Keystones

The Keystones are six artefacts of mysterious origin (even the word 'artefact' is loaded, since it implies deliberate intelligent creation). Each one represents a Paradigm, one of the foundational principles underpinning any given reality.

The Keystones were not all found on Veltheria itself, with half of them requiring travel to distant parts of the universe, or even into other planes: the Maelstrom, the Aether, and most recently the Celestial Sphere.

A common debate on the subject of the Keystones is the 'instantiate or exemplify' debate. If the Keystones instantiate the Paradigms, then they are the Paradigms' source, and every possible reality will likely have its own set of Keystones. If instead they exemplify the Paradigms, then other realities may not have any Keystones, or may have an incomplete set, depending upon the specific circumstances that cause the Keystones to exist.

Dr Favrian Margolis is currently Veltheria's most renowned expert on the Keystones.

History
Veltheria's history with the Keystones began when residents of the ancient city of Halsteyr a perfectly symmetrical, smooth and clear ruby in one of its mines. It was not the last of its type to be found, and as the miners dug, within the town nearby all manner of wonders were sighted: two envoys of belligerent nations on the verge of war found peace, the clocks of the city sped or slowed until all were in perfect synchrony with one another, and it was said that not one crime was committed in Halsteyr on that day.

The miners eventually located a perfectly spherical and many-coloured stone. Its magical nature was obvious, and soon it was brought before scholars and mystics from all over the known world. It sang a ringing, almost angelic melody, and all who heard it perceived something different. Musicians came to transcribe what they heard, and mathematicians took the manuscripts and had to describe new arithmetical and algebraic laws simply to explain what they were seeing.

Almost overnight, the old superstitious mysticism was overturned in favour of the new all-consuming science: thaumatics. The stone, named Máua (Harmony) for an ancient legend, revealed that it was not the only stone, and while scholars decoded the music it made and produced wonders once thought beyond possibility, explorers set out for the other stones.

Along the way they learned more of their world. The titans, a lineage of humanity believed lost to ancestral myth, were rediscovered on a distant continent, and soon learned of the wonders of Máua. They themselves lived close to the resting place of Cáwi (Continuum), which taught the world about the nature of space and time, the connection and separation of all things.

One by one, over centuries, the Keystones were found, and they represented fundamental properties of the universe known as Paradigms. Not all were on the earth – one was found deep within the grey soil of the moon. With each came a leap in thaumatics, a leap in human understanding of the world, and a leap in human thirst for knowledge.

One stone evaded discovery, and the search took humankind to other planes of existence. The Voidship Acheron and the ultranauts within it travelled into the aetheric sea; Splendour into a plane where the very elements of nature clashed in states of matter hitherto undreamt of; the Oculus peered into history and sent probes into the near future.

The voidship programme culminated fifty years ago in a fateful mission which sent Discovery into what was considered the final frontier; the celestial sphere. It emerged into a realm of light, occupied by powerful beings once considered to be gods. They objected to the human presence, and made their objections known. Yet though the ultranauts returned traumatised, they returned successful.

When Jádu, the Keystone of the Wyrd, was returned to Veltheria, the song of Máua was complete. Humankind had already expanded its dominion beyond the earth, building cities on the moon, and on the nearby planet of Mars. Now, the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and experience that defined humanity faced its first steep slope. This would not last long, for the music of Máua took on strange new echo: evidence of entire realities parallel to Veltheria's.

Descriptions and Known Abilities
The names of the Keystones are derived from ancient legends and the mythologies of multiple cultures. They are not universally used, but it is often preferred not to simply refer to the Keystone of Life as 'Life' simply because 'life' is both a common term and a name for one of the Paradigms. The names listed here are acceptable both in common parlance and technical or formal contexts.

The possible uses for a given Keystone are perhaps impossible to fully catalogue. Below are some behaviours or abilities that have been shown consistently, or else are famous instances of something the Keystones have done. Note that this section details effects brought about specifically by the Keystones. For the most part, their properties are not used directly, but instead incorporated into thaumatic devices or mimicked in sorcery.

Maua, Keystone of Harmony
Maua (MAO-ah) is a perfect sphere evincing all visible colours from different angles and under different conditions. Closer examination of the sphere reveals spheres all the way down, somehow tessellating in defiance of the usual way of things. Maua seems unimaginably complex, and yet it evinces perfect symmetry along every conceivable axis, and no structural flaws.

Things tend to harmonise around Maua: a dropped glass will shatter into a few dozen smaller versions of the original glass, or dropped sand will fall into perfect pyramids, each comprising a prime number of grains.

Maua is the only Keystone to have ever been able to counteract the effects brought about by another Keystone. It was discovered near the town of Halsteyr.

Anakhu, Keystone of Life
Anakhu (AHN-a-koo) is a dark, asymmetrical stone roughly the size of a human heart. Every so often, Anakhu sprouts a shard of crystal from itself, drawing matter from the world around it. Anakhu is warm, and within it is a bright light like a single star caught in green, red, purple and gold resin.

Life thrives around Anakhu most of the time, which has allowed for thaumatics that stabilise ecosystems (or establish them, in the case of the colonisation of Mars.

Anakhu has been known to 'feed' on its surroundings, usually manifesting as converting materials immediately surrounding it into dark material similar to itself. It does not tend to do this when living organisms are nearby. Anakhu was discovered at the heart of the elemental Maelstrom.

Jádu, Keystone of Wyrd
Jádu (JAH-doo) is a tetrahedron which never shows the same colour to any two observers, even if those observers are scanners detecting the wavelengths of the light it transmits, reflects and emits. The mathematical relationships between its transmitted, reflected and emitted light in a given moment are governed by laws as yet undiscovered.

Jádu always rests either on an edge or point – it can be placed face-down but always tips to a more paradoxically stable position.

Jádu allows events to occur which are vastly unlikely or even impossible, which is seen in a few natural phenomena (such as nuclear fusion or radioactive decay). These events are far more likely to occur when Jádu is nearby.

Jádu's initial presence in Arcadia is consistent with it having bestowed sorcery in humans, for the beings in that plane seemed to wield its power fluently.

Ríyu, Keystone of Mind
Ríyu (REE-yoo) is an elongated ovoid stone, symmetrical along all axes, pearlescent in colour and mosaiced within, showing a fractal pattern of branching and intersecting straight lines. The shape of its inner fractures can be altered briefly by a sufficiently strong will.

Riyu seems to be a conscious thing in and of itself, and being near it can bring back long lost memories, though never consistently and seldom usefully.

Riyu's physical response to the wills of nearby minds has allowed the development of tools for training sorcerers, who must influence the world with their wills. Riyu was discovered in the silvery sea of the Aether.

Ylias, Keystone of Bond
Ylias (EE-lee-as), whose name comes from an ancient concept of 'substance' (also featured in the name of substance yliaster), draws itself into a cube when left alone, but can be moulded like putty or drawn into a fine sand (whose grains always pull together after a few seconds). It usually appears an unappealing shade of faintly yellowish grey, but when examined closely it is comprised of trillions of iridescent grains, each a perfect cube.

Ylias has been known to attract and repel materials via unknown forces. When placed close to Jádu, random transmutations of nearby substances have been observed.

On one notable occasion when Ylias, Jádu and Maua were together in less than perfectly controlled conditions, a nearby clock transmuted into room temperature solid helium, which kept time flawlessly for a few hours before dissipating into the air and raining down as a cloud of microsopic gears and springs.

Ylias was found buried within the lunar soil

Cáwi, Keystone of Continuum
Cáwi (KAH-wee) has a curious shape, appearing as any transitional stage of a rotating tesseract, made of solid gold with an indigo sheen.It never seems to rest flat on any given surface, rolling about as though subject to strange forces on invisible surfaces.

Minor events in proximity to Cáwi can happen in reverse, or else are accelerated or slowed. Often, Cáwi is in multiple locations at once (unless one of those locations is in close proximity to Jádu, in which case there it stays). It is this tendency that has allowed for the development of instantaneous communication, and subsequently the creation of voidships.

Cáwi was discovered on Veltheria, in the custody of the Titans.