#item #stoneroad #arcane #rare A short, thick rod of pale composite material matching the Stoneroad bricks - about eight inches long, with polished copper fittings at both ends. The body of the rod is a clean silver-white. The copper caps are embossed with survey runes, weathered but legible to anyone trained in ancient construction practices. **Value:** 5,000 gp - Available at [[The Shady Gnome]] in [[Hedgehaven]] ## Description The Stoneroad builders called these *Tonals*. "Dowel" is the modern shorthand, accurate to the shape but blind to the function. The [[Stoneroad Builders|Stoneroad builders]] used Dowels as calibration tools during construction. Pressed into a socket in a partially-laid section of road, a charged Dowel would draw ambient magical energy through the Veil and hold it in suspension, powering the road's functions until each section was complete and self-sustaining. Once the section was laid and locked, the Dowel was pulled and reused. That covers the construction-era role, and it is what scholarship records. The current-era role is different. The Builder network has degraded past self-sustenance almost everywhere it exists, and the sockets that were once temporary anchors for new construction now serve as permanent interfaces for borrowed power. A charged Dowel seated in a working socket discharges into the installation around it, producing a partial, weakened version of its designed effect as the Dowel drains. In this sense a Dowel functions as a magical capacitor: pulled to full charge in a working installation, then carried to a degraded one to give it minor temporary life. It is closer to a wear item than a tool in this role, draining each time it is asked to power something the network can no longer power on its own. Most surviving Dowels are partial or spent. Recharging requires a fully working installation, and those are vanishingly rare. The [[The Ashen Well Keepers|Ashen Well Keepers]] hold the only known one, an Obelisk in [[The Sere]] they were lucky enough to have found or repaired; they do not share access. A live Dowel (silver-white rod, bright copper ends) is immediately recognizable to anyone who knows what they are looking at. A spent one tarnishes from the ends inward: the copper dulls first, then blackens, and the silver body follows. A fully spent Dowel is a uniform dull grey. ## Known Parties of Interest - The [[The Ashen Well Keepers|Ashen Well Keepers]] hold the ancient well infrastructure knowledge that makes Dowels usable again. A Dowel was the agreed payment from the [[Mountainview Barony]] in exchange for AWK permission to establish a Barony settlement in [[The Sere]]. - The [[Academia Arcanum]] in [[Syl'Dareth]] holds Dowels in their collection and sourced this one for [[Hadrian Riggs|Hadrian]]. - [[Hadrian Riggs|Hadrian]] was carrying it back to the AWKs when he was ambushed and taken by the [[The Church of Shargaas|Shargassans]]. They do not know what it is. - How it eventually made its way to [[Stellan Quickfoot|Stellan]]'s shelf in [[Hedgehaven]] has not been established. ## Charge State | Appearance | Charge | | --- | --- | | Silver body, bright copper ends | Full | | Silver body, dull copper ends | Partial | | Silver body, blackened copper ends | Low | | Uniform dull grey throughout | Spent |