Vault of the Twelveworld

The central planet of the Chatcaavan Twelveworld system, where the old ways are kept. Fill in with info from book 6.

Vital Statistics (At a Glance)

Pronounced vault. Possessive is Vault's. Demonym is (there's actually something but I forgot it, it's like keepers or preservers or something).

• Major Populations: Chatcaava
• Type: Chatcaavan World
• Population: very low
• Gravity: medium-low
• Native Language: Chatcaavan
• Settled: relatively early in the history of the Chatcaavan Empire
• Current Allegiances: Chatcaavan Empire
• Length of Year: not sure
• Length of Day: not sure

History

This planet is encircled by the eleven planets of the Twelveworld system, collectively known as the Redoubt. The Vault is rarely visited, and is neither well-guarded nor well-garrisoned. There are few orbital installations. (Only one, maybe? One is mentioned as being attacked by the pirates.)

Geography

"They’d landed in a forest: deciduous, she thought, and temperate with frequent precipitation if she read the signs correctly. There was little underbrush, which had contributed to the roughness of their landing, but they’d come down near a clearing where the shift in the silhouettes suggested different trees. Probably a watercourse, which was fortunate."

Landmarks

The Temple Fastness

"Their destination was a fastness carved from the face of a mountain peak, and the Queen had never thought she would see anything to rival the beauty of the throneworld palace but this… this easily compared, though in a wholly different manner. There was no delicacy in it, despite the multiple balconies and enormous window walls overlooking the sky. No one had bothered to soften the ruggedness of the rock in which the manse was embedded. This was, the Queen decided, a monument to a wilder beauty, and a celebration of the natural world to which the Chatcaava belonged, and the sky that was their birthright. All of them, wingless or not."

The Cave

"..on a plateau midway up a mountain, a glorious brown and silver mountain that shone in the high, bright light of the sun. Their ledge abutted a wall four times the length of their shuttle; it had been flattened out of the rock and carved with sensuous shapes, animals of every kind, reliefs polished until their curves looked like marble. For all Sediryl knew, it was marble—she’d never studied geology. A single opening was set into this wall, twice as tall as Sediryl was high, and two carved Chatcaava, both winged, framed it, their joined hands delineating the topmost arch."

"The entrance led into a tunnel. Its walls were chased with flowing creatures, sea and sky and land, the contours pulled from the shadows by warm pinlights near the ceiling. Sediryl had been fearing a long and tortuous descent, but the tunnel opened quickly into an intimate cave, no larger than Sediryl’s sitting room in Nuera. A single couch had been hewn from a wall barren of ornament save a trickle of water that issued from somewhere Sediryl couldn’t see in the faint gold veil cast by yet more of the pinlights. An occasional tinkle sounded near the floor, where it pooled in a divot the size of Sediryl’s palm. The floor was just as bare as the walls. No place to sit. No place to build a fire. No windows or skylights. No chimney for smoke. It felt like a womb, like a beginning-of-all-things place, and a quiver shot up Sediryl’s spine as she watched the Chatcaava laying the Queen on the stone table."

Politics and Government

• The Keeper of the Cave, an older, four-armed female with skin a soft, warm gray and hair long and light, almost white. She wears russet robes (that nearly match her unusual auburn eyes). Calm confidence, looks directly at others without fear. She "holds the secrets of our race, passed down from the time of our flight from the Source." The Keeper of the Cave waits for the female who will bring back to the Chatcaava the ability to shift, "not as a transitory act, but as a genetic choice."
• Chief (or Senior) Ranger - oversees the preserve, winnows the numbers of the children when they grow too numerous. A striking, older male with "a rain-gray hide that mottled into paler spots like altocumulus clouds. Eyes a delicate rosy peach, like a sunrise."
• Huntmaster - the liaison to any hunting parties that arrive from offworld. This male selects and trains an heir quickly, because accidents often befall the hunters on the Preserve. This male is known as the Huntmaster's Heir.