Syrene's Wisdom

Overview

Syrene's Wisdom is located in Syrwatch in the Highborn territory of Casinea. Custodianship of Syrene's Wisdom grants an Imperial title; a seat on the Imperial Bourse; and a seasonal bounty of valuable ilium.

The Resource

In the silver mines above Syrene there are sometimes found brilliant blue seams, no more than a few inches long, that dull chisels upon the first strike. Although these seams are small and difficult to work they yield a constant supply of Ilium.

Much of the time it's groups of silver miners who are tasked to work the Ilium seams, whenever a new seam is found. These miners are notoriously dour, grumpy, and pessimistic. Some wit once commented that they had "an almost Varushkan mien!" and to this day some wags still refer to the area around Syrene's Wisdom as "Southern Varushka". The humour is probably mispaced; mining ilium from Syrene's Wisdom is a punishing duty, due more than anything else to the dangers involved in working the mines. Indeed, on several occasions through the Empire's history, questions have been raised in the Senate about their continued operation.

The primary problem is that the mines near Syrene are prone to flooding. Sudden, vicious floods roar through the mines, quickly killing the unprepared, and halting all work until the waters subside. Sometimes the waters recede quickly, other times they remain high for several days. When they do subside, strange figures are sometimes glimpsed in the mine. The common wisdom is that these are the spirits of drowned miners, but some scholars suggest that there may be a less spectral explanation. They disagree on specifics however; some claim they are creatures of the realms drawn to the mine and it's ilium, while others suggest they are hitherto unknown creatures from deep within the earth. None of these beings has ever been captured, and accounts of their appearance vary wildly, but there does appear to be a connection between their appearance and the floods; there are very few stories of their being glimpsed save in the days immediately after a flood.

Regardless, scholars tentatively agree that the floods are connected in some fashion to the pools of nearby Syrene, which are known to be of interest to several eternals - although the reason for this interest has never been properly explained.

A great deal of energy has been spent trying to predict the occurrence of these freshwater floods, and with some limited success. While roughly three-quarters of the floods can be predicted a week in advance, there are still numerous incidents where a flood occurs with minimal warning - and once every few decades a flood takes place with no warning and usually leads to tragic loss of life. It has been eighteen years since the last such surprise flood. The miners believe they are probably overdue, and this leads to a particularly grim atmosphere in the mine and the surrounding villages.