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The wall old kingdom by joshwongart

The Wall, Old Kingdom side, by Josh Wong.

The wall by joshwongart2

The Wall, Ancelstierre side, by Josh Wong.


The Wall is a vast, high wall imbued with protective Charter Magic that stretches from coast to coast.[1] Its effects, while lessened with distance, are also felt to the sea on both sides.

Ancient and extremely powerful, the Wall separates Ancelstierre from the Old Kingdom and protects the former from many magical threats: it can stop most Dead and Free Magic elementals, and it is outfitted with special windchimes, carved by the current Abhorsen, that play a song heard only in Death and keep the newly Dead from rising.

On the Ancelstierre side, it is guarded nonstop by the perimeter garrison, who are armed with both guns and swords. Many have baptismal Charter Marks as well, even though their higher-ups refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Old Kingdom’s particular dangers.

Both seasons and hours are different on both sides of the Wall. In Ancelstierre, it could be a gray drizzly autumn morning, while in the Old Kingdom, it could be a lovely warm summer sunset. There are complicated almanacs that calculate time and month of year for travelers.

Crossing The Wall

Crossing the Wall by Laura Tolton

The wall contains crossing points. Ancelstierre's side is famously much more worried about those who wish to cross from the Old Kingdom than vice versa: a no-man's-land of concertina wire and evidence of mortar and grenade explosions on their side makes this clear. Ancelstierre technology, however, tends to fail so close to the wall, especially if the wind is blowing from the north (this is not always a natural wind), and even without that complication, machine-made weapons and technology don't tend to damage something from the Old Kingdom side that is intent on crossing.

In Abhorsen, Hedge uses his massive host of killed Southerlings to make two rows of Dead Hands through the Wall and carries Orannis and a possessed Nicholas Sayre between them. The Wall's protective magic is occupied with destroying the Hands (which are constantly replaced). Nick and the two hemispheres of Orannis thus pass through unharmed, when otherwise such a powerful Free Magic being would be unable to cross.

The building of the Wall is sometimes depicted in the moving stained-glass window in the Great Hall of Abhorsen's House. During the events in Terciel & Elinor, it shows a scene of stonemasons labouring with block of stone and rows and rows of Wallmaker Charter Mages working a vast cooperative spell. One at a time the Mages disappear into the half-built wall, merging with the stone, thus making the line "Three and Five became stone and mortar" literal in the Five Great Charters rhyme.

The Wall itself is one of the Five Great Charters and a physical source of The Charter in the Old Kingdom.

Walltolten

Both sides of the Wall, by Laura Tolton

References[]


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