The Custodial Assemblies

The Custodial Assemblies govern the inhabited districts and license excavation, entry into unrestored sections, and movement of recovered material. Their authority comes from the palace charter issued by the High Seat about four centuries ago, not from a demonstrated older right. They administer the charter within the moon, but do not possess the authority behind it or claim rule beyond it.

Custodians act through assemblies responsible for the districts in their keeping, without a single presiding office for the moon. Their concrete instrument is the license: it names a receiving settlement or mission, the place opened, the work permitted, and whether recovered material may move. Where work crosses district bounds, each affected assembly retains its own decision. An approval for excavation does not by itself authorize entry into every unrestored gallery.

A scholarly mission first applies through Vhalessa, yet Velyrian approval only brings it to the moon. On arrival, the mission submits to custodial inspection and answers to local limits on access, handling, excavation, and movement. The assemblies cannot represent the moon abroad, revise or override the charter, or compel Velyr’s archives to disclose what they may hold concerning the Erasure. External representation remains with Velyr.

Their one recorded concession from the charter is the refusal of a crest, including Velyr’s. Public institutions use functional marks, and residents keep the Nameless Moon as a deliberate public name. That refusal does not free the assemblies from the instrument that authorizes them. Their standing is tested whenever research presses them to fill an admitted gap, or Velyrian sponsorship is mistaken for local permission. They preserve removed inscriptions as evidence of deliberate erasure while refusing to turn custody into an answer the surviving record cannot give.