The Stripped Galleries
Research Station
A partly restored district where custodians and licensed researchers study visibly removed inscriptions without claiming to recover the name or purpose erased.
Overview
The Record
The Stripped Galleries are a surviving district in which deliberate removal can be read across walls, thresholds, fixtures, and public surfaces. Its 1,600 custodians and licensed researchers occupy restored pressure galleries connected by sealed routes. Beyond the working passages, unrestored sections remain closed behind marked seals and are neither ordinary ruins nor chambers waiting to be reopened without cause.
Research proceeds under licenses governing excavation, contact with inscriptions, movement of recovered material, and entry into each restricted section. A mission approved through Vhalessa still answers to custodians on the ground. They may narrow access, close a passage, or hold an object in place without claiming authority to decide what the removed words once meant.
The district matters because the Erasure was left visible. Cut stone and interrupted markings establish deliberate work, but no surviving fragment supplies the lost name, the target of removal, or the hand behind it. The galleries preserve that limit publicly. Their function is not to keep a secret until its appointed opening, but to prevent an acknowledged absence from being filled by convenience.
Identity and Function
Function
The Stripped Galleries preserve the clearest surviving evidence of deliberate erasure, support licensed examination and cataloging, and control movement between restored research spaces and sealed unrestored passages.
Identity and Function
Governance
Custodial assemblies license research, excavation, entry, and the movement of recovered material. Local custodians may close a gallery or narrow a license. Vhalessa may approve a mission, but neither that approval nor an ordinary Velyrian permit overrides the charter terms applied on site.
Environment and Travel
Environment
Partly restored pressure galleries occupy a surviving district beneath the moon’s thin nitrogen atmosphere. Lit research passages and small inhabited chambers follow sealed routes under low gravity, while unrestored sections remain behind pressure seals where structural condition, air, and access are not maintained for ordinary travel.
Environment and Travel
Travel Notes
Arrive through a receiving settlement with a named mission and custodial inspection. Licensed visitors may use restored galleries assigned to their work. Touching an inscription, opening a sealed passage, excavating, or moving recovered material requires separate authorization. A Velyrian travel permit establishes passage to the moon, not permission to conduct research here.
Culture