Amidst the treetops of the Ambar Forest, cleaving through the canopy of leaves on into the clouds above is a tree unrivaled in all dimensions. Several thousand feet of wood, earth, leaves, and branches stretch into the Attovian sky. At its base the Ambar Tree fills an area some 5 miles in diameter, roots like giant arms sink into the earth and pull up the surrounding soil and plant growth. The first several hundred feet of the tree is a mass of flowers, grass, and other brush occasionally breached by the huge limbs of the tree like pods of whales surfacing beneath an earthen sea. The soil here is sacred, no paths but those beaten by millennia of Elven feet are permitted to be made, and not a nail, stone slab, or plank can be found.
This unblemished nature quickly vanishes once the first borehole is reached. Just above the Ceven Neitha, a series of precise holes equidistant from one another, in exacting diameter, ring the perimeter of the tree. This is the only obvious visible blemish when externally viewing the hickory brown trunk. Upon descending into the boreholes a vast atrium presents itself. In the early morning and just before sunset shafts of sunlight shoot through natural cracks in the Ambar Tree’s bark. The beautiful rays shine through wood carved murals casting Elven history upon the walls in intricate shadows. Great natural pillars of the trees own flesh ascend to a roof several hundred feet above the grain of the smoothed floor. In its center a massive column, the Ambar Tree’s life core, or Huor as the Elves refer to it. The portion of the tree that remains untouched, for it carries the souls of Elves long dead, and the life of the Ambar Tree itself.
Circling the core is a large depression in the floor, six wooden staircases lead down to the subterranean levels where the Thurin Cim reside. As if in opposition of the descending portion, six wooden pillars of a size between the supports and the Huor are placed in a hexagonal orientation around the center of the tree. Each hoists a winding staircase stretching towards the canopy. Every aspect of the staircase is hewn directly from the ancient tree, as if being discovered behind the pillar it climbs. Roughly five Elves abreast, each staircase rises until the atriums ceiling where it meets and joins the floor above. Over all of it the tree continues to bloom, every surface left unpruned sprouts leaves, and brilliant golden Ambar Flowers, it is a gorgeous shade of green and yellow many Attovian writers have attempted yet failed to capture in literary form.
Uplifted as are its denizens is the Maltrond, the mid level of the tree, still thousands of feet beneath its highest branches, but two thirds of the way up the lived in portion of the trunk. Hundreds of multi-story houses, carved from the tree like the rest of the internal architecture, host the members of the Ta man Arpata bloodline. Two concentric rings of buildings serve two purposes. The first and larger ring is residential in nature, many houses still empty, waiting for new members of the bloodline to come of age and claim theirs. The second smaller ring encircles but does not touch the core itself and functions as a source of business, offices, stores and entertainment.
Access to the Ta man Arpata’s quarters is not strictly forbidden, however it is societally discouraged. It is punishable by exile however to visit the Rî in Ambar without express permission. It is initially unclear how one reaches the highest floor. The ceiling of the Cidinn Aglar where the Ta man Arpata live has no break between the walls and the core, seeming to continue as a solid mass thousands of feet above the rest of the citizens. It is not until one seeks it that they find a third, far smaller circle at the center. There is a false core which extends 10 feet out from the true core, going unnoticed by the uninformed, but accessible by those granted the Eredh Lihta. A long hidden spiral staircase coils unknown about the Huor until it reaches the Rî in Ambar.
Pruned constantly the path to the Rî in Ambar is a constant lush green thanks to its proximity to the core. As it spirals skyward the golden Ambar Flowers sprout in increasing abundance until the narrow stairwell pulses with a brilliant light as though a million evening suns were shining softly into the tree. This overgrowth continues powerfully into the Rî in Ambar, like flowing cascades of amber the flowers spill over every surface permanently lighting the royal halls in the Ambar Tree’s glory. The royal palace, Noss in Ambar grows out from the massive central pillar its wooden parapets and towers gilded with Ambar Flower tinsel which coats the entire castle-esc structure chiseled from the heart wood. Below the Noss in Ambar courtyards and mansions where those royals who do not belong to the immediate ruling family live in luxury far above those Elves of lower blood. But above all the pomp and circumstance of the Noss in Ambar, putting it to shame as a real sunset to the artists poor colorless sketch, the Eredh in Ambar. The Seed of the World. The glow of the Ambar Flowers is put to shame by the portion of the Huor made a bright burnt orange as something blindingly bright shines through the solid trunk as though it were paper. There it casts a permanent sunset upon the Cundo in Ambar, its pleasant light a sight only befitting the worthy and the chosen.
Glossary
Ceven Neitha: Soil Divide, the dividing line between the earthen portion of the Ambar Tree, and the trunk proper.
Huor: Life core, the central heart wood of the the Ambar Tree, to be untouched by tool or work.
Maltrond: Halls of Gold, the central lived in portion of the tree where the Ta man Arpata reside.
Rî in Ambar: Crown of the World, here lives the royal bloodline in line for the throne and noblehood the Cundo in Ambar.
Noss in Ambar: House of the World, the great wooden palace where the current ruling family resides.
Eredh Lihta: Seed Seal, a special talisman which grants access to the central stairwell.
Eredh in Ambar: Seed of the World, the original second seed of the Ambar Tree cultivated by the first Elves of Beleg gúl
Dimensions
5 miles in diameter
4471.78 ft tall