Threshold Seeds & Threshold Shards
To the untrained eye, a Threshold Seed looks like little more than a jagged, coal-black mineral flecked with silver veins. In reality, these stones are crystallized splinters of the Boneyard itself, manufactured and planted by the Veilbreaker to systematically rot the boundary between the Material Plane and the River of Souls. Left undisturbed, a seed acts as an anchor that bleeds cold planar static into the surrounding environment, souring nearby soil, driving livestock wild, and unravelling local spiritual balance.
Growth, Mass, and Scale
While the terms are often used interchangeably by scholars and adventurers, seed and shard describe distinct stages of planar growth:
- Threshold Seeds (Minor Nodes): Small, portable slivers of crystallized veil. Seeds are easy to conceal and are typically planted in areas where the local soil is already naturally thin—such as church crypts, mass graves, or ancient battlefields. A seed begins as a localized rift that leaks ghost-echoes or corrupts nearby divine magic.
- Threshold Shards (Major Formations): As a seed feeds on ambient life force, ambient souls, or divine essence over time, it expands into a massive, pulsing Threshold Shard. These larger formations invert their behavior: rather than leaking energy outward, a mature shard actively consumes souls, tears the local Veil completely open, and anchors major planar breaches like the one beneath the Ossuary of Forgotten Swords.
Destruction & Veil Resonance
Whether dealing with a nascent seed or a fully formed shard, the party faces a critical choice upon confronting one:
- Shattering (Forceful Break): Smashing the mineral severs its immediate tether by brute force. However, the resulting shrapnel leaves behind Veil Resonance—silver-glass fragments that hum with lingering static. While this destroys the node, the fragments give off erratic harmonic pulses that make tracking subsequent tears more difficult.
- Purifying (Clean Recovery): Cleansing the stone turns its silver veins dead-gray, yielding a stabilized specimen. Sister Mirela can use an intact, purified seed or shard to trace its origin line far more accurately, allowing the party to triangulate the exact coordinates of the main breach waiting at the Threshold of Souls.