Sower of Salt

The Sower of Salt is a unique device believed to have been created by High Artificer Ngeshadar of Vash Ossai, under the orders of King Azibaal, probably around 1,700 years before the foundation of the Empire of Kataris. It was designed as a weapon of last resort against the Aboleth that dwelled in the underground lakes below the city, and was powered by the city's Necromantic Engines.
Activation of the Sower of Salt could be triggered in two ways - via the will of the Anima, or through manual methods. The former required the user to be in communion with the Anima, and for four conditions to be met: that the Inner Wards of the city had fallen; that Garrison Command was "unresonsive"; that the "Constant Blade has fallen from the Hand of the Queen"; and the physical presence of both the Royal Seal - which at the time of Vash Ossai's fall was the Spear of Melekhandra - and the sigil of the High Warden of the Anima. The process by which manual activation was supposed to be achieved is unclear.
According to Melekhandra's Mnemnotic Records, an attempt to activate the Sower of Salt was made during the fall of Vash Ossai, but this was not successful. Queen Melekhandra is said to have dispatched two of her courtiers to attempt to manually activate the Sower after contact with the Anima and with Belchetop was lost; their fate is as yet unknown.
Upon activation, the Sower of Salt would initiate a chain reaction that would drain all the power from the necromantic engines and the stores of necromantic energy connected to them, before converting the souls that comprised the Anima into raw necromantic energy and likewise draining them into itself. This process is understood as taking around fifteen minutes, during which time all the functions of the Anima would be bound to the Royal Seal, to expedite the evacuation of the city. When the process was completed, the Sower of Salt would detach from the bottom of the necromantic engines and fall into the lake below, releasing a sudden and overwhelming pulse of energy that would extinguish all life in the water - killing the aboleths instantly and preventing them from being able to escape to the Periphery.
It is somewhat unclear what side effects might result from the activation of the Sower of Salt. The Anima has stated that the activation of the weapon would trigger explosive bolts that would drop a large volume of rocks into the main access tunnels to the city with the intention of sealing it off from the surface for all time, and the draining of all necromantic energy from the city's grid would likewise result in the city's teleportation nexus becoming non-functional. Ambrosius implied that the activation of the Sower of Salt would probably result in tens of thousands of deaths in the city of Cameri, located on the surface above Vash Ossai, though the extent to which this is true is unclear. Finally, the draining of the necromantic grid would result in the collapse of the Wardstorm that was erected by the Oathcircle to prevent access to Tchokayahattak.