The Warmth You Can Carry
"No king mints it. No guild controls it. Its value is written in the light it holds."
In the aftermath of The Betrayal of the Sun-Queen (488 AH), the conspirators who broke Queen Anya found themselves unable to loot her most powerful treasure: the Sun-Queen's Tomb, a chamber permanently sealed and glowing with the radiant, untouchable light of her final ritual. However, they discovered that the intense, concentrated magic of her death had a unique side effect. It caused smaller, secondary crystals in the walls and foundations of the Glimmering Spire to "bloom." These crystalline growths, no larger than a Lítillfólk's hand, fractured off. They were fragments of the Sun-Vein, but uniquely imbued with the Queen's last act of defiant, self-sacrificial power.
A Solar Shard is a flat, palm-sized sliver of crystal that glows with a gentle, internal light. Its value is universally recognized for three reasons:
Intrinsic Warmth: It emits a constant, low-level magical heat—enough to keep a Lítillfólk warm for a day in moderate cold, or take the deadly edge off a frost-tide for a giant. This makes it a literal life-saver and a unit of survival.
Stable Magic: Unlike raw Sun-Splinter crystals which can be volatile, the Queen's sacrifice stabilized the magic within the Shards. They do not degrade, explode, or fade. A Shard found today is as potent as one that fell 400 years ago.
Untainted by Faction: Because they originated from an event that shamed all major powers, no single nation claims the right to mint or monopolize them. They are a tragic neutral currency, their origin a silent rebuke to the treachery of kings.
The Shard created a de facto common economy across Niflheimar.
Denominations: Value is judged by clarity, size, and glow. A cloudy, dim shard might buy a meal. A clear, brilliant one the size of a giant's thumbnail could buy a wagon.
The Warmth Standard: Many contracts, especially between giants and Lítillfólk guilds like the Stone-Wrights, are written in "Warmth-Days," payable in Shards. It is a currency tied to the most fundamental need.
The Queen's Irony: The Sun-Splinter Throne, which hoards its large crystals, ironically must often trade in Solar Shards for external commerce, constantly handling the physical remnants of their greatest political failure.
Beyond economics, the Shard is a powerful symbol.
For the Oppressed: It is "Anya's Promise"—a piece of stolen, regal power now in the hands of the common folk, a tool for their survival.
For the Powers-That-Be: It is an uncomfortable reminder of the consequences of overreach and betrayal.
A Universal Truth: In a world of shifting alliances and frozen grudges, the warm glow of a Solar Shard is one of the few things every being, from a Frost-Fang hunter to a Ashen Crest engineer, understands and accepts.
It is not coin. It is congealed sacrifice and radiant defiance, and it is the closest thing Niflheimar has to a universal heartbeat of commerce.