The Mountain That Holds the Old Things · The Night Court
the Prison
A prison carved into living granite, deep beneath a Night Court mountain, where the High Lords have kept the oldest and most terrible Beings since the world was young.
Stone cells. A single candle. Things that should not be let out.
At a glance
The dossier
The place
What it is
The Prison is not a tower or a keep but a wound in the mountain — chambers cut into living granite, far enough beneath the Night Court's peaks that time loses its hold. There are no seasons here, no weather but cold stone air and the small, faithful flicker of a single candle. It smells of tallow and ancient dust, of bone and the long memory of rock. The High Lords of the Night Court did not build it so much as inherit it; the office of gaoler passes down with the crown, a duty older than any one ruler, kept quiet because the things behind the doors are best left unspoken.
The prisoners
What is kept here
What the Prison holds are not criminals but Beings — entities ancient and powerful enough that the only mercy and the only safety was to wall them away. The Bone Carver, who reads the shape of every death, dwells in a stone cell ringed by candlelight. Stryga, the Weaver, is bound here, and Bryaxis, a thing that is closer to fear made flesh than to any creature with a name. They are bargained with rarely and never freed lightly. To descend into the Prison is to go asking a favour of something that has watched empires turn to dust, and to hope the price it names is one you can bear to pay.
Features
Within the stone
Connected
Who and what is bound here
High Lord of the Night Court — keeper of the Prison
Went into the Prison to bargain with what was kept there
Of the Night Court's inner circle — herself older than the Prison's prisoners