Extrachthonic Cartographer's Guild

The Extrachthonic Cartographer's Guild is an elite institution within the Clerisy of House Faendryl. The original role of the Guild was to map newly discovered valences, which have many unknown hazards. This role has expanded to include measuring the properties of valences, running experiments within them, and returning with samples of native matter and "wildlife."

The Harrowers

Known colloquially as the "Harrowers", the Extrachthonic Cartographer's Guild is a special operations unit for other worlds. While they are researchers who are part of the Clerisy, not the Rachis, as with other Faendryl "private" institutions they have paramilitary aspects and get conscripted into missions by the Basilica. They work on teams with ordinary duties, but also get assigned to task forces, under the order of the Basilican Sorcerer. They are the ones who do the first field work on valences that have not been explored yet, but also scout out or do reconnaissance on the more dangerous valences. Thus they also serve as security forces for House Faendryl. The internal structure of the guild is not well-defined. Titles that have been seen on Harrower NPCs include "guildmaster", "veilmaster", and "cartographer."

Harrowers also get tasked with discovering breaches or weaknesses in the veil, including finding them by sensing them in other valences, and reporting it to the sorcerous regulating authorities. This can be caused by demonic summoning, or mana storms and wounds from old portals. The Faendryl consider themselves as having "original jurisdiction" in all places concerning the veil. Harrowers have been seen turning up, or even conducting full-blown operations, in other countries in disregard for the permission of other authorities. Though the Faendryl are more restrained in this way with the other Houses.

Harrowers are soldier-scientists who have to meet intense physical and intellectual standards even to apply to be members of the Guild. Only a tenth of those pass the final selection process. It is not unusual to find Palestra among them, particularly if the Palestra has combat training and magic education relevant to that valence. While roughly half the Clerisy budget goes to valences research, and valence travel is normal for Faendryl sorcerers, the Harrowers are the ones who first physically go to unexplored realms to encounter unknown hazards. Provided they have ascertained that travel there will not be immediately lethal. They provide "hard data" to the rest of the Clerisy, and determine if valences are too dangerous. The Harrowers also monitor the exploits of the Patriarch's Order of the Guardians of the City, often recruiting those Armata members into valence ventures, as the unhealed rift at Maelshyve allows in unfamiliar extraplanar creatures at random which the Harrowers then wish to identify further.

Known Members

Harrowers have sometimes appeared in storylines. Xociral turns up randomly around the continent when returning to Elanthia. Ersix was in The Roots of All Evil. Several Harrowers and some number of other unnamed Harrowers appeared in the Lost Palestra storyline. They have specialist roles in the guild, but it is not systematically defined.

• Harrower Vortelis Infernebrus Faendryl
• Harrower Ersix Severus Faendryl
• Harrower Xociral Glodinal Faendryl
• Harrower Moravius Faendryl
• Harrower Nallius (Alabaster Spire NPC)

Equipment

Cartographer field teams are supported by the most advanced equipment and experimental magics available to the Faendryl. These are typically highly restricted, and often very specialized.

Panoptics

The panoptic is described in "The Theory of Governance and Social Order" as "an iconic piece of headwear" that "allows users, in special settings, to view different types of light, as well as to translate various non-light-based energies into an optical analog viewable by normal Faendryl." Very few outside the Harrowers have access to them. Their construction methods are "a highly controlled secret", impractical for large-scale production, and there is a death penalty for removing them beyond the borders without explicit permission from the Patriarch.

Harrowers obviously are allowed to bring them into other valences, as that is the whole point of having panoptics. The Basilican Sorcerer granted the Harrowers authorization to bring their own panoptics, and all other necessary equipment, to the Darkstone Bay region when conducting their operations over the shadowy Ithzir invasions and the lost Palestra Blade Aralyte.

• Panoptics have been portrayed on NPCs as "intricate faenor headbands" with various attachments, especially gemstones with exotic magical properties. The mana storm of Melgorehn's Reach was said by Vortelis and Xociral to give them headaches with the panoptic, and that its "chaos" caused them interference, when they were trying to understand the source of shadows and shadowy Ithzir invasions.

• Panoptics allow Harrowers to see even in "pitch black" valences with no visible light (e.g. Shien'tyr) by converting the energies of those valences into optical analogs that the Harrowers can see with their eyes.

• Vortelis used his panoptic to shine a cone of light at the base of a bleakstone statue, which made the ground under the statue semi-transparent in ordinary visible light to ordinary observers.

• Vortelis said they use "essence prism" devices to disperse extraplanar energies (the analog of composite elements) into fundamental constituent pure energies to calibrate their panoptics.

Chthonic Anchors

The metaphor of "chthonic" is said to refer to it being more difficult in general to "climb back up" into Elanthia from the other valences, which can be conceived of as "lower", as we mostly are unable to access "higher" or "more pure" or "more ordered" planes unless they are overlapping and intersecting into our own. Vortelis said there are several difficulties with returning to Elanthia from other valences.

• (1) One is the inability to open rifts to our valence with the more chaotic essences of demonic valences. This is reinforced by veil wards, such as Shieltine's Ward, which are monitored by the Basilica Tower.

• (2) Another is the "needle in an ocean" problem in that our valence is near infinite, and mostly vacuum, which means getting to our world is not the same thing as merely getting to our universe.

• (3) Related to this issue, there is the "cosmic abyss" problem, where there are a vast number of other valences. It is not trivial to find our own universe without already knowing where it is relative to some other valence, especially when exploring unknown worlds and potentially falling into other ones. Getting lost means needing the luck to "sense" and find random veil weaknesses from Elanthia.

• (4) There are also "targeting" difficulties in that if you are not guided by stable flow patterns (e.g. Planar Shift) from being within that valence, you need to have rifts exiting at extremely specific elevations and locations, so that you are not dropping from hundreds of feet in the air or walking into solid rock a mile underground. This is a "not going in blind" problem of knowing the destination and travel path.

For such reasons, Harrowers will often use "chthonic anchor" devices to "tether" themselves back to Elanthia, when they are traveling in the outer valences. Especially when there is little or no expectation of natural rifts forming to Elanthia. These tethers keep the rift a crack open, similar in principle to the "links" used in minor demon summoning. These have been depicted as nearly perfect "quasi-spheres" of urglaes, which Vortelis said are sometimes found in excavations around the ruins of Maelshyve and adapted by the Guild. Vortelis said these small ones are thought to have originated in Despana's urglaes foundries, and larger spheres have been rumored to exist among dark cults. These help the Harrower find their way to rifts to Elanthia, or help other Harrowers trace the thread back to a missing Harrower.

a floating void black urglaes sphere with misty veins of crimson.

>look sphere
The nearly perfect sphere is only a few inches in diameter.  The deep black urglaes is striated with misty veins of crimson, and set within shifting bands of some strange alloy.  Darkness forms a halo around it, burning through with crimson.

The tethers can also be used for probes through the veil, as well as testing whether the tether (at the binding strength that would be used on a person) will be ruptured by rifts being too violently unstable.

Vortelis fixes a small metallic orb to a dark tendril of energy from his urglaes sphere.

The probe vanishes into the ripple of air. The tendril of dark energy flickers around, as if being drawn like a line of rope, then begins thrashing and grows taut.

The ripple in the air shakes violently. The veil warps around the urglaes sphere, making waves in space, until finally the dark tendril snaps!

Vortelis also said that the Palestra Blade Aralyte Halanori Faendryl, not having access to a quasi-sphere, used her shadows soulstone as a makeshift knock-off of a chthonic anchor. Except hers had been rigged to expend shadows energy to hijack rifts / portals toward the Shadow Realm valence, triggered from the end of the demonic valence, which in principle would have aided her in returning to Elanthia without assistance by others. Vortelis said such a device would never be made or used, as it would allow malevolent powers to open their own portals into our own world.

Essence Extractors

The Harrowers have devices that will disintegrate matter and break them up into their constituent essences, which Vortelis called "fractional distillation", where for example mud would get turned into essence of water and essence of earth. This is primarily used for the study of extraplanar matter, or matter that has been transformed by sorcerous radiations. Vortelis did this to a sample of bleakstone to provide a baseline contrast, so that when he used it on a bleakstone statue, he would see if there was anything being siphoned out of it that was not intrinsic to bleakstone itself.

a multi-vialed veil iron extractor

>look extractor
The extractor is a dark cylindrical tube of kroderine with an ivory aranthium core that ends in a metallic icosahedral head, which has various fittings for filter lenses that feed into attachments of absorbing medium vials.  The bottom of the cylinder is a kind of clamp of conjoined veil iron pieces, flexibly inter-hinged with pure urnon.

Vortelis also used it in combination with an "essence prism" on a hazy tenebrous orb. He disconnected the suction from the extractor, which still broke apart the orb, then the essences were sucked into the other contraption instead. This allowed him to siphon out and use the shadows energy in the hazy tenebrous orb, without having to directly do it through handling the orb.

Essence Prisms

The Harrowers have "essence prisms" that split apart "raw energies" or radiations into their component modes of more fundamental elements. This is loosely analogous to chromatic dispersion with prisms. The elemental mana from a composite elemental, such as a mud elemental, would be split into the elements of water and earth. This is used more generally for "sorcerous elements" from extraplanar energies. Vortelis noted that what they are calling "shadows" is mostly a fusion of "darkness" and "chaos", meaning shadows are analogous to a composite element.

These devices are designed to fit the quasi-spheres, which bleed through the veil, and can be used to bring a wide variety of extraplanar radiation into the devices. They are loosely analogous to a spectroscope for magical energies, and work similar in principle to the extractors. They also give some measure of the intensity of radiation from how fast they fill up.

a prismatic aranthium contraption

>look contraption
The contraption has a veil iron cusp fused into a strange crystal that is bottomed with protrusions of myriad materials, whether exotic metals or pure gemstones, which are held in place with aranthium fittings which cap the ends of each probe. The metallic casing supporting the protrusions has correspond glowing runes, and the whole head of it is flexible to rotation.

Vortelis said that their panoptics will register if other energies are building up and leaking out of its crystal, which would mean a kind of energy that is unable to filter into any of the given probes. He said they use these to calibrate their panoptics. The energies are stored and released through aranthium probes. These can also be used in conjunction with the essence extractors.

Valencial Astrolabes

The Harrowers have veil devices called "astrolabes", that are metaphorical analogs of astrolabes for valences instead of astronomy. Where an astronomical astrolabe serves as a star chart and physical model of the visible dome of the sky, and has the function of allowing the identification of stars and latitudes and times, a valencial astrolabe is used in the location of valences through the veil. (Grishom Stone notably used an astrolabe when trying to gain access to the Ithzir world of Kol Tar'sken through the mana storming of Melgorehn's Reach during the Return to Sunder storyline.)

a phasing black alloy astrolabe

a convoluted valencial cartograph

Example of use:

Moravius inserts a new tympanum in his astrolabe, then rotates the rete around the mater as he examines the ripple in the air.
Moravius hovers the astrolabe near the ripple, gesturing as it phases in and out.
The large ripple in the air contracts, then wavers unstably and shifts around in space.
Moravius adjusts a small revolving rod on the astrolabe, orienting it with the tear in reality and consulting his valencial map.
Moravius tweaks the index of the astrolabe along the ecliptic hyperbolic engraved on its rete, looking between his map and the rift as well as the mater.

The precise way this works is not clearly described. In this example Harrower Moravius Faendryl was probing unstable rifts in the Bleaklands to the Shadow Realm valence, trying to determine if they were suitable for forming a stable gateway portal. Or if they would eject travelers into the interplanar void, or land them in some other valence, or rip them apart in the "tidal forces." Moravius was essentially using the "astrolabe" and "valencial cartograph" to assess if the rift was cleanly leading to the single location desired and not others. He was also seeing if they were "too narrow" or too unstable.

It functions by phasing in and out of reality through the veil. The astrolabe terminology is analogy and not literal. The "mater" is the base plate, the "rete" is a star chart, the "tympanum" is a latitude-dependent interchangeable disc compared against the rete, the "revolving rod" or alidade is a sight for star or sun angles on the back, and the "index" is a pointer on the front aligning the rete against the mater and tympanum. Instead of stars and the night skies, this is some kind of cosmological mapping. It is outside of the space of this valence, so this is some kind of abstract or higher dimensional model.

Behind the Scenes

The Harrowers were part of the initial Faendryl socio-political document, which was later revised into the official "The Theory of Governance and Social Order" document. The "elevator pitch version" of the Harrowers was described by their creator as "SFOD-D (Delta Force) with the IQ and scientific knowledge of Stephen Hawking."