Glass Needles

"The courtyard of the palace is never dark, thanks to the two glowing obelisks that have been placed there. They are filled with a swarm of tiny lights - a little like a jar of fireflies, if the jar was made of varicolored glass, seventy feet tall, and had sharp edges."

— Miyagi Yumeko, in a letter to her son.

During the conquest of Saba, the Malika of Saba used Glass Needles to deploy hordes of glass constructs to aid her forces. There were nine of these obelisks originally, but seven were destroyed by the forces of King Wainaba during the invasion. The two remaining needles have been placed in the courtyard of the Malika's palace in Tarshish.

A Glass Needle is an obelisk of multi-colored glass that stands about seventy feet tall. The surface of the needle is inscribed with branching, interconnected patterns along the edges where the different colors meet. The needle is lit from within with thousands of tiny, moving lights. Those who do not know the purpose of the needles often marvel at how beautiful they are.

Histories of the invasion of Saba claim that when the needles were originally deployed, the lights streamed out of the obelisk like bees from a hive. Each light was embedded in a tiny glass creature, mostly insects and arachnids. They would fly and crawl in every direction, stinging and biting and harrasing the defenders of the city. These stings carried a strange venom - glass splinters would begin to form at the site of the sting, and then grow and shatter within the victim's body. Sharp shards of glass would slice the victim to pieces, and the remaining splinters were seeds waiting for the right soil. If someone acidentally cut themselves on one of these shards of glass, the process would repeat itself, claiming another victim. Only by smashing the Needle that housed the insects could the process be halted. After the battle, the Malika had her constructs gather the remaining shards, and some speculate that she keeps them in reserve for some future use.