Glimmervein

Part I: The College's Crisis (Y95-Y98)

When King Arwon gave his "Find our resources" mandate, the College of Mages had two problems. The first was stone, which the Transmuter Telyna Volan solved with the "Sky-Train." The second, more critical problem was arcane components.

The College's explosive growth in Y84-Y94 had created an insatiable demand for focusing crystals, psionic resonators, and pure magical reagents. They were draining Arwon's treasury by importing these rare, high-value components from the Anishinabe Confederacy (specifically, the Hosteki Dwarves and Vishani Drow).

Baron Vorrash, managing the College's finances, declared this unsustainable. The kingdom had to find its own supply.

Part II: The Dowsing (Y98)

The challenge was not taken up by a Transmuter, but by a quiet, meticulous Rock Gnome Diviner named Corrin Glimmerjaw. She was a professor in the School of Divination, and she knew a brute-force search would fail. These magical veins were not "loud" like a marble quarry; they were "quiet."

For a full year, she and her team of Diviners and Abjurers painstakingly scried the deep mountains. They finally found it: a faint psionic resonance, a "hum" deep in the earth. It was not a quarry, but a vast, subterranean cavern network—"Glimmerjaw's vein" or Glimmervein as it became called—where raw, magically-attuned, and dangerously unstable crystals grew like plants.

The problem was that mining them was like defusing a bomb. The slightest tremor or an errant spell could cause a crystal to "feedback," unleashing a wild magic surge or a psionic explosion.

Corrin spent a second year developing the solution: the "Glimmerjaw Containment Field." It was a series of complex, inter-linked Abjuration runes that were to be carved onto complex geometrical idol and placed near the crystals. These runes would "harmonize with and isolate" the magical field, allowing the crystals to be safely harvested. She had not just found the mine; she had invented the key to unlock it.

Part III: The Charter & The Town of Runelight (Y99-Y182)

Corrin Glimmerjaw presented her findings—the map to the Glimmervein and the papers for her Containment Field—directly to King Arwon. However, Arwon refused to meet with her and she was forced to present her findings to Baron Chancellor Iccasash Vorrash. Who looked over her work and arranged a meeting with the King. Corrin then presented her findings to King Arwon, the meeting took place in the Church of Senzyn, with the enitre congregation present. It was a stressful situation for the gnomish master. Her partners who aided her in devising the entire process were also present. Her presentation seem to draw Senzyn himself, who stood in front of the church listening to the presentation. The god forced her to explain some of her most elusive calculations, however, she found herself truly shining in this moment.

After her presentation at the Church of Senzyn, Arwon, offered her a new job as Baroness Corrin Glimmerjaw and a hereditary noble title of Baroness of Glimmervein.

Her new "work town," Runelight, was founded at the mouth of the Glimmervein cavern.

• The Town: Runelight is not a bustling, noisy quarry town. It is a quiet, tense, and meticulously-planned settlement, built deep in a mountain canyon. The very air hums with contained magical energy.

• The People: It is a town of specialists: Gnomish Diviners (who "dowse" for new veins), Dwarven Abjurers (who carve the "Containment Field" safety runes), and Elven Artisans (who do the impossibly delicate work of cutting and harvesting the raw crystals).

• The "Industry": The Glimmervein is the most dangerous and profitable workplace in Arwonia. Workers are paid an enormous salary, but they work in total silence, their tools wrapped in dampening cloth.

• The Transport: The harvested crystals are too unstable for a "Sky-Train." They are carefully packed in lead-lined, warded chests, which are then loaded onto heavily-guarded, low-tech mule carts. This magically-"dull" transport is the only safe way to get the "volatile" product to Arcanus.

By the Present Day (Y182), the Barony of Glimmervein is the quiet, secretive, and wealthiest of all the baronies, supplying the College and exporting its priceless crystals to the richest nobles and mages across the world.