Cornerstones

Overview

The Cornerstones are the boundary guardians of the Iron Backbone, counted among its Foundations. They stand at its edges and make sure that nothing from outside breaches its structure.

Appearance

A Cornerstone is a squared mass of dark stone, as large as a house, set at the corner of the plane's structure where two lines of it meet, and carved, or grown, into the shape of a crouching guardian with a broad, blank face. Its stone is the hardest in the plane, dense and dark grey, and veined with gold that brightens when something approaches. It does not move unless it must; when it does, it unfolds heavy limbs with a crack like a quarry blast. Its eyes are two slits of amber light. It smells of struck flint.

Habitat and Range

They stand at the edges and corners of the Iron Backbone, where its structure meets the Veil, and at its gates.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Cornerstone watches the boundary and lets nothing breach it. A visitor who enters by a gate is no breach and is let pass; what forces its way in, or tries to break the structure from outside, it stops with all its weight.

Abilities

It cannot be moved, and it holds the boundary against force. Where a Cornerstone stands, the plane's edge does not give.

Uses and Dangers

They keep the Backbone whole. Their danger is to anyone who enters it by force.

Lore and Belief

Builders on Caeldon lay a cornerstone with rite, and some say the rite asks the guardian of the corner to hold it; travellers' tales of the Cornerstones may be part of where the custom came from.

Siege-breakers tell of a hold gate that would not fall to ram or fire, and say a Cornerstone held it; the hold's own Dwarves say only that they built it well.

Where It Appears

• The Iron Backbone