> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Emerald Ceremony > [![[Emerald_Ceremony_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Emerald_Ceremony.webp) > ###### Lore Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Lore | > Category | Event | > Era | Sixty-eight years ago, thirty-two years into the Century of Silence | > Outcome | One hundred volunteers crossed; the passage one-way | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Historical | The **Emerald Ceremony** was a one-time elven crossing-rite, performed in the decades after the elves withdrew into the Faewild, that sent one hundred volunteers back into a [[Valtorra]] that had vanished behind the rising Empire. It was one of the most costly working the [[Circle of the Weave]] had ever attempted, and the only breach the sealed elves permitted in a century of self-imposed silence — a deliberate, sorrowful wager that some of their own should walk into danger so that the rest might not stay blind. None of the hundred were expected to return, and for a lifetime none did. ## Overview Decades into the [[Sumara, The Shining City#The Century of Silence|Century of Silence]], the elves of [[Sumara, The Shining City|Sumara]] had withdrawn entirely from the Material Plane, and that withdrawal had cost them their sight of it. Only rumour reached them through the Fey courts — of a vast empire and darkness spreading across Valtorra. After years of debate the [[Sumara, The Shining City#The Confluence of the Seven|Council of the Seven Circles]] authorised a single exception to their own prohibition on crossing: a controlled, heavily warded rite that would open a temporary passage to the Material Plane so that volunteers could go through, integrate into Valtorran society, and quietly watch, gather word, and help where they could. The Circle of the Weave built and powered the working, and named it for the emerald light of the portal it opened. One hundred elves, drawn from all seven Circles, walked through. Because no living [[Silmara Family|Silmara]] remained to open the [[World Gates]] — the only safe road home — the crossing was understood to be one-way. The volunteers went anyway, and the city has mourned them as heroes ever since. ## History ### A Century's Blindness When the [[Valtorran Empire]] rose and the elves of Valtorra faced extinction, the [[Silmara Family|Silmara]] royal line opened the [[World Gates]] and led their people out of the Material Plane into the safety of the Faewild, sealing themselves away. Safety, over the decades, became blindness. The elves had no eyes left on the world they had fled, and the few rumours that filtered through the Fey courts only sharpened the unease: an empire was swallowing Valtorra, and something darker than an empire might be stirring beneath it. Thirty-two years into the silence, sixty-eight years ago, the Council of the Seven Circles faced the question it had avoided — whether to keep choosing safety, or to risk learning the truth. The debate ran for years. [[Ayana Syndrosa]], then Meridian of the Weave and the youngest to hold that post in living memory, pushed hardest for action: she did not believe it wise to abandon the Material Plane to the Empire entirely. In the end the Council relented and sanctioned a single, narrow exception to the crossing prohibition — for observation and aid, and nothing more. ### The Working The rite fell to the Circle of the Weave, keepers of Sumara's wards and students of planar phenomena. The elves' own road between worlds, the [[World Gates]] that run along the roots of the [[World Tree]], could be opened only by a Silmara bearing the family signet — and the Silmara line was believed extinct. With no key and no Gate, the Weave built a workaround: a brute-force planar crossing that needed no Silmara, and so could promise no return. The working centred on a great construct raised in the Greensward Canton of [[Sumara, The Shining City|Sumara]], among the living trees and warm bioluminescent depths at the city's root — a towering portal-frame of bronze and metal. When it was complete and brought to life it filled with a sheet of luminous emerald light, and the volunteers crossed on foot, walking single-file into the glow. The Circle committed its finest instruments and artifacts to power it, the most deliberate and expensive thing it had ever done; its stores have barely recovered since. One hundred elves volunteered, drawn from across the seven Circles rather than the Weave alone. Ayana Syndrosa, the Ceremony's architect, chose to go with them, handing leadership of the Weave to her second-in-command and lover, [[Illythia Voss]], much to Illythia's chagrin, and walking through without looking back. The hundred scattered across Valtorra to live as ordinary folk and wait, watch, and aid against the Empire from inside it. ### The Hooded Hundred The crossing was built for secrecy as much as for distance. Every volunteer came to the portal cloaked and hooded, and none saw the faces of the others or said goodbye as they passed through. None knew who else had volunteered, nor where any of the rest would be stationed once they reached Valtorra. The design was deliberate: an agent captured and interrogated by the Empire could not betray the others, because they did not know them. The anonymity reached all the way to the top. Even Ayana Syndrosa, who had championed and designed the Ceremony, crossed hooded and unknown. None of the hundred knew that the Meridian of the Weave walked among them. Only one record ties the hundred together: a sealed roster of who went and where each was posted. It is kept by the Meridian of the Weave at the [[Locus Arcanum]], and for a lifetime it stayed closed. Opening it at all breaks the network's founding promise, and it can be unsealed only by a vote of the [[Sumara, The Shining City#The Confluence of the Seven|Confluence]]. Even then, names are released one at a time, for a clear purpose, since every name revealed puts the others at risk. ### Aftermath & Legacy None of the hundred returned to the Faewild, and for a lifetime the city assumed none ever would. The Ceremony left two marks that are still felt. The first is material: the Weave never recovered the artifacts it spent, and the [[Circle of the Weave|Diminished Trove]] — the Etherean Canton's magic-item shop — stands near-empty to this day, its best stock long since carried away by the volunteers. The second is human: a hundred families left to grieve the living, with no word of who had survived and who had fallen. The bronze construct still stands in the Greensward, dormant. It has not been lit since the day the hundred crossed, and is unlikely ever to be powered again — for the silence around the Ceremony finally broke when the [[The Bloody Nails|Bloody Nails]] surfaced a living heir of the Silmara line. With a Silmara to work the World Gates once more, the safe road home exists again, and [[Ayana Syndrosa]] became the first of the hundred to walk back into Sumara after a lifetime away. ## In Memory & Belief Sumara remembers the hundred as heroes — elves who walked willingly into a crossing they did not expect to survive, so that the city behind them would not stay blind. It is a grief the city carries openly rather than a victory it celebrates: the Ceremony is spoken of softly, never as a failure and never as a triumph, but as a costly and necessary thing. Loved ones still descend to the dormant construct in the Greensward to lay flowers and remember names, and the empty shelves of the Diminished Trove are explained, to any who ask, in a single sentence — *everything of note went with the Emerald Ceremony; we sent our best.* What became of each volunteer is, for most Sumarans, simply unknown: some are presumed dead, some still out there in the world, all of them owed a debt the city has had no way to repay. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 43 - The Shield of the North]] The name first reached the party — and slipped away again — in the halls of Val Noren. Drawing [[Ryo]] aside in private, [[Ayana Syndrosa]] dropped her disguise, exposed his pointed ears alongside her own, and interrogated him about the "Emerald Ceremony" and his origins. When she realised he genuinely knew nothing of his heritage, she cast *Modify Memory* and wiped the entire encounter from his mind, unwilling to trust her secret to him — so the first mention of the Ceremony left no memory behind. #### [[Session 50 - A New Morning in Sumara]] In Sumara at last, the party felt the Ceremony's long shadow first-hand. The shelves of the Diminished Trove stood nearly bare, its keeper explaining that the city's finest items had gone with the volunteers; and deep in the Greensward they crossed the canton that had once held the great green portal. Above it all they found Ayana herself off-duty for the first time in a lifetime, home in Sumara again beside Illythia — living proof that the Ceremony's one-way road had, against all expectation, finally been reopened. #### [[Session 56 - Homecomings and Farewells]] [[Illythia Voss]] told the party how the Ceremony's agents were sent: cloaked and hooded, anonymous even to one another, unable to say goodbye as they passed through, so that none could betray the rest if captured — [[Ayana Syndrosa|Ayana]] among them. The only record of who they are is held by Illythia at the [[Locus Arcanum]]. For the first time, the Confluence has agreed to loosen the binds on these agents and unlock the record, so that any stationed in Val Luminor might help free [[Eirieneth Silmara|Eirieneth]]. Illythia added that the party may already have crossed paths with such agents on their travels without knowing it. #### [[Session 57 - On the Eve of Hell]] [[Illythia Voss|Illythia]] told the party the Confluence had been swayed by signs of the Worldbreaker's return, the rising rebellion and a royal held by the Empress, and had opened the ledger. She released one name: Theradin, deep undercover in the central ranks of Val Luminor society as Tobin Ashe. Other names would be released only with Council approval, since every name revealed endangers the rest. [[Kaelen Vayne|Kaelen]] later offered to contact the agent in [[Val Miriel]] through the ledger, to prepare the way for an elven strike force. ## Trivia - It is one of the few things in Sumara mourned at a fixed place: the dormant bronze construct in the Greensward has become an informal memorial, tended with flowers by the families of those who crossed.