Cradle of Undoing

Overview

The Cradle of Undoing is a fortress-complex hidden inside Mount Thornmaw. It is the oldest site tied to the Unmaker. It is where the Unmaker was first confronted and sealed during the events that mark Year 0 of the Thal Reckoning. From that victory, Kavrix adopted a unified calendar and an alliance between major powers. Since then, the Cradle has remained sealed, watched, or occupied in secret by those who study endings and control. The place resists normal magic, resists sound, and resists record-keeping. Many who enter report gaps in memory, lost notes, and failed divinations. The Cradle exists to unmake things: plans, items, oaths, and even identities.

World Context

Kavrix is a realm shaped by high magic, unstable borders, and regular cross-world summoning. Every ten years, a formal Summoning Ritual brings “official” heroes who are celebrated and registered. Between those cycles, “wild” summons occur without control. This constant influx strains politics and faith and encourages factions to manipulate arrivals. At present (1138 Thal), tensions are high between Aertos and Solara. Rumors say wild summons are spiking again, and some fear this points to the Unmaker’s return or a breach at the Cradle.

Historical Origin

0 Thal: Thallus Fjord was summoned by a rare multi-kingdom coalition. He wielded a power that sealed endings and countered the Unmaker. The Unmaker was defeated at the Cradle of Undoing and sealed beyond mortal and divine reach. The Thal calendar began after this victory. The gods reaffirmed a Balance Compact that shapes how great powers oppose each other.
Aftermath: The Adventurer’s Guild formed to manage lesser threats and frequent summons. The Academy of Heroes later emerged as neutral ground for training, drawing on the traditions of Aertos and the engineering of Solara. Both institutions keep partial files on the Cradle, but much is redacted or corrupted.

Purpose and Function

The Cradle is a place designed to end continuity. Weapons weaken, rituals fail, and records blur. The effect is not loud or violent; it is steady and exact. This environment allows the study, storage, and dismantling of dangerous relics, contracts, and vows that cannot be broken elsewhere. It also provides a summoning focus that, if misused, can attract entities that match the Cradle’s theme of negation. Authorities who know of the site disagree on whether to destroy it, seal it forever, or use it as a check against growing threats like the Obsidian Order, the Infernal Syndicate, and the Silent Chorus.

Political Relevance

Aertos: Values preservation and balance. Views the Cradle as a threat to harmony and a reminder of past catastrophe. Supports wards and guardianship by vetted mages.
Solara: Values innovation and controlled risk. Some Solaran councils seek to audit, model, and repurpose the Cradle’s fields to stabilize machines and weapons that suffer from magical drift. Others warn against any attempt to “instrument” the site.
Grimstone Hold: Offers craft support for doors, locks, and vault stone. Dwarven masters refuse to set long-term forges in the Cradle due to metal fatigue and tool failure rates.
Sylvaniar: Opposes any expansion of the Cradle’s influence. Rangers and wardens monitor the mountain’s outer slopes for leaks of its entropy field into neighboring woods.
Villain Factions:
- Obsidian Order (Valerius): Seeks to bind the Cradle under law and pattern, using it as a capstone to enforce total order.
- Infernal Syndicate (Xylos): Explores contract dissolutions and debt erasures inside the Cradle, turning “unmaking” into leverage over rivals.
- Silent Chorus (Aethelred): Studies the Cradle as a template for stasis—ending motion and voice. Some liturgies attempt to copy its silence.

Access and Defenses

There is no open road. Hidden switchbacks and dead tunnels surround Mount Thornmaw. Entry requires keys in three classes: a physical token forged to a specific lock geometry, a sigil phrase that must be spoken by a recognized soul, and a timing mark aligned to the Thal calendar’s older observances. The keys change if any one is publicly known. Inside, warded doors, null halls, and watcher-crystals separate each wing. Scrying fails. Teleportation scatters. Written maps lose detail the closer they get to core chambers. These measures were adopted after the original sealing, then updated across centuries by joint committees and, at times, by unilateral actors.

Magical Behavior

Silence Bias: Sounds dampen. Commands and oaths lose binding force unless reinforced by very old law or god-level sanction.
Entropy Bias: Crafted items degrade faster. Enchantments unwind unless grounded by pre-Thal methods or divine marks tied to the Balance Compact.
Record Drift: Text, diagrams, and recordings made inside the Cradle are unreliable after removal unless witnessed and countersigned by a neutral authority like the Academy or a Host-aligned temple.
Summoning Vector: The core circle can pull across worlds when primed by the Thal cycle, but tends to attract beings aligned with negation or correction. This includes “Unmaker-adjacent” souls during surge years.

Key Locations

Villain Summoning Chamber (Vanta Gate)
A perfect obsidian circle with faint glyphs that never fully darken. Seven monoliths stand in chains, not to restrain a body but to anchor a pattern. A split mirrorstone dais sits at center, aligned to an inactive arch. Speech falls flat; time jitters at the edges of thought. This is where the player arrives in the current arc. The chamber recognizes arrivals tied to the Cradle’s function and will complete the ritual even if no officiants are present.

Procession Path
A polished corridor that links major nodes. Six side channels bear sigils for Aerthos (Aertos), Solara, Aok, Sylvaniar, the Obsidian Order, and the Silent Chorus. Where they meet, stone is scorched in the shape of a single bootprint. No guards. No dust. People feel as if someone just passed.

Entropic Forge
A cold vault where objects accept that they are not whole. Metal pits, leather splits, bindings fail. Behind seven locks lies Nullbrand, a void-shaped blade formed by subtraction. It holds edge in the Cradle but grows inert outside unless fed with vows to be broken.

Hall of Quiet Blades
Silent training floor under watcher-crystals. Racks hold dulled weapons. Constructs replay famous styles in endless loops. There is no shouted drill, only repetition until motion is exact.

Throne of Refusal
A recessed dais with a jagged obsidian seat facing a blank wall. No banners. No echo. Three ruined statues kneel at the edges. The throne rejects audiences. It receives decisions.

Silent Refectory
Long basalt tables, ash-robed attendants, tasteless rations. No talk. No ceremony beyond precision. A mural at the far end shows Mount Thornmaw as a hollow shell with a dark heart.

Sepulchrium
Rows of sealed sarcophagi carved from grief-stone. No bodies within. Names appear and fade—known, unknown, yet to be born. Staying too long causes people to hear their own name as a question.

Chamber of Unrest
Guest suites that look fine but feel wrong: seats slightly too tall, beds that tilt, fireplaces that never vary. Mirrors stay fogged. Bell-pulls summon silent attendants or dismiss them mid-step.

Dissection Vault
Sterile unmaking lab: rune-dampened tools, everlight slabs, stasis tubes. Notes carve themselves into stone and erase daily. Only a few can work here; all are oath-bound to silence.

Ashscript Study
Shelves of partial tomes and burned scrolls. A scarred rootwood desk. An old viewing orb that shows choices made and then unmade. No wards. Nothing here wants to last.

Black Iron Galley
Hearths of black-veined ore. Measured heat. Unmarked crates. Attendants work in steps, not talk. Output feeds the Refectory. Food sustains but gives no pleasure.

Servants’ Quarters (Bound Hollow)
Doorless cells behind thick black curtains. Cots, a basin, an iron hook. Workers move on ritual schedule without posted times. Voices sound practiced, not lived.

Unmaker’s Master Bedroom (Cloister of Still Flame)
Echoless chamber with inert braziers. Black drapes hide frescoes of future ruins: Aertos fallen, Solara failed, Aok cracked. A single obsidian slab serves as bed and altar. Time feels slow here.

Lantern Hall
Lanterns with no flame, only a dull pulse that each holds a last memory: a town that gave up, a hero who turned away. At the end, a pedestal with the shape of something never placed.

Cell of the Bound
Seven arched chambers sealed in humming stone. Inside float soul-echoes of summoners who called the Unmaker. Their looping regret feeds the site’s stability. Interference risks collapse of the Cradle’s moorings.