The Maw Frame

Originally called the “Throat of Aru’xat” — and revealed in the Slanted Circle Grimoire’s marginalia by the more accurate name the Maw Frame — this is a massive resonance engine designed to wake Vorthalax, the Sleeper Beneath Stone.

Components (Grimoire Marginalia)

The most strategically valuable intelligence recovered in Session 12 is the Mage’s own labeling of the Frame’s components. The Slanted Circle Grimoire contains a sketch of the Frame with each part annotated:

• Anchor — the binding to a specific ley node. The Frame must be moored to a place where the leylines run thick. The Astralglades was the original anchor; Xen’Drik’s leynexus is a secondary anchor, which is why the Circle was able to activate a regulator there.
• Resonator — the vibration source. The crystal lattice the party encountered in Xen’Drik in Session 12 was a regulator/resonator pair: the regulator generates a tuned ley pulse, the resonator amplifies it.
• Gate — the planar door itself. When the resonance matches, the Gate opens to Ulnex Arhun.
• Lung — the breath beneath.

That last word is the unsettling one. The Mage’s marginalia label Vorthalax’s mass under Xen’Drik as a lung — meaning the Frame is not just a door. It is a respiration system. When Vorthalax breathes, the Frame inhales with it. When the Frame opens, Vorthalax exhales through it.

This reframes everything the party has done with ley anchors. They were not reinforcing seals against an enemy. They were maintaining a respiratory pause.

Purpose

The Maw Frame is built to:

1. Anchor to a sufficiently dense ley node
2. Resonate at Vorthalax’s frequency by tuning regulators distributed across multiple leyground locations
3. Open the Gate between Eberron and Ulnex Arhun (where Vorthalax’s tail extends)
4. Allow the Lung to breathe fully — letting Vorthalax uncoil across both planes simultaneously

The Circle’s framing of this as mercy — letting a tired world sleep — relies on Vorthalax being awakened gently rather than torn loose. The party’s framing is the opposite.

Construction

The Slanted Circle originally used enslaved humans to cut down ancient trees and construct the Astralglades Frame. Purple-robed cultists oversaw the work. The Xen’Drik regulator the party broke in Session 12 was a secondary installation — proof that the Circle had advanced beyond the Astralglades and was activating distributed resonators across multiple continents.

Activation Capability

In Session 12, the Frame’s Xen’Drik regulator briefly opened the Gate. The party witnessed:

• A beam of ley energy from the ground
• A doorway tearing open at its peak, opening into Ulnex Arhun
• Stars, galaxies, and upside-down towers visible through it
• A colossal tail (Vorthalax’s) drifting through
• The Slanted Circle Mage descending bodily from Ulnex Arhun into Eberron

After the Mage’s death, the Frame fizzled — but did not seal. The Frame remains active as a structure. The next opening could come from any sufficiently powered regulator on the leyground network.

The Astgrove Capability

Significantly: when the Maw closed at the end of Session 12, the view through it changed to Astgrove — and Rook stepped through. This is the first evidence that the Emerald Enclave can use the Frame in some capacity, an ability previously thought to belong only to the Circle.

Whether this was an Enclave capability they had been concealing, or a temporary alignment forced by the Frame’s destabilization, is unknown.

Current Status

Active but not currently opened. The Frame still rises in the Astralglades. Distributed regulators may still exist beyond the one the party broke in Xen’Drik. Rook’s instruction at the close of Session 12 was to “close the Frame” — implying the structure itself is reachable and can be sealed by an action the party has not yet taken.

The campaign’s open question for the Vorthalax arc: how do you seal a respiration system without killing what it belongs to?