Installation 04

Archivist's Excerpt from Dancing Lovers & Other Tripe: Lore and Lunacy of Exterior North, CVI 42.4

Of this strange place and its stranger … (occupant?) little can be said. Actually very much could be said if anybody knew what to say. Alas, nobody does, and those who do are annoyingly silent on the matter. Scattered reports from the towne of Orphan Heights in its early days make mention of the Galó from Jaloheim referring to a “Blind Oracle” of sorts, when no such belief existed prior to their settlement in the Rift, and corresponds to no known parallel in earlier Nordic folklore, fraudulent or otherwise. Furthermore, there is little to link these sparse accounts to that being encountered by two particular Orphan Heights boys generations later.

What they encountered—or believe they encountered—wholly defies reason, and so their claims were dismissed by all competent historians out of hand. What they allegedly observed was an intelligence, luminary interplay of language, and knowledge of ancient astral events that, if true, would rewrite cosmic history as known by pretty much anybody. Neat.

One could easily still dismiss the claims of the boys, though the presence of such a being would help explain the Jaloheim Clan’s choice to settle in one of the worst locations in The Expanse that otherwise makes one question their judgment, or even sanity, if not their basic competence. Still, if real, if ancient, if intelligent, if (somehow) disembodied … if indeed he ever had a body, then his existence and relation to the present Confluence would be … frustrating.

The Installation itself is actually situated beneath the Temple of Jalós, and can only be entered by uttering some or another gibberish known only to the Shrinemaids and High Priestess Priestess Tevir, "Ilonef kirin aldistan," which means nothing in any known tongue, and certainly not in the language of the Galó.