Vel’Zherineth

City of Silk and Stone

Vel’Zherineth drops for miles inside a narrow fissure. Floors hang on silk anchors hammered into the rock and checked each week by weaver crews. Causeways carry a low glow from oil that keeps threads from drying and cracking. Markets sit on ledges behind railings built from layered silk and bone pins. Stalls sell chitin plates, bone knives, venom jars, thread-keys, and spools of coded line that carry orders from level to level. The Gutterhold Warrens crowd the lower walls. Grunts sleep in pod-rooms—hard silk shells with a sling, a hook, and a shallow tray for gear. Orders travel by wire-pluck through rafters. Duels settle rank. The loser hangs for an hour. If no spider takes the body, it burns. If a spider takes it, the silk is washed and reused with a new mark. Above, the Fangshear Coil hangs like a hard knot. Only the fused and the chosen train there. They practice at night while the rest of the city keeps still.

The Spiralthrone and the Brood

The Spiralthrone Sanctum rises from the chasm floor and wraps a column of stone in plates of dark silk and rune-stitch. Only Fang-Priests and the Arachnomancer step inside the inner coil without call. Rites use no voice. Captives are bound, lifted, and offered to ancestral forms pressed into the walls. Outsiders who witness a rite do so one time; they leave under guard or do not leave at all. Behind layered veils lie the Broodvaults. Eggs rest on tension cradles. Caretakers wear scent seals on throat and wrists and guide spiderlings with taps, oil trails, and steady light. Broods are trained to climb on sign, hold on silence, and bite by count. A lost brood shuts trade for a week and hangs black veils across causeways. The Skeliri mourn spiders with more care than they mourn grunts. A grunt’s name is cut away after a day. A brood’s line is kept in resin and read each season.

Coercion by Design

Below the lowest terraces hang the Coilglass Cells. Each is a clear egg of hardened silk steeped in resin and bound with thought-bending stitchwork. Prisoners hang over the dark, turned toward the city so all may see them. The cells force memory loops and obedience drills until will breaks. The Skeliri call this truth-work. Survivors call it ruin. The Naath Council has bargained for named citizens. The talks end in silence or with a silk-wrapped box marked in codes only Lorekeepers read. Those marks rarely bring comfort. Once, the Merchant Guild paid ransom for a bonded factor. He returned with steady hands and a flat voice, burned his ledgers in the Stall Hall yard, and named ten buyers who had never met him. The Guild does not pay ransoms now. In Vel’Zherineth, fear is not an accident. It is policy, trained and maintained like a brood.

Rule of Web and Knife

Power runs down the city through clean lines. The Arachnomancer rules by decree from the Spiralthrone. Fang-Priests transmit law through venom rite and web-sign. The Silkbound Ascendants enforce it in the chasms and at the gates. Below them stand weavers, brood-tenders, and quartermasters. At the base are grunts, thralls, and bond-debt workers taken from raids or bought from smugglers. A grunt who fails a count loses rations. A thrall who resists loses speech. A weaver who wastes silk loses fingers. Edicts fix daily quotas for venom, silk, ore scrap, and dried meat. Rations rise and fall with those quotas. Names are not family markers; they are duty marks that can be cut away. Pair-bonds are licensed by priest review to produce strong climbers and quiet minds. Children sleep in sling nests and learn silence before they are taught words. The law is not sacred. It is useful. If it stops being useful, it is cut and rewoven.

Markets, Tribute, and Theft

Vel’Zherineth runs on tribute and controlled trade. Venom moves in capped flasks. Silk rope moves in measured coils. Chitin plates, bone rivets, oil, salt, and dried meat flow up and down the city on hoists. The Skeliri sell little to outsiders and buy even less. When they trade, it is to bind a debt or bait a target. They trade venom for permits, then swap the permits for access to ledges where a caravan can be taken whole. They supply “safe” crossing signs that lead to silk curtains and drop-lines. They send coded couriers to the Redfang orcs when they want noise near the Verdwood so Wardens pull back from a different route. They skim off study tools from Lorekeeper teams—simple things like survey pins and coil lamps—then return them weeks later to display reach and control. Their favorite coin is silence. They buy it with fear, with ransoms, and with the threat of never finding the bodies.

Warfare of the Peaks

The Skeliri fight to win fast and leave no trail. They do not spend bodies if a trap can do the work. They hang web curtains over drops and pull them at the right count. They plant wedge-stakes that break ankles and throw a target into silk. They drill night hunts where squads move by tap code and oil scent. Ascendants cross ceilings on palms and toes to flank a rope team. Brood-guard spiders pin the rear, then wait for any rescue to step into lines stretched at knee height. Against Redfang raids, they poison water bags and cut bridge-ropes only after the last two ranks pass so the front runs into a cul-de-sac. Against Wardens and Seekers, they set false retreat and pull leaders into narrow chimneys where arrows cannot turn. They do not waste fire. Smoke draws swarms and dulls venom. They deny food and air, then count the dead after the web goes still.

Diplomacy at Knife-Edge

The Naath Council keeps a narrow accord with Vel’Zherineth. No raids below the tree line. No silk traps within sight of marked shrines. No hunts during Warden funerals. The Skeliri break each rule when it suits them, then pay a price they choose: release of a captive, return of gear, or a year of quiet on a named ledge. They hold hostages in Coilglass Cells until talks bend to their terms. They bind trade by debt ledgers written in silk code and stored in bone tubes that only their priesthood can read. They seed Ezra’s boards with false contracts through front names and watch which Seekers take the bait. They send “gifts” to the Merchant Guild—venom jars, clean chitin, safe-path cords—that carry hair-thin threads woven with listening knots. Words spoken in the Stall Hall reach the Fangshear Coil by nightfall. They do not negotiate in good faith. They calculate outcomes, set bait, and accept small losses to secure a long hold.

Infiltration and Rot

The Skeliri work from inside as often as from above. They plant agents in caravan crews using bound thralls with cut tongues and taught habits. They lace gifts with hair-thread and listening knots. They hire smugglers to carry coded spools into Naath and leave them in drains under the Spindle so the threads can catch the footfalls of named officials. They bribe hillfolk with rope that does not rot and hooks that never bend. In return, they ask for small things: a copy of a Warden patrol slate, the time of a Council vote, the route of a Lorekeeper walk. Each small thing binds the giver. Each bind becomes a lever. When exposure threatens, the Skeliri cut ties fast, push guilt onto a dead hand, and move the game to another ledge. They do not waste a tool. They do not defend a pawn. They replace both and continue the count.

The Hollow Below

Past the city lies the Hollow Below, a chasm without wind. Rune-webs cover its mouth. Some glow steady. Some fail and must be rewoven by priest teams who work with eyes closed and hands guided by tap code. The Skeliri do not let others near the rim. Even their champions keep back from the old knots. Stories call the things inside the Hollow the Graven: thoughts carved into stone by giant rites that learned to bite. Wardens have no proof. Seekers who looked for proof did not return. Lorekeepers say the Hollow pushes back at minds that try to grasp it. Vel’Zherineth treats the Hollow as a lid that must hold. They feed it prisoners when rune strength dips. They keep a plan called the Severance Rite: a fast cut of anchor lines that will drop whole levels into the dark to blunt a breach. If it happens, they will cut first and explain later. Their fear of the Hollow does not soften them. It sharpens them. They will kill to keep the lid sealed and kill again to hide how close it is to failing.