Ceremony · Book 13 · Footwizard
Minalan's deep-north expedition into the Anghysbel jevolar to investigate the source of striekema, recover pre-Inundation artefacts, and learn what he could from the jevolar-protected region. The expedition discovered the Cave of the Ancients (Unger Station, a colonial geophysical research outpost), recovered a small arsenal of pre-Inundation weapons (plasma rifles and other tools) under Lilastien's instruction, established working contact with the Met Sakinsa Leshi, harvested striekema from the ash mound of the fallen Lesh Stonetrunk, mapped the various peoples of Anghysbel (Kasari, Tal Alon, Karshak, Kilnusk dwarves, the Plain of Pillars), and made allies of the Avalanti adept Bomoadua and the colonial-era refugee Rolof.
The Anghysbel Expedition was Master Minalan's deep-summer journey into the wild northern jevolar-region of Anghysbel, a magic-suppressed valley in the far north of Alshar. The expedition is the entire structural arc of Footwizard. It was Minalan's longest period without magic since his rajira manifested.
Anghysbel sits beneath an Alka Alon-built jevolar (an annulment sphere on a regional scale) that suppresses most thaumaturgy within its bounds. Within that protective bubble several peoples and species long lost to the Five Duchies still survived: an isolated population of Kasari, the rustic Avalanti kindred of the Alka Alon, the Kilnusk dwarves of Grost Kilnuskum, the Met Sakinsa (Leshi tree-folk), wild gurvani tribes, and various pre-Inundation human survivor groups. The expedition's purposes were partly archaeological (Gareth's lead on the Cave of the Ancients), partly thaumaturgical (the source of striekema, the rare mineral the Bouleuterion was using in advanced enchantment work), and partly diplomatic (establishing relations with the Anghysbel peoples).
The expedition's flagship discovery, and the chapter Minalan describes as the fulfillment of the quest. Gareth had cultivated rumours of an ancient survivor site in Anghysbel for months before the trip. The Kasari knew it: the local Melleray Kasari used it as emergency shelter, and called it the Cave of the Ancients.
It was, in fact, Dr. Hugo Unger Station for Geophysical Studies, a pre-Inundation Imperial-era colonial outpost preserved by the jevolar's anti-magic field. The station's nondescript grey floors, indirect lighting, and utilitarian engineering struck Minalan as a place built for work rather than ceremony. Lilastien (who knew the place from her own colonial-era memories) gave Minalan and the rest of the expedition the working tour of the colonial period's technology in a single afternoon.
From the arsenal at the station, Lilastien distributed a careful selection of pre-Inundation weapons to the expedition: plasma rifles (which Minalan carried in place of a baculus through the rest of the expedition), and other implements that worked entirely without rajira and were therefore usable inside the jevolar. Minalan also recovered enough technical material to fundamentally upgrade his understanding of the colonial period and the Magocracy that followed it.
The expedition made first contact with the Met Sakinsa Leshi (sentient tree-folk) through Bomoadua, a centuries-old Leshi who had taken an interest in Rolof after the colonial-era refugee stumbled into Met Sakinsa territory. The Met Sakinsa lived in a fortified grove and maintained an ancient grudge against the Kurja (a hostile insectoid species also bred by ancient empires).
The Lesh Stonetrunk had died in Rolof's defence years earlier: he had run out to save Rolof from a Kurja attack and was struck by lightning, which fused his silica-rich core into striekema in an instant. The expedition's job at the grove was to carve into Stonetrunk's twenty-foot ash mound and harvest the striekema from his fused core. The harvest succeeded (under raggi attack at the end), and the striekema went home with the expedition to feed the Bouleuterion's enchantment work.
The expedition mapped most of the inhabited regions of the valley: the Melleray Kasari camp, Midmarket, Anferny, Lakeshire, Grost Kilnuskum (the Kilnusk dwarven city), and the Plain of Pillars beneath Chimney Mountain. Nattia piloted the Sky Rider survey overhead where possible. The expedition met Lord Kanlan of the local Kasari, who had a medical condition Lilastien could operate on (the procedure was performed at Unger Station's preserved infirmary).
Anghysbel was, unsettlingly, home to a number of winged drakes — smaller relatives of dragons that lived wild in the valley and had not been seen in the Five Duchies in millennia. One overflew the expedition without engaging; Minalan, weaponless without magic and aware that even the plasma rifle would not stop a dragon, sat in the road and prayed it kept flying.
The expedition produced striekema, the Cave of the Ancients (with its archaeological and technological yield), allies among the Met Sakinsa and the Avalanti, the Junebug-class colonial-arsenal contacts that would mature in later books, the introduction of plasma rifles and other colonial-era weaponry into Minalan's personal arsenal, and a thorough mapping of the Anghysbel peoples for future diplomacy.
It did not produce: the recovery of the Junebug aircraft (that comes in Practical Adept at the Sagan Institute, a separate colonial site); the Sointula folk-talisman insight that finally cracked the snowstone-spell protocol (that comes in Preceptor, from Alya's necklace at Sevendor); or the encounter with the Old God's Daughter (a separate later plot line). Those threads are sometimes confused with the Anghysbel material because all three involve pre-Inundation lore, but they belong to different books.
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