Copper Mountain
Realm of the Mistress
Location: Quasi-Elemental Mineral / Core Mineral
This mountain isn’t actually a mountain, but a forest of stone, sealed in an enormous globe of malachite. The Mistress controls all of the minerals around her realm, and there are plenty of minerals there to control. Some are very rarely found anywhere else—like charoite, a blue mineral, that can be used to replace almost any gem-based material spell component. The whole realm is lit by the Mistress’ palace—its spires are carved from alexandrite. In normal conditions this precious gem barely changes its colour under sunlight, but here on the plane of Mineral this magical spires emanates soft sunshine by themselves, lighting the whole realm.
The palace is surrounded by a gloomy forest, where all plants are made from different stones. There, a cutter can meet daikos—strange golden snakes with beautiful patterns on their scales. They can effortlessly glide through any stone—and just as effortlessly petrify those who trespasses on their territory. They aren’t inherently evil however, and will tend to talk to bashers whom they find unthreatening. Daikos are fond of riddles and tests of character. For example, a daiko may suggest that a body could take all the gold they want, but it would turn to useless stone if they ever lets go of it. Many addle-coved planewalkers have come back empty-handed, as they’ve forgotten how heavy gold can be—or let their greed get the best of ’em. It is said that all daikos respond to a giant serpent named Great Poloz (although some reckon he’s really a fallen couatl), who has the power over any piece of gold and does not obey the Mistress.
One curious location in the stone forest is the muddy swamp, the only place in the realm where water is found. This is a home of Sinyushka (sea hag [she/her] / CN). She claims to have been ostracised by other hags because of her beauty. While she’s still mostly as ugly as a hag, she has strangely perfect teeth and deep mesmerising blue eyes that make her overall appearance very uncanny. Sinyushka and tries to coexist with other creatures of the stone forest, even adopting their strange habit of “testing” visitors. She’s not always honest however, and sometimes her cruel nature can resurface.
Finally, the last weird creatures of this forest are the ognevushka. These spirits (or perhaps they are fey) appear to be tiny humanoid flames, that dance erratically in circles and seem to, sometimes, lead onlookers to places where gold nuggets can be found. Or maybe they just leave this gold behind them as they go?
The Copper Mountain is a dangerous place to visit. Clouds of toxic malachite dust sweep down through the stone forest occasionally, while the light from the palace is strong enough to cause sunburns. But the most dangerous thing, in fact, is inside the palace. The Gem Flower is said to be an object so beautiful, that whoever looks at it will never be able to forget it, and will slowly consumed by depression, as they realise that nothing they can ever see again will be as beautiful. Of course, Sensates are half suspicious of this claim and half absolutely eager to test it. Though alas, the only ones whom the Mistress willingly allows to see the Flower are her Mountain Masters—select few master stonecutters, who are currently trying to create a second Flower like this one. They haven’t been successful yet though, and once in a while one of them dies—this it happens pretty fast actually, as they all are absolutely consumed by their pursuit of perfection—and the Mistress has to find a new one. Yet for some reason she continues her efforts…
Finally, there is one more secret in this realm. A hidden crypt in the forest holds petrified bodies of a group of humans. There are men and women, elders and children among them, and their features and clothing look very similar to those of the Mistress. One seemingly knowledgeable bubber once told a story about a tribe that lived in the mountainous region on some Prime world. They once worshipped the Great Poloz and “other powers of the Urals”, but they were almost exterminated by an invading empire and had to enter a sacred cave, that turned out to be a vortex to the Plane of Minerals. How is the Mistress tangled up in all of this? Well, she certainly isn’t telling…
Sources:Â Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Margarita notes: While this homebrew power is based on Slavic folklore and beliefs, the amount of actual information we have on pre-Christian Slavic deities is so minuscule that building any kind of lore out of it is impossible. However, there are a lot of folk beliefs about things these deities are thought to represent, which I have worked into the piece.