The Blue Flame has high ceilings - remnant of its life as a Cydonian warehouse before it became a tavern. Most of that height is just rafters and shadow. But on the wall facing the entrance, someone used it.
A carved relief spans the full width of the back wall, floor to ceiling. The wood is dark with age and smoke, and the work has the worn quality of something made with genuine care - not a commission, but a labor. The Cydonian furnace with its unsettling blue flame sits to one side, separate; this wall belongs entirely to the carving.
Three figures occupy the scene, each rendered in confident relief:
On the right, Bram Karsen stands in strict profile, shield raised toward the far edge of the panel. Facing him, carved in jagged crystalline relief, is an icon of the Frost - a starburst of angular ice. He stands between it and everything behind him.
On the left, Aria Kessel faces an upward-reaching flame on the opposite edge. Her arms are extended gently toward it, open-palmed, as though offering warmth back to the thing that provides it.
In the center, Luthor Shrike faces outward - directly at the viewer. His fist is raised above his head, clad in the Thunder Gauntlet - a relic of his own making, and the only symbol he carries.
Running through the entire scene - looped around the shield’s rim, threaded through the robed figure’s open hands, gathered behind the central figure’s back - is a braided cord. It does not bind the three figures, but connects them together! Its ends disappear off both edges of the panel, implying something larger than what’s depicted.
Beneath the carving, in simple block letters:
“A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
No one in Hearth seems to know exactly who made it, or when. It predates most of the current residents. Oryn Gold-Hand, if asked, will say only that it was there when he opened the place. Some people think, however, that he made it himself, inspired by the leaders who shaped Hearth.