Nivarra
Frost Palace, built in a glacier crevice, is its capital. Treaties, corpses and evidence of crimes are preserved in ice for centuries.
City identity
Frost Palace, built in a glacier crevice, is its capital. Treaties, corpses and evidence of crimes are preserved in ice for centuries.
City information
Neighborhoods: Frost Palace, Frozen Witnesses, Short Summer Market, Melting District, Giant's Sleep. Current crisis: Archive thaws; Evidence of past wars and a still-living prisoner emerge.
Location in Avarra
| Field | Record |
|---|---|
| Continent | Ilyr-Khaz |
| Region | Ice Rifts and Short Summer |
| Physical site | A deep glacier rift opening to a fjord, with a wind shelf above it |
| Access | Ice road and sled convoy in winter; fjord ships and rift lifts in the short summer |
| Nearby ties | Coastal fishing councils, the melting districts, and northern pass markets |
Nivarra’s archive is not beneath the palace but in the rift wall. Treaties, evidence, and state burials are set in ice layer by layer; the city was built on the assumption that cold keeps everything. As the short summer lengthens, that assumption melts, and the past arrives in the public square with the water.
A state held by ice
Frost Palace stands on the upper shelf against fjord winds. Frozen Witnesses houses jurists maintaining evidence and burial ice. Short Summer Market gathers the continent’s fish, fur, metal, and seed trade for two open months. The Melting District is worker housing moved a little farther downhill every spring.
Frost Palace law holds that whatever comes from ice is not merely an object but a witness. Yet it is unclear which year’s law applies. If a prisoner thawed from an old war says the war never ended, how binding are today’s treaties?
Table tensions
- A thawing seal invalidates the property claims of three living households.
- Before the fjord route opens, every scale in Short Summer Market begins to show the same wrong weight.
- Giant’s Sleep carries not the voice of a century-old prisoner, but the voices of children who spoke with one.