Seedvault+of+Arvandor

//From the Skies of Arvandor's mountains, near the realm of Aedrie Faenya, lies the Seedvault of Arvandor.//

It hangs from a root, or some say a vine--a massive ball of rock five miles around, hanging from the sky 500 feet above a nameless peak. The root, some say, is of the World Tree, that highway between the celestial planes.

No doors or windows lie on its surface--simply bare rock. Mists cloud its surface, and a strange forest grows in places across its face. On its dark underside, gargantuan Icicles protrude down into the mountain chasms. Four Temples wreath its equator, and a grand, colonnaded avenue skirts this waist, connecting the four temples.

Here a coterie of free celestials make their home. Led by a great eladrin, they were granted their freedom from divine service during the time of troubles. Many of the Gawds, realizing that the fallout in command and control among their servitors (who were mandated by Lord Ao not to act without divine orders), decided after that time to release a few cadres of their underlings to be free to act. There had always been a few free celestials, but now they had been ordered by their gods to cut their own path.

Among the ancient free ones was Greval, an antediluvian Eladrin who was once a servitor to one of the Dark Seldarine (some say Vhaerun); his dark charisma and independence, combined with an initiative to act in the interest of elves in ways the elven Gawds would not think of, won him the free space to act.

He tended towards collecting--the criminal, the criminally insane, the suspiciously-powerful artifact or construct, and so on. Early on he collected seven score of petrified drow, whom he resolved he would attempt to redeem. When this project failed, Elistraee pulled some favors to have the drow imprisoned instead.

Most stories of the seedvault come from those attempting to rescue the imprisoned drow. The few unsucessful break-ins have been masterminded by Drow, and it is in their lore that the seedvault first appears.

Later, however, Greval managed to snatch up a magical project from Myth Drannor even as the Yugoloth armies swept across the city of magic. These were the Mythal Seeds, potent hybrids of Treants with living spells that promised to knit the weave in ways that anyone (who was their master) could dictate). They would be walking //Mythals//, or so the reasoning went.

Greval sounded things out and didn't like the idea of the Phaerimms and Yugoloths that began to call the old ruins of Myth Drannor home getting hold of the Seeds, and sent a crack team to the Magical College's labs in the first weeks of the fall to retrieve the seeds.