Rillachor

Rillachor is an ancient elven city beneath Sandwater Slough, reached through the sewers and the tunnels below The Tallow Stair; the Slough was built over this former elven colony. Its builders were astral elves of The Star Scorpion Guild tradition, and their machines (street-sweeping constructs, robots and glasswork golems) still run on ancient olive oil. After the last Star Scorpion ship left, the city's remaining engineers sealed its systems and abandoned it, around 720 PC; their long terraforming of the south lay dormant until it ran wild in 1019 PC as The Great Evaporation.

The party entered it in April 2026 (real time). They passed skeletons that crumbled at a magic door, took the bracelet later identified as the Star Scorpion Command Node, Uldrick drew the World Branch from residuum glass, and in the depths they killed the corrupted Archivist and rescued a child. Later expeditions mapped its districts:

• The amphitheatre: its walls hold crystals forming the city's administrative diary, ending some 150 years after the Star Scorpion Guild delivered the terraforming behind The Great Evaporation. The amphitheatre itself is a giant stargate, magic brass encasing something stronger, which crashed to the ground when its chains failed; Three Anchors Square may mark its old anchors.
• The Conservatory of Necessary Wildness: a sealed door onto living jungle (see The Necessary Wildness), where a giant guarded Thistle Jack until the party released him. Its top comes out at the House of the Poisoned Tear.
• The Hall of Navigators: tuning forks and a screen with a tree burned into it, unpowered for centuries; its machinery dates from roughly 580 to 640 PC (the party's guess of some 600 years was too high), and it is linked to the desertification.
• The Government Quarter, the Custodians' Annex and a residential library, where Slick found The Seven Journals of Mechanus.

Uldrick took residuum glass here, which he used to enhance The Branch into the World Branch, and felt faint sparks of power from the residuum he gathered.