The Qualotani Melt

A Ninth World Artist Colony

The Qualotani Hills are a region of rolling green plains in central Malevich, south of the Wyr River. Like many places in the steadfast, the hills host a variety of Numernera sites the qualotani people have existed with side-by-side for centuries. By the most renown site, known by art collectors and speculators across the Steadfast is the Qualotani melt.

The Qualotani Melt is technically part of a numenera called the Six Old Fathers, a collection of six large rectangular prisms the size of three-story buildings. Each is made of the same material: a gray, slightly irradescent substance that resembles stone but is somewhat pliant, like synth. The two southernmost Old Fathers are no longer standing, instead "melting" into a single great mound of clay-like material called "meltstuff" or "melt clay". This material gives the Melt its name, and its importance to the Steadfast overshadows the rest of the numenera, leading to the entire area being knowsn as the Qualotani Melt.

Meltware

In its raw form, the melted numenera has several interesting properties. It maintains its own temperature, between cool to the touch to small pockets being so cold they burn they can cause numbness ot even frostbite. Small caves have been dug in the melt by qualotani locals for storing food and sometimes their dead. The clay is elastic but malleable and can be shaped with some work. Meltstuff shaped in this way returns to its original shape as part of the Melt in a matter of minutes unless, that is, the shaped part is cut from the main body of the Melt (in the language of those who work with melt clay, when the clay is "freed"): the lump of meltstuff "collapses" violently, trandforming from a mound of rubbery dough into a near diamond-hard piece of "meltglass".

Meltglass has a beautiful, shining surface; the facets of the glass are hazy, as if curling smoke were captured in a glass case. Some pieces show a rainbow of subtle colors depending on how the light catches them, and to top it off the pieces are durable and long-lasting, with only the very oldest pieces showing signs of cracking or wear.

For over a century, artisans have come to the Melt to practice the art of meltware: by shaping the melt clay precisely and freeing it expertly, the collapse of meltstuff can be largely controlled, enabling beautiful, useful, and artful designs to render in the numenera of the Qualotani Melt. Platters, goblets, mirrors, even legendary portraits and abtract expressions of emotion and history have been comissioned and crafted on the Melt. Nobles of the Steadfast pay handsomly for the works fo the best artists on the Melt, and demand in recent years has only increased.

The Colony

The Qualotani Melt is more-or-less permanently occupied by a collective of artisans and apprentices, along with their families, servants, merchants, physicians, prospective buyers, spies, and other assorted people who make their life and living on the Melt. This "artist colony" has no official name, and in fact has developed a culture to (in theory) ensure the Melt remains a place where none may lay claim to the bounty of the numenera.

No houses are allowed to be built on or near the Melt; all the artisans, their famalies and staff live in wagons and other temporary shelters. The only building is a wooden warehouse where the finest works of the meltware masters are put on display and visitors to the colony are received. Due to the nature of melt clay, all work must be done on the melt itself, but no permanent workspaces or shops are permitted. Each day, everyone who wishes to work with meltstuff must trudge up the slightly-bouncy, chilly slope of the Qualotani Melt and set up their workspace and tools and each night everything must be removed from the Melt when the artisans return to thier camps.

The Qualotani Melt artist colony has no formal government or bylaws, only traditions upheld by the Melt's unofficial trustee (see below), and as meltware has become more popular and lucrative, the high ideals about none laying claim to the melt have been "relaxed".