Bardic Stones

In the city of Ashenpool, Lochmalan is the bardic college Quillians. They teach various styles of artistic skill such as dance, instruments, sculpting, and paint. Their emphasis is on the spoken word, learning to engender ardor amongst even the stodgiest in the crowd, choosing to brush color along the breeze linking orator and auditor over canvas and stone. The Wordweavers, an elite society of Quillian storytellers, produced the bardic stones as a way to ply their trade.

Purpose / Function

Before the bardic stones were first developed, the storytellers of Quillians would primarily visit the major ports and cities were coin was more easily managed. The first Wordweavers had great pride in their college and wanted to see the skills learned given back to the community that supported them. The coin was primarily a means to an end after all, and with a little support from the massive influx of vitraxine, the felt they could just start at the end instead. The first need they had to cover was survival. Lochmalan is not a dangerous territory, but the muddied roads and cold winters make trudging to various farming villages a journey of disease and frostbite. To make matters worse, these small collection of houses have few people with fewer coin. Providing comfortable amenities along the road would help encourage at least those down on their luck to visit these lands.
The second need was education. Every storyteller dreams of writing their own ballad or epic tale, though most do that dreaming in the warmth of an inn far from any adventuring as possible. Besides, writing is not what makes a storyteller; it's reading. Reading without books but just the phrases and parables carved into the back of your mind over and over until their structure affects how you think. Reading the faces and bodies of the crowd to bond over unrequited love or to encourage with the grand achievements of another woman from the backroads who set out to save the world. The bardic stones would be filled with books to allow the storytellers to practice this skill, developing voices for the characters, shifting choreography, and other such talents without judgement.

Architecture

Large boulders with a stage hewn from the center and a small hatch in the center are placed across Lochmalan. Each Wordweaver has a skeletal key that opens the trapdoor producing a stairway down into a small living quarters. The space has the basic necessities: a comfortable bed, self-cleaning bedpan, warm fireplace, and cooking utensils. The only ornate item in the space is body length mirror on the far wall from the stairs. Finally, there are the walls, top to bottom, covered in bookshelves and volumes of various myths and legend. The Wordweavers are able to make use of this space on their travels as long as they spend at least four hours each day regaling passerby with stories. Upon not completing four hours for the day, opening the hatch shows merely cold stone beneath. Incidentally, this is also what any curious knave with a crowbar would find as well.

Founding Date

821 VE - 1109 VE

Parent Location

Lochmalan