Although not a source of power, it does possess immortal life.
Malyrdeon princes gifted with Wall affinity use the Wall Stone to unlock the structure which houses the Wall's Archive. the Aidion. The Wall Stone also allows these princes to amplify their dimensional awareness such that they can "walk the Wall," a deep communication with the Wall's temporal structure that enables them to peer into timelines past, present, or future and so uncover the nature of events or shadows cast by those events. Determining the location, origin, or ramifications of events by this means has given the Malyrdeon dynasty of Essera great power and influence.
The Wall Stone must be handled carefully. The living artifact -- product of a being that was a Highborn progenitor -- interacts readily with Highborn flesh. To prevent disruptive inadvertent connection to the Wall or profound temporal dislocation, the Wall Stone is handled by its chain and is either wrapped or worn atop one or more layers of clothing.
The Rill Stone
Before Derlon, one of the immortal sons of Amynas and The Leur, gave his body and life to revive and transform the Rill, he removed his left eye. From his eye he created a jewel -- green like his eye -- which he placed into a ring he had crafted of Rill corpus. This ring he handed to his sons and said, "By this device shall I see and know you."
The Rill Stone is traditionally worn by the ruling Hierarch of Sordan and the device's green jewels glow when the ring is in contact with living Sordaneon flesh. The Rill Stone's powers are strictly affinity-based; while any Sordaneon can wear it, only those heirs inoculated with Derlon's cells directly by a previously gifted Sordaneon can wield certain of its abilities.
Because Derlon will always "see" and "know" the Rill Stone's bearer, the ring unlocks all Rill doors, chambers, and barriers. Rill components cannot be secured against the Rill Stone.
Although the Rill Stone can tap into and summon Rill energy, this ability comes with great risk and is seldom used -- even so, Hierarchs have used the Rill Stone to generate defensive shields, empower Rill cores, and in one case -- Deben III -- to hurl energy bolts. Though Deben III's massive power gain burned away his hand, it did not damage the Rill Stone.
[A note about the artist: The illustrations above were created by the talented Margarita Bourkova. Give her site a look. She does wonderful work.]
* I have great difficulty envisioning what my characters might look like, so hesitate to commission character art. On the other hand, I thought it would be interesting and fun to have illustrations of the Triempery's artifacts -- and maybe eventually the Entities. I have just commissioned illustrations of the Undying Crown and The Lear's Ring and look forward to sharing them!
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