The Hall of Heroes

A museum built by public vote and public donation, to make sure the dead of the first war are remembered as more than their deaths.

What is in it

Ch. 99 itemises the collection while it is still being assembled, and most of it is donated by the towns rather than commissioned.

• The statue. Thirty feet, at the valley's highest point, "Visible from every community, but never overshadowing them". It shows Nilah mid-swing, with smaller figures of ordinary people round the base looking up.
• Empty pedestals, deliberately, "waiting for future legends". Ch. 99 has Nilah stand at one and imagine somebody she will never meet standing on it.
• A library, with books, maps of every place the heroes helped, and their belongings.
• Nilah's pressed Celosia flowers, which she is asked for and gives up. She had collected them since the war as proof "that beauty could still exist after everything we'd lost", and Sera makes the case that they can do the same job for strangers.
• Valdris's original reconstruction plans, nets and tools from Port Sunder's first joint human and sea-folk fishing expeditions, and a preserved spider cocoon from Thornwick.
• A child's drawings. The half-fox girl from Valdris donates hers and says she wants to tell the stories in pictures "so even people who can't read can understand".

Who is modelled. Ch. 99 names them: Kael, Bella, Shen, Neru, Matta, Fenris, Illia, and Icarus with his wings spread.

Two first artists

The chapter has the half-fox child ask to be "the museum's first official artist", and then closes by giving the post to somebody else:

the very first named artist of the museum was none other than Illia, a world-renowned talent.

The archive records both. The child asks for the title in the middle of the chapter and the Council awards it to Illia at the end, and nothing in between addresses the child again.

Heroes' Day

The dedication is set for the summer solstice, and the Council declares it a continental holiday. Delegations come from places Nilah never visited and ships from across the sea. Ch. 100 is the ceremony.

What it is

Not a monument to one person, which Nilah resists until she is told to stop.

SC2: The statue is just the centerpiece. We're building a Hall of Heroes, a place where the stories of all who fought for hope can be preserved and told. [...] A living memorial, a place of learning and inspiration. (ch. 99)

At its highest point stands a thirty-foot statue of Nilah with her flame blade raised, "visible from every community, but never overshadowing them", carved by dwarven stoneworkers who fought each other for the honour.

Around it are smaller figures: Icarus with his golden wings, other heroes preserved in story and song, and several empty pedestals waiting for future legends.

The models inside name the rest: "Kael, Bella, Shen, Neru, Matta, Fenris, Illia..."

What is in it

• A library, with books about everyone, maps of the places they helped, and their actual belongings.
• Nilah's pressed Celosia flower collection, which she donates after a moment of panic at the thought.
• The original plans for Valdris's reconstruction, from Marcus.
• Nets and tools from the first joint human and sea-folk fishing expeditions at Port Sunder.
• A preserved spider cocoon from Thornwick.
• The drawings of a half-fox child who asks to be the museum's first official artist, "so even people who can't read can understand".

Illia is named the museum's first official artist by the Council of Souls.

Centuries later

It is still standing, and Astra is in it constantly across Act 6, sketching at the edges of the festivities and biting back a bitter laugh at how clean the official stories have become:

Her parents' stories had never sounded this clean, this sanitized. (ch. 103)

She goes back to it to work when she cannot work anywhere else (ch. 118, ch. 122, ch. 124), and a father lifts his daughter there so she can touch Icarus's marble hand.

The empty pedestals were filled. Icarus has a statue by Astra's time, and Astra's generation are the ones being measured against it.

Open questions

• Whether Nilah's statue is still standing in Astra's era.
• Whether anything of it survives to Arthur's, four hundred years further on.