Rift Plate 028 · Gate of Stone
Cairntoll Sovereign
The mountain's oldest road-keeper taxes motion itself, commanding cairns, scree, and mile markers as instruments of royal judgment.
- Plate group
- Gate of Stone
- Classification
- Construct
- Field account
- Recovered
Recovered natural history
Field record
Toll hearing
One step woke the marker behind us. Our second divided the switchback into three lanes, each beneath a raised stone hand.
The Sovereign sat across the pass. Stacked chalk boulders made its body and throne. Iron stakes and weathered plaques held them together. Its crown carried every direction the road had taken. Toll tokens on chains clacked inside its chest whenever we moved.
It read our names off rusted plates and told us what the mountain said we owed. Then the cairns stood.
Road jurisdiction
The hearing comes first: a toll and the lanes you may use. Movement against the decree is punished. Resist and the markers rise, stone lanes fall from above, or scree begins to flow in organized currents. It would rather receive public submission than kill. Surrendering a name or destination may satisfy it; a treasured route token may also be accepted.
The markers are its witnesses. Remove them and its certainty weakens. Contradictory maps or movement on several unclaimed paths divide its attention. Once its jurisdiction fails, it stops sitting still and stamps the slope into motion.
Read the environment
Signs of its presence
Fresh iron crowns appear on every cairn in the pass. Mile markers turn to face one empty bend.
Toll tokens clack beneath solid stone in time with footsteps.
Survival doctrine
Field precautions
01
Contradictory Authority
Plant two authentic markers with opposed directions at the split between its lanes. It has to stop and adjudicate.
02
Unrecorded Ground
It cannot command stone never measured as road. Expose raw bedrock beneath a marker and approach along that strip.
Recovered Field Plate
01
Primary form
Towering cairn-bodied monarch with a crown of route stakes, hanging toll plates, and a chest like a stacked mile marker.
02
Material detail
Chalk stone, iron spikes, weathered plaques, lichen, and chain-strung toll tokens clacking against its body.
Continue through the folio
028 of 100 recovered plates