Overview
The Nexus Research Center is Thalassai's research facility beneath Stella Aeterna in Chronasis. The ancient Chronasis gate stands in its main gate room. Cyrena leads the center, and Jareth works there as a scientist and engineer. Under Cassian, Thalassai uses it for experimental technology, gate operations, and technical investigations involving Thalassai and its allies.
Layout
The center lies below Stella Aeterna, reached from the palace's main hall and lounge through a descending door, stairs, and lower passages. Its main chamber is the gate room, which contains a massive half-circle gate with symbols and metal indents for devices and cables.
The main chamber is crowded with equipment: crystalline arrays, documents, essence cores, resonance tools, amplifiers, conduits, books, orbs, glass instruments, prototype engines, workbenches, cables, and scattered tools. Protected side rooms connect to the gate room, so the lower complex contains research benches and guarded inner rooms beneath Stella Aeterna.
Research and Technology
Researchers there study gates and develop Thalassai's aether, resonance, transport, and containment technologies. They build air balloons, aether-and-sail vessels, enchanted boots, and aether-powered ship lifts, and they test resonance stones. Under Cassian, they improve windweavers, build train prototypes, tune devices to Cassian's essence, contain captured divine power, prepare shields and void equipment, and use Jareth's atraxi knowledge for new tools.
Aether-Powered Ship Lifts
Aether-powered ship lifts, also called ship elevators, are Thalassai waterway structures that raise and lower vessels along rivers. They improve inland river trade and operate around Chronasis beside dams and controlled waterways, moving vessels as if the vessels have almost no mass.
Enchanted Boots
Enchanted boots are common Thalassai mobility technology that enhance speed, running, and leaping for civilians and soldiers. Quick-footed people in Stella Aeterna use enchanted boots, and Thalassai's everyday innovations include similar speed-enhancing boots.
Watergliders
Watergliders are Thalassai river craft that skim swiftly across waterways. They operate alongside ship elevators, dams, river-control artifacts, and windweavers, and guests use them for regional travel after a feast at the Celestial Nexus.
Resonance stone
Resonance stones are Thalassai communication artifacts that carry speech across long distances. Thalena designs them, and the Nexus Research Center develops them through resonance magic and technology. Early stones are unreliable. Later versions let Zephyra hear Hadrian during a ferry trip carrying Tazarin from Terranova and let Cassian coordinate supplies and military orders from his office.
History
Orin founded Chronasis atop the ancient gate, so the gate chamber remained beneath Thalassai's palace once Stella Aeterna rose above it. Long afterward, Thalena rebuilds the Palace of Time into Stella Aeterna and expands the chamber around the gate into the Nexus Research Center.
The center flourishes with Thalassai's growth. Its researchers develop gate studies, resonance stones, windweaver improvements, and aether-artifact engineering. Thalena investigates whether the gates can reach the God Realm. The center is also where the child Lunorax arrives after a written message in Stella Aeterna gives Thalena his name; she and those involved keep the event secret.
During Cassian's rule, Thalassai runs gate activity from the gate room. Cassian, Thalena, Cyrena, Deylin, Jareth, Jin, and Thalassai researchers repeatedly use it to activate the Chronasis gate, study the void, test equipment, prepare expeditions, examine dangerous recovered technology, and investigate incidents involving Thalassai and its allies.