Tri-Needle Navigator
“Just follow the needle.”
The Tri-Needle Navigator is one of the few surviving field-instruments from the twilight of The Lost Ages, a compact brass device built for scholars, explorers, and state agents who needed certainty in a world increasingly defined by magick's unpredictability. While primitive by Lost Age standards, the Navigator is far beyond anything Everwealthy craftsmen can replicate today. In its heyday, it was issued to surveyors cartographers, and military signal officers who needed to track both terrain and unseen energies in the field. During The Fall, the war with Devils that ended in fire and began The Great Schism, Navigators became invaluable. Officers used them to predict magickal “hot zones,” mages sought them to map safe passages, and scavengers bartered their own limbs for a working specimen. Today in The Civil Age, their use has split along two grim paths. Treasure Hunters covet Navigators for the third needle, an enchanted pointer that subtly drifts toward concentrations of intense magick, be that an ancient vault, a rogue coven, or a cache of alchemical material left to sour in the dark. The Arcane Coalition meanwhile, Everwealth's magickal oversight, uses them for far darker purposes. Unlike Chime Lanterns, which detect magick only in close proximity, a Navigator can sniff out distant threats, clusters of hedge mages, brewing rituals, concealed cauldrons, or illegal stockpiles of volatile reagents. Villages whisper that a Navigator’s movement is the herald of a raid, for where its thin needle quivers, the Coalition soon follows. Though small, each device contains a working philosophy, the world lies, the wind lies, the magick lies, but steel does not. A Navigator does not discriminate between benevolent and malevolent forces; it merely seeks the largest concentration of spell-signatures it can sense. As a result, treasure hunters, relic-thieves, Witch-hunters, and Coalition trackers all rely on it. Some call it a gift. Others call it a death sentence one direction away.
Mechanics & Inner Workings
At first glance, the Tri-Needle Navigator is little more than a brass hunter’s pocketwatch, sturdy, weathered, its lid opening with a soft, reassuring click. Inside, however, lie its three faces, the first, a crude but loyal clock that keeps time for a week before demanding a firm rewinding. The second, a compass resting on a shock-padded seat, able to point north unless the world around it is particularly cursed or turbulent. These two alone make the device valuable. The third is what makes it feared. The arcane pointer, impossibly thin and faintly violet in good light, carries a subtle enchantment not seen since the late Lost Ages. It does not react to petty spellcraft or the flicker of a hedge mage’s charm, its sensitivity is tuned to mass, depth, and density of magick. Hidden covens, clustered alchemical stores, ritual grounds, stonework steeped in centuries of enchantment, or blighted ruins heavy with curse-rot will, over distance, cause the needle first to tremble, then shiver, and finally swing with grim certainty toward whatever reservoir of power lies ahead. Yet its brilliance is matched by its flaws. The needle grows sluggish or entirely inert underground, blind beneath too much stone. In violent storms it spins uselessly, caught between magnetism and sorcery. Proximity to strong curses or distorted terrain can “stain” the pointer, locking it into permanent misdirection. Worst of all, the enchantment is too weak to acknowledge minor magick, in lands where only faint charms or passing spells that can still easily kill you are near, the needle refuses to stir, reducing the Navigator to nothing more than a clock and compass; Leaving you blind to the dangers It does not tell friend from foe, treasure from doom, it merely points toward the largest pool of power nearby, and leaves the consequences to the poor soul holding it.
Manufacturing process
The exact process by which the Navigators were made is largely lost, reconstructed only through fragments of workshop records and examination of preserved units.
Frame & Casement:
Frame & Casement:
- Artisans first forged a Tuskites' brass shell containing a triple-hinged design, its interior etched with stabilizing geometric lines meant to reduce magnetic distortion.
- A tempered magnetized needle was mounted on a shock pad made from compressed plant fibers treated with oils that no current alchemist can recreate. This padding prevents minor jostling from disturbing readings.
- The most mysterious step. Surviving notes imply that the third needle was forged from an alloy containing powdered gemstones exposed to ritual heat-treatment. It was then suspended above an engraved metal disc bearing a pattern of micro-runes, far too small for modern tools to replicate. Finally, the needle underwent a “binding pass,” a process described only as “aligning the instrument to the deep current.” Many scholars suspect this refers to an old, subtle enchantment performed by Mage-Smiths who understood magick not as power, but as mathematics. Once assembled, the device was tested in chambers saturated with ambient spell-resonance until the third needle moved of its own accord. No such chamber exists today.
History
The Tri-Needle Navigator rose to prominence during the mid-to-late Lost Ages, when scholars and surveyors began mapping the invisible infrastructure of the world’s magick. As laboratories expanded and spell-industry bloomed, the need to track “deep energies” grew, a necessity that spanned research, military strategy, and state surveillance. During The Fall, Navigators were repurposed into tools of survival. Commanders used them to avoid dangerous spell-breaches. Mages used them to locate stable ground or dormant leylines. Refugee caravans used them to skirt corrupted warfronts choked with Devil sorcery. In the Schism soon after, however, their use changed. Navigators became instruments of suspicion and war. Factions used them to locate rival spell-hoards, saboteurs used them to find unstable magickal caches to ignite, death squads used them to track covens hiding in the woods. Factory lines capable of producing Navigators were destroyed early in the Schism, some intentionally, some incidentally, repeat casualties of a hundred years of war. Presently, they survive as most of The Lost Ages do. Barely.
Significance
To most Everwealthy citizens, Navigators are myth. To treasure hunters, they are a compass to fortune or a shovel to one’s grave. To thieves, they are an early warning system for guarded vaults. To alchemists, they are a way to locate long-buried reagent stores. To the Arcane Coalition, they are a strategic asset, one of the few tools capable of detecting illicit magick before it is used. Where the similar Chime Lanterns also hoarded by the Coalition alert only to immediate magickal presence, Navigators can lead a Coalition patrol across miles of forest to a coven that believed itself hidden. They can locate illegal alchemy dens before their fumes betray them. They can track rogue magi long before spell residue fades. Their neutrality is what makes them feared. The Navigator does not care why magick gathers, only that it gathers. And in Everwealth, nothing draws the Coalition faster.
Rarity
Tri-Needle Navigators are exceedingly rare relics. Few dozen remain functional across all Everwealth, with the Coalition owning a slim majority. The rest circulate among smugglers, delvers, Treasure Hunters, and private collectors. In successful markets like the capital Opulence one may surface once every few years, always damaged, always overpriced, always quickly vanished into a new pocket.
Weight
1 lb.
Dimensions
3" diameter, 1.2" thick.
Base Price
3-8 Golden Capras (300-800 Silver Capras), condition determines upper range.
Raw materials & Components
Though deceptively simple on the surface, this device is built from a combination of specialized materials long out of reach for most modern Everwealthy craftsmen. Only by examining surviving relics can scholars piece together what once went into its construction.
- Any magickal element, rune-etched piece, or Lost Age fabrication.
- The main housing and internal mechanical parts.
- Auxiliary materials like wicks, glass, gears, hinges, etc. all beyond our current reach.
Tools
Crafting such a device once demanded a precise blend of mundane instruments and specialized Lost Age implements, most of which are now extinct or understood only in theory.
- An instrument used for engraving, calibrating, or tuning delicate components.
- The Device required for heating, tempering, or stabilizing materials.
- Precision rig or clamp used for alignment and assembly.
- Any magickal or semi-magickal tool once required but no longer reproducible.
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