The Frozen Archive
The Frozen Archive is a landmark in Landorya. The Frozen Archive is a vast natural cavern located deep beneath a glacier near Frosthold, where the Frostborn preserve their most critical records by inscribing them onto tablets… It is commonly linked to THE FROSTBORN. Geography: The Archive occupies a deep natural cavern accessed by a descending passage from Frosthold's eastern glacier face. The cavern extends for s… Climate: Permanently cold, still, and silent. No wind penetrates to the Archive's depths, and the temperature has held constant…
Location Info
- Type
- landmark
- Civilization
- THE FROSTBORN
About
The Frozen Archive is a landmark in Landorya. The Frozen Archive is a vast natural cavern located deep beneath a glacier near Frosthold, where the Frostborn preserve their most critical records by inscribing them onto tablets… It is commonly linked to THE FROSTBORN. Geography: The Archive occupies a deep natural cavern accessed by a descending passage from Frosthold's eastern glacier face. The cavern extends for s… Climate: Permanently cold, still, and silent. No wind penetrates to the Archive's depths, and the temperature has held constant…
Geography
The Archive occupies a deep natural cavern accessed by a descending passage from Frosthold's eastern glacier face. The cavern extends for several hundred feet in its longest dimension, branching into side-chambers used for different categories of record. The natural ice formation of the cavern walls provides perfect insulation, and the deep cold keeps every tablet in a state of permanent preservation.
Climate
Permanently cold, still, and silent. No wind penetrates to the Archive's depths, and the temperature has held constant within a narrow band for as long as any record extends. Archivists must dress for the cold even during summer work shifts.
Points of Interest
- 📍 The Hall of Treaties, where inter-clan compacts and trade agreements with outside races are stored
- 📍 The Genealogy Rows, shelf after shelf of lineage records tracking bloodlines across the major Frostborn clans
- 📍 Elder Astrid Longmemory's Transcription Corner, where the century-old elder has been working to transfer oral histories into permanent runic form
- 📍 The Founding Tablets, the oldest legible records in the Archive, whose rune-style predates the current Frostborn alphabet by several generations
- 📍 The Sealed Chamber, a locked section whose contents and reason for sealing are known only to the current Council of Chiefs
History
The Archive was established after the Age of Fracture, when the near-destruction of several clans demonstrated how vulnerable purely oral traditions were to catastrophic loss of life. The Council of Chiefs commissioned the cavern's conversion into a formal repository, appointing the first class of professional archivists and beginning the systematic transcription project that continues to this day. The Founding Tablets predate this formal establishment, suggesting the cavern had been used informally for record storage for generations before it was officially organized.
Legend & Lore
Archivists speak of a tablet in the deepest sealed section that is said to record the actual words Glacius spoke when he created the first Frostborn — transcribed from a vision received by Eira Snowsong during the Age of Fracture. Whether this tablet exists and what it says are questions the Council of Chiefs declines to address. Apprentice archivists dare each other to press their ear against the sealed chamber door on the winter solstice and report what they hear.
Life & Culture
The Archive is staffed by a small permanent community of archivists who dedicate their lives to the work of preservation and transcription. New archivists are selected young, identified by both literacy and the patience required for exacting runic inscription work. They live in chambers adjacent to the cavern, emerging for communal meals and ceremonies but spending the majority of their waking hours in the cold quiet of the Archive itself. Elder Astrid Longmemory has been making the daily descent from Frosthold to the Archive for over thirty years to work on her transcription project, and is said to know the location of every tablet in the collection.