> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Soulstone Anchor > [![[Soulstone_Anchor_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Soulstone_Anchor.webp) > ###### Basic Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Item | > ###### Item Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Item Type | Soulstone | > Rarity | Artifact | > Held In | [[Caer Nystral, The Dawnless City\|Caer Nystral]] | > Origin | [[Vale of Eternal Night\|The Vale]] | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Active | A soulstone is a relic of an age long before, forged to do the one thing no blade can: hold an immortal soul so that it can never return. They were made to kill the unkillable — beings that simply reform when slain, beyond the reach of any blade — and to keep them caged past any hope of escape. The art that bound a soul into stone is long lost, and the few that remain are beyond replacing. The Soulstone Anchor is one such stone: the one [[The Bloody Nails]] seek, held in the deepest vault beneath [[Caer Nystral, The Dawnless City|Caer Nystral]] in the [[Vale of Eternal Night|Vale]] — and, by [[Praetor'Varanous|Praetor's]] reckoning, the single key to a weapon that could end [[Kharazoth the Crimson Shadow|Kharazoth]] forever. ## Properties A soulstone is a vessel for a soul. Some beings cannot truly be killed: strike one down and it only reforms, returning as strong as before or stronger — an archfae or a hag that rises again unless slain beside its own anathema, a creature that has cut its soul loose from death by some darker art. A soulstone is the counter to that deathlessness. Kill such a being near the stone and its soul is dragged inside rather than allowed to flee and rebuild, and there it is held, unable ever to reform. What goes into a soulstone does not come back out on its own. ## Creation The soulstones were made thousands of years ago, in an age that ended long before the Court, the Vale's endless night, or any living memory. The art of forging them died with the age that knew it; no one now can say how a soul was ever bound into stone, and none have been made since. What soulstones remain are irreplaceable, and guarded as such. ## The Anchor The stone the [[The Bloody Nails|Nails]] were sent to find is called the Soulstone Anchor by [[Praetor'Varanous|Praetor]] and the party, though no record of the [[Vale of Eternal Night|Vale]] names it so. It is kept under guard in the deepest vault beneath the Veiled Citadel of [[Caer Nystral, The Dawnless City|Caer Nystral]], the one such relic the party has any hope of reaching. #### Appearance The Anchor is a faceted jewel a little larger than a closed fist, heavy for its size and worn smooth by long years. It is black, shot through with veins of deep red and faintly translucent, and somewhere far down inside it a dim light stirs and never quite settles — the slow glow of a coal that will not finish dying. For an object that sits perfectly still, it gives the unaccountable impression of something patient rather than inert. ## The Weapon Against Kharazoth [[Kharazoth the Crimson Shadow|Kharazoth]] cannot be killed by ordinary means. Where a lich binds its soul to a hidden vessel, he bound his to nothing at all, so that destroying his body only sets his soul adrift until the Material Plane reconstitutes it — no blade, spell, or army can end him. [[Praetor'Varanous|Praetor]], the ancient silver dragon beneath [[Sumara, The Shining City|Sumara]], found the one exception. A soulstone, worked into a weapon of the wielder's choosing, makes the binding possible: struck with it, Kharazoth's soul is bound to a chosen mortal. With his body then destroyed, his spirit cannot drift free to reform — it is held fast to the mortal it was tethered to. And killing that mortal destroys Kharazoth's spirit along with them, ending him for good. It is a sacrifice, exact and absolute, paid in the bound mortal's life, and it is the only method Praetor has ever found. The Anchor is the resource that makes it possible — and the reason the [[Vale of Eternal Night|Vale]] became a road [[The Bloody Nails]] had to walk. ## The Prisoner The Anchor is not empty. Sealed within it is [[Maloreth the Patient|Maloreth]], an ancient archdevil of the Hells, bound there in revenge by [[Mirileth]] — the Vale's queen, who in a far earlier life was [[Ellesandra Silmara|Ellesandra]]. Long before the Court, Maloreth unmade her, severing her spirit from her flesh; when the pact she struck gave her form and power again, she hunted him down and turned the cruelty of his own age against him, binding his soul into the very kind of relic forged to cage the deathless and locking it in the deepest vault beneath her throne. There he has waited ever since, the stone's single prisoner. This is the knot at the heart of the prize. A soulstone holds a soul fast and lets nothing return, so while Maloreth is kept in the Anchor he cannot reform in the Hells — the stone is what has kept him gone. But forging the weapon against [[Kharazoth the Crimson Shadow|Kharazoth]] needs an empty soulstone, and emptying this one releases Maloreth's soul to stream back to the Hells and rebuild a body over the weeks and months that follow. To end one ancient evil, the Nails would loose another. The cell they need is occupied, and its tenant is every bit as dangerous as the enemy they mean to lock inside it. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 49 - The Silver Sage]] When [[The Bloody Nails]] sought [[Praetor'Varanous|Praetor's]] counsel in the [[Vault of Memories]], the ancient dragon weighed the nature of their enemy and named the only way he had ever found to destroy [[Kharazoth the Crimson Shadow|Kharazoth]] for good: a weapon of their own choosing, enchanted and anchored to a soulstone out of the [[Vale of Eternal Night|Vale]], and paid for with a bound mortal's life. The soulstone was the key resource — and the moment the Vale turned from distant rumour into a destination. #### [[Session 51 - The Last Light]] Researching in the archives of the [[Circle of the Scroll]], the party pieced together what a soulstone is and does — the trap laid for beings too strong to keep dead. No record named the "Soulstone Anchor" they sought, but the term soulstone surfaced plainly, and the texts implied that the stone held in [[Caer Nystral, The Dawnless City|Caer Nystral's]] most secure vault was one such relic, and a powerful one. #### [[Session 52 - The Star-Veiled Queen]] In the obsidian heart of [[Caer Nystral, The Dawnless City|Caer Nystral]], the secret of the Anchor came apart. When [[Berberis]] spoke the words *soulstone anchor* before the Star-Veiled Queen, all warmth drained from the hall — she killed [[Caradoc]] and his lieutenant where they stood, for no living thing was permitted to know that word. Then she stayed her hand from the party and named herself: [[Mirileth]], and also [[Ellesandra Silmara|Ellesandra]], the ancestor who two thousand years past bargained her body away and, with the archfae, trapped the archdevil [[Maloreth the Patient|Maloreth]] inside the very stone they had come to claim. The Anchor, she revealed, was never empty; its prisoner is the devil who unmade her, and breaking the stone to forge the weapon against [[Kharazoth the Crimson Shadow|Kharazoth]] would loose his soul to reform in the Hells. Her terms for the Anchor: destroy the crone [[Ymrageth]] and her coven, open the [[Vault of Memories]] for her with [[Ryo|Ryo's]] blood, and journey into the Hells to destroy Maloreth's reforming body once the stone is broken. ## Trivia - Forged to hold the souls of the deathless, the Anchor is sought now for the very end it was always meant to serve — to put down something that cannot otherwise be killed. - "Soulstone Anchor" is not a name any record of the Vale uses; it is what [[Praetor'Varanous|Praetor]] and [[The Bloody Nails]] call it. What the Court names it, if anything, it has never said.