Shard of the Autarch

A god-slaying material — fragments of shimmering green crystal so potent that stabbing a god with one can kill it. Per the lore surfaced in Session 19, an elven woman — The Autarch — used one to slay the God-Emperor (the human supremacist of the 3E Era of Kings who killed all the other gods and declared himself the only god), making him explode and collapsing his ~360,000-year empire — i.e. Godfall itself, and the rollover into the current fourth era. The shard is named for her, the slayer. Just 40–70 years ago a group in Varia used a couple of these to kill a god. Their aura is immense beyond reckoning; even a failed sample fills a mage's magic-sight entirely.

Crucially, shards are meant to fall from the sky / space and merely be found — they are not supposed to be manufacturable. Dr. Provostinalkov is, against all expectation, artificially fabricating one in the Gwyndinas Sewers. In a world where only one god survives (the All-Flame Queen, recently returned), a working shard could end the last god — making this the "chess piece that changes the game" Eldrich the Elder is buying.

Session 19

• Identified via history/lore checks when Dr. Provostinalkov showed his product. Magra (advantaged by her sister Daewynn's letters) and Silithane (as a Varian) and Thalia (well-studied) supplied the lore.
• Eldrich the Elder purchased the first real sample (unfinished, ~1–2 months out) for everything he owns; Thalia holds the receipt and a failed shard-flake in a glass box.
• The doctor's failed samples are the green runoff poisoning the sewer water.

Session 21

• The deal formally closes: Eldrich the Elder takes the receipt and the failed flake at lunch, overjoyed — "it will be the greatest decision I have ever made when that is in my hands."
• Eldrich extracts Dr. Provostinalkov from the sewers to a safe new base beyond the wall so he can finish the real shard, and resolves to keep its existence secret from the Reclamation's suspected traitor until it's ready — fearing he'd "sign the death warrant of the man in the sewers" otherwise.
• The threat sharpens: a dead Varian at the lab proves Varia knows about the project — a rival faction now circling a god-killing weapon.

Session 50

• A natural source — and a rival refinery. Infiltrating the Middle Tor mine, the party finds Laewendas mining a natural vein of glowing green crystal; Lash identifies it as a crystal growth, not metal — a gemstone emerged from the rock rather than a tapped ore vein. Fenric floats the resemblance ("I think that's similar to that stuff that scientist guy makes") and the GM allows only "similar colour, similar energy," adding that a lot of people are trying to cook up something like what Dr. Provostinalkov has apparently managed. Nothing is confirmed here; the identification lands later, in Session 51 (Dilbert's journal naming the Godkiller Shard as Laewendas's goal) and Session 52 (the refined green panache). The kidnapped alchemist Snuffles is being forced to refine it (ore-dust ground with herbs into a glowing bowl that keeps failing into black sludge), trying to reproduce the doctor's success. This recasts the whole Menagoles occupation as a god-weapon operation, and puts a mountain's worth of raw material in Laewendas's hands — while Eldrich holds the only finished product. (Whether the mined crystal is literally Shard material or a related ore is flagged in Canon Questions.)

Session 51 (the goal named — and the crystal complicated)

• Laewendas's goal, in writing. Fenric decodes Dilbert the Mage's ghost-journal, which states outright that Laewendas is going after the "Godkiller Shard" — the Shard of the Autarch. Her Middle Tor dig is confirmed as a hunt for this god-weapon.
• The bulk crystal is fuel, not the Shard. The red crystal the party has been hauling by the ton (~800 lbs) is revealed deep in the mine to be high explosive — the boring machine's charge, so volatile that human diggers must clear ahead of it. This complicates Session 50's read that the mined crystal is the Shard substance: the bulk ore is a fuel, not the prize.
• A second, magical (blue) crystal. Distinct from the red is a cordoned vein of light-blue/cyan crystal that reads as far more magical (the bigger pieces "medium magic" to Fenric's magic-sense) — a plausible candidate for the actual Shard material, and guarded: harvesting one wakes a crystal creature (cliffhanger). What the blue crystal is, and which crystal (if either) is the true Shard, is now open lore. (The Session-50 "glowing green" mine-crystal vs. the Session-51 "red" ore is a flagged discrepancy in the private working notes.)

Session 52 (the "panache" — immortality and god-death unified)

• The green crystal named. In the hidden Foredweller research facility deep under the mine, the gemologist Anita calls the pure, refined green crystal the "panache" (also "elixir"). The scientists' running theory: this facility is where the Foredwellers refined the green shards the Autarch used to arm herself and wage war against the Emperor who had killed all the other gods to declare himself the one remaining god. So the substance is named for — and was the weapon of — the god-slayer.
• One substance, both edges. The panache both creates and destroys life: it is the Elder-race immortality elixir and the god-slaying Shard material — "the Fore-dwellers were extremely competent in creating, refining, and using this green-shard substance, both to create and destroy life." This fuses the campaign's immortality-elixir thread with its god-weapon thread into a single Foredweller craft. The green reading of Session 50 is vindicated: the refined product is green (the red ore is fuel; the blue crystal a separate magical vein).
• Why Provostinalkov keeps failing. Refining the panache throws off enormous heat; the Foredwellers cooled it with the deep's canal system, whereas Dr. Provostinalkov was "freeballing it in the sewers" for want of exactly this. His life's work is a crude copy of what this lab holds pure and refined on a desk.
• The Autarch = the slayer, not the God-Emperor. This reframes earlier lore: the "Autarch" is the elven woman who slew the God-Emperor, not the emperor himself. (The Session-19 gloss that equated "the Autarch" with the God-Emperor is flagged in Discrepancies; see the Autarch/God-Emperor thread in Canon Questions.) Laewendas guards this facility partly with her own scientists (Session 52). Still level 7.

Session 55 (the party owns one)

• Not hers to begin with. Restated plainly at the table: a shard is "not actually the shard of an Autarch, it's just a resource of the Ancients that the Autarch has learned to process or weaponise" — she does not predate the facility, and the facility is what makes the goop that becomes it.
• Proven against the void. The gemologist Anita touched her shard to Thalia's Void Stone at the end of 32-foot calipers. The stone cracked open, an eight-foot peripheral-vision-only entity stood up in the room, and the shard's dim glow flared from a foot of light to three or five and annihilated it — radio static, then nothing. Fenric and Silithane read it as two opposing domains of magic meeting: fire and water, life and death. The GM's cautious note is that the green comes from this planet and the void thing did not, so the green winning may be the good outcome.
• Given to the party on an oath. Anita's terms: "If you vow an oath to me that you will only use it to kill these things, you can have the one that I have." Thalia swore on her honour, her life and everything she holds dear; Magra on her twin sister's life; Silithane and Fenric likewise. A pledge, not a rolled check — but this is Rivalon, and breaking it "would decay horrifically." Jex declined and was refused permission even to touch it; Lash was out of the room. The shard now sits in the party's galley wagon as a shared tool.
• How to hold one. Handed over inside an inverted glove: razor-edged on every face, it cuts clean through a gripping hand with whatever pressure you apply. Otherwise safe to handle.
• The rumour attached to owning one. "If you ever come across the Autarch or one of their agents and they demand it from you, you really don't have much of a choice but to give it to them. It is partially why they are so rare."