An original dark fantasy celestial observatory, fictional relic catalogue No. 001. All places, people, institutions, rituals, mechanisms, and historical events in this article belong to the invented setting of the Ashen Meridian. This is a work of fantasy design, not a description of an archaeological discovery.

In the courts beneath the Ebon March, the sky was once treated as an unfinished machine. Astronomers drew its orbits on parchment; masons raised walls to follow its shadows; locksmiths attempted to reproduce its stubborn cycles in brass. The greatest surviving design in these fictional chronicles is the Noctis Astrarium, known to common pilgrims as the Mourning Star Orrery. It resembles a compact ruined cathedral that has forgotten its enclosing walls. Four black basalt buttresses encircle a standing forest of concentric bronze and brass circles. At the centre, a turquoise crystal turns within a cage of clockwork and engraved meridians. Beneath it, massive toothed wheels rest like fossilised suns.

At first glance the instrument appears to be a monument, and that mistake is part of its visual identity. Its stairs are not meant to be climbed. Its carved gates are too small to admit a visitor. Its crowns and spires communicate an older architectural belief that knowledge should have a weight, a silhouette, and a sacred orientation. From a distance, the machine is an altar. In profile it becomes an astronomical diagram. At close range it resolves into journals, hinges, opposing counterweights, tooth flanks, locking collars, and a disciplined family of fasteners. The design uses real polygonal components for those important shapes rather than treating ornament as luminous paint on a smooth shell.

This is an educational, illustrative model of a fictional product: part names, masses, materials and operating figures are simplified and are not a manufacturer's drawing, a design basis or a safety/acceptance document.