Material
A pre-Inundation Vundel-aligned mineral found in deep subterranean veins, distinguished by its ability to host enneagram imprints semi-permanently. The Olum Seheri Ghost Rock vein was the source of the Handmaiden enneagram that became the core of the Magolith. Korbal had built the Olum Seheri laboratory directly over the vein for the same reason.
Ghost Rock is a pre-Inundation Vundel-aligned mineral, found in deep subterranean veins through the western Mindens. The mineral's defining property is its ability to host enneagram imprints — the magical-spiritual signature of a sapient creature — semi-permanently, even after the original creature has died.
Ghost Rock holds an enneagram on contact and preserves it through subsequent millennia, releasing the imprint only when an appropriate working draws it out. The mineral is dense, silvery-grey in colour, and semi-transparent in good light. It is rare: most known veins lie deep beneath major Mindens citadels, and the Vundel are believed to have aligned several of them deliberately at the founding of the world.
The Imperial Magocracy understood Ghost Rock's properties academically but never had access to a viable vein. The Alka Alon at Anthatiel were custodians of the largest known active vein, kept under their citadel as part of the city's thaumaturgical infrastructure.
The Anthatiel vein was inherited by Korbal when his necromancers transformed Anthatiel into Olum Seheri. Korbal built his entire host-body programme on the Ghost Rock vein's foundation: the rock could hold enneagrams of would-be Nemovorti for centuries while waiting for suitable host bodies to be prepared, and could be used to verify or contest enneagram-installation work.
The Battle of Olum Seheri raid retrieved a single particular enneagram from the vein: that of the Handmaiden, an ancient Vundel sub-creature whose imprint had been resting in the rock for millennia. Minalan's Scholars team carried the enneagram out of the underworks; the Magolith was constructed around it.
Ghost Rock's availability is one of the structural reasons Korbal was operating where he was: the mineral is the necessary substrate for any sustained host-body programme. The Olum Seheri raid did not destroy the vein but it disrupted the laboratory built over it; Korbal's post-raid host-body programme has been crippled and could not recover within the saga's timeframe.
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