Kalistan

[Doc]

Empress opens rebuilt Gem Vault
The new location for the vault is located close to the new Main Homesite
Kaliburg, Grand Duchy of Ananto
June 8, 5723


Her Imperial Majesty offers rare glimpse inside one of the twelve halls of the newly rebuilt gem vault

Following the major Eveari Earthquake at the beginning of the century, the Royal Gem Vault on the Ananto Estate in Eveari was extensively damaged and was nearly lost. Access to the vault was completely destroyed, and nobody could enter the extensive underground treasury of House Ananto for years. Once Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Carolina II Ananto had completed the relocation and rebuilding of the main home and the repairs and renovations to the Pavilion and the Museum of the Empire, located on the property, as well as most of the staff quarters, it was finally time to tackle the gem vault.

The first step in recovery was to excavate an access to take a tour of the ruined vault. To do so, civil engineers from Marcus Construction, a civil engineer and general contracting firm in Eveari, were hired to dig an access shaft that ran parallel to the old stairway and elevator system into the vault. Several pilot tunnels were dug to determine how far down the access was damaged, and ultimately, the determination was made that the entire elevator shaft had completely collapsed and a new entrance to the vault would be needed.

"The destruction was so complete," said Chris Marcus, who co-owns the firm with his father. "We were pretty amazed, because the entrance was very well constructed, but in a battle between man's construction and the volcanic island of Ananto, the earth almost always wins. Ultimately it was determined that the old entrance was completely inaccessible and destroyed, and therefore a new entrance would be needed."

Once inside the vault, inspectors moved carefully through the damaged corridors. "I was with the first crew into the collapsed vault," said Marcus. "Initially we did not have any electric service installed down there, and obviously what was there was completely destroyed. What we found was complete destruction, where large slabs of concrete and earth had fallen in, massive cracks in walls and just mountains and mountains of physical wealth scattered all over, gems of all kinds, like someone had taken a sprinkle cannon and just blasted the whole place with color that glinted in our flashlights as we panned across the floors." Of the 8 hallways in the original gem vault that extended like spokes on a wheel around a central hallway, 6 of them were completely destroyed and almost totally inaccessible, while two of them suffered extensive damage but could still be accessed. "I have never seen so much gold or silver in my entire life," said Marcus. "I honestly didn't know this much even existed."

Marcus joked when talking about how the initial excavations were the most strenuous and dangerous. "It was quite hot down there while we were trying to string working lamps and ventilation. We all had to be weighed before we went in and after we came out, to make sure nobody tried to make off with any of the stones or ingots or anything. And for the first few weeks, most of us would come back up, just drenched in sweat, and would actually weigh like a pound less than when we went down into the vault. It was ridiculous. The joke became that if you weighed the same when you came up as when you went down, you probably had three or four gold ingots on you somewhere."

Once ventilation had been established, crews could work more diligently. "We knew we were going to have to demolish the old vault completely, but we had to first pull all those stones out. The Empress had ordered the construction of a new temporary holding facility for her treasure, and when we first went in there, when it was totally empty, we all thought no way would they get anywhere close to filling this place up. But I'll be damned if they didn't come close. By the time we had emptied out the old vault, the new temporary treasury, emphasis on temporary, was filled with stacks of boxes six feet high and across the entire room. There was just enough room for the team of jewelers that Reed provided to work: Their job was to clean, sort and grade each stone that came up from the vault. It was a massive job." Marcus said much of the precious metal needed to be melted down and recast, because the damage was so extensive in the central ring where most of it was kept. "In the end it was tons, and I mean tons of stuff that we eventually brought up and placed into the treasury, generations and generations of horded wealth. It was mind numbing."

Excavation also required removal of much of the concrete. "Well, you don't just go through and push concrete and rebar around when you are that far into the ground. This place was meant to serve as a tomb that could withstand a nuclear blast if need be. And now it lay under six stories of earth. Digging out a 150 feet deep hole was not childsplay, especially since the earth was so disturbed." He said the excavation of the the vault took 16 months total before crews were able to access the collapsed structure from the top. "It was like we were opening a quarry on the property, and we worked every day to do this excavation. It was a truly massive undertaking."

As Marcus was excavating the old vault, they were also busy building a new one. "The new one is significantly closer to the surface," said Marcus. "The Empress asked that it be closer to her home than the old one was, but we took sonograms of the subsurface, and realized that the bedrock is much closer to the surface near the forest where she planned for the vault We realized that placing the vault a mere 50 feet below the surface was a much easier task, and when she agreed, we were able to get to work." Marcus said he employed a crew of more than 450 tradesmen and women from around Ananto on the project. "Lots of laborers, lots of welders, lots of concrete guys-- Eveari alone couldn't support that and we had to put a bid out to contractors across Ananto to come in and help us. It was an Island wide undertaking by the end." The new vault was constructed over four seasons and was finally finished in 5721. Final excavations on the old vault were not completed until the next year, but the treasury had already started moving back underground. By the time the last stones were discovered, after sifting the last earth coming up from the pit, the new vault was about to be opened.

"We were extremely careful with our excavation of the old vault," said Marcus, "but it is possible that there are still precious stones mixed into that soil. House Ananto was working with us to determine whether what they thought they had had all been accounted for, but even they, at some point decided that we were at a point of diminishing returned, we had retrieved the vast majority of the fortune and unless any more stones were easily recovered, we should just proceed with the job." House Ananto estimated that some of the fortune could be still mixed within the soil taken from the old vault, but recovery of that would be too expensive to justify the additional labor necessary to extract it. So it would just be buried on site of the old vault and become part of the Estate. At the end only the foundations and whatever remained of the upright walls of the old gem vault were kept. The old storage location of the Hulanevek Diamond, which was three floors below the main vault, was not accessed, so anything that was in there will be lost. House Ananto did not confirm whether anything remained in that area.

The new Gem Vault was formally opened to exclusive and select tours earlier this month. Her Imperial Majesty Empress Carolina II Ananto herself accompanied the first tour, made up of the families of Eveari workers who had built the vault. "My guys and gals have already seen the inside of the vault," said Marcus. "We built it. We have been down there countless times. But Her Imperial Majesty specifically asked if our families would like to see what we had been working on for such a long time. A lot of people said yes." Her Imperial Majesty also rewarded each member of the crew a choice from a selection of raw gems selected from the horde to each of the workers, and offered to cover costs at Reed if the worker would like his or her gems turned into jewelry, to say thank you for their work on her behalf. "Of course, we were well paid too," said Marcus, who said his firm stood to earn more than 15 million Imperial Pesos on the job. "The gems were just a small token, a tiny fragment from the next to infinite number that are down under the ground again, but I would argue that they are probably more than most of our folks had before."

Small groups have joined the waiting list for tours this summer. "There's a bit of buzz surrounding this in Eveari at the moment," said Marcus. "The tours are free, but they're only doing like 6 tours for the rest of this year, and so getting in to see the vault is next to impossible, and probably will be for some time." Groups can sign up to the waiting list through the Museum of the Empire, who, as of this week, said that there is likely a three year wait already. Private tours are also available, but not yet to the public. Marcus said that with excavation completed, the crew still has about two years of work left on the old site to fill in the massive hole that needed to be dug to save the Royal treasure trove. Work is expected to complete at the site in late 5724.

@LaModa