Sylissar

Sylissar, "the bound thread." The recovered ancient name; the colonists call it the Lab.

House: Myndari
One of the six artifacts recovered from the ruins of the ancient civilisation that ended itself ~200,000 years ago.

What it is

Quantum entanglement, the foundation of communication and navigation, and an engineering lab besides. It works through paired particles, bound so that neither can be listened to, copied, or counterfeited without the listening leaving a mark. The Lab carries no message faster than light, and it was never meant to. What it offers is the thing the houses came to fear more, a channel that cannot be entered unseen. The whole of it sits in a single sealed bunker on Olyrissan, deep enough that the war which ended the previous civilisation here never reached it.

The site

There is no armour inside, and no dust of bones. Whatever happened on Olyrissan happened on the surface, and the surface bones are long gone, and the ocean has closed over the entrances.