Lore:Avanchnzel

Avanchnzel
Type	Ruin
Continent	Tamriel
Province	Skyrim
Hold	The Rift
Subregions	Ragged Hills
Appears in	Skyrim, ESO

Avanchnzel circa 4E 201

"Avanchnzel is waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"No one seems to know. Perhaps the return of the Dwemer. Perhaps the end of the world."

— Conversation between Watches-The-Roots and Breya

Avanchnzel (roughly meaning Eternal City in Dwemeris) is a Dwarven ruin located on the slopes of the Jerall Mountains in The Rift, south of the Treva River and west of Riften. Once a great hall of dwarven construction, Avanchnzel was as much a library as it was a city, built to hold the vast memories of the Dwemer. It was run almost exclusively by strange mechanical spiders.

A lexicon is kept stored deep within, remaining heavily guarded for millennia after the disappearance of the Dwemer. The knowledge contained in the Lexicon is said to hold the accumulated memories of centuries of Dwemer, and was responsible for creating everything within the ruins. Many of the animunculi residing within remained asleep, waiting for an unknown purpose…

History

Interior of Avanchnzel circa 2E 582

Avanchnzel was a citadel built by the Dwemer prior to 1E 700. The smaller nearby ruins of Bthalft were home to the Aetherium Forge constructed by other clans. Rkund was also found along the Jerall Mountains, though is unknown what connection the site may have had to Avanchnzel, and if they were among the Dwemer city-states that were conquered by King Gellir. Curiously, there are no records of Falmer inhabiting the ruins, suggesting they were never enslaved in Avanchnzel. Based on what little is known about the ruin, some scholars of Dwemer architecture believed what could be explored to merely be the outer chambers of a much larger site, access to which had become blocked by the time of the Second Era. The automatons defending the place made it too dangerous to inquire further.

A memory displayed by the lexicon of the expedition coming across the dormant automatons

When the Oscillating Son was deconstructed and his parts scattered across the continent, his leg had found its way into Avanchnzel. Some time during the Interregnum, a group of Argonians delved into the ruins and discovered the hidden entrance to the Dwemer underworks. The spider and sphere guardians swarmed them in the outer chamber, resulting in a few casualties. The survivors reached the central heating plant and other machinery, but insisted on pressing farther in, searching for relics they could remove. Their intrusion into the inner chamber awakened a Dwemer Centurion, named Thzallek Eft according to the inscriptions, and almost all of them died in the assault. Only one survivor reached the exit, but was unable to escape as the doors had been locked by an unseen mechanism. With their food and water back in the outer chamber, her only hope was for other researchers to open the doors from the outside. In 2E 582, a rogue member of the Mages Guild by the name of Malsia traveled to Avanchnzel to gather Dwemer skystones in attempt to open a portal to Aetherius. A bounty hunter named Solvar confronted her outside the ruins under orders of the Guild, but was burned to death by Malsia and she fled the scene. She used the skystone artifacts to successfully travel to Aetherius but the portal collapsed on her, and she'd returned when the Vestige turned the skystones to reopen the portal, losing her soul in the process as her soul gem had broke.

In 4E 201, two Argonians named Watches-The-Roots and From-Deepest-Fathoms led expedition to the ruins to steal the lexicon, hiring Drennen and Breya to aid them in the effort. They believed that if properly controlled, the lexicon had enough knowledge to turn paupers into kings. Journeying through the ruin over the course of a few days, they encountered many automatons, both awoken and dormant, destroying them all along the way just to be safe. The dangers of the ruins gradually began to stress out the members of the party, and by the time they'd reached the Animoncultory, Drennen attempted to flee the ruins for his own safety and died before he could escape. At the doors to the Boilery, Watches-The-Roots unknowingly triggered a pressure plate and was killed by a spinning blades trap. From-Deepest-Fathoms and Breya continued on, finding the lexicon guarded by two centurions within the final chamber of the ruins. Breya died finishing off one of them, telling Fathoms to run out through the exit, who did so after taking the lexicon. Returning to Riften, From-Deepest-Fathoms was losing her sanity from the memories obtained by the lexicon, and begged the Last Dragonborn to return it to "them" inside Avanchnzel. When they reached the ruins, the intricacies of the lexicon began to display their powers, showing them memories of the ill-fated journey that preceded them by projecting the ghosts as a resonance, a playback of From-Deepest-Fathom's previous exploration. Discovering the bodies of the expedition members in the ruins, they made their way back to the final chamber and returned the lexicon to its Lexicon Receptacle, honing a few skills from the ancient knowledge gained by the lexicon. From-Deepest-Fathoms' sanity returned to her afterwards, but she had lost any recollection of the journey to Avanchnzel, seemingly the work of the lexicon's influence upon her.

Gallery

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  Avanchnzel circa 2E 582

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  Avanchnzel skystones opening a portal to Aetherius

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  Thzallek Eft

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  Avanchnzel balcony

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  The Precursor's leg in the ruins

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  The Lexicon

See Also

• For more information, see the game-specific Skyrim and ESO articles on Avanchnzel.