Shandaular, later called the City of Weeping Ghosts, was a ruined city in Thesk, and once capital of the Nar realm of Ashanath. It later expanded through a permanent portal to a location that would take on the name of Southern Shandaular in the Council Hills in the Eastern Shaar, home to the Arkaiun people.
The original city stood on the western shore of Lake Ashane, approximately 20 miles north of the town of Kront. The remnants of the southern portions of the city that spread beyond the gate formed buried ruins beneath the Council Hills.
A two-way gate was established between Shandaular and the Council Hills in −1064 DR, and thereafter the city expanded through the gate. Its name was shared with the southern portions of the city.
Shandaular of Ashanath was destroyed by the forces of the Nentyarch of Tharos in −946 DR. The act would unify the petty Nar kingdoms into the Narfell empire. Refugees fled through the gate and settled in southern Shandaular and the surrounding Council Hills. They took the name Arkaiuns in honor of the heroic leader Arkaius who stayed behind to seal the gate against the Nentyarch's armies.
In the Year of No Regrets, −69 DR, an Illuskan tribe from Ruathym arrived in the area via a portal and proceeded to intermingle with the Arkaiuns.
Followers of Myrkul backed by the unleashed demon lord Eltab usurped power in Shandaular in the Year of the Adamantine Spiral, 106 DR. They founded a theocracy they named Eltabranar, which reached across much of the Eastern Shaar.
By the mid-to-late 14th century DR, the Shaaryan tribes of the Shaar used some of the more easily accessible tunnels of the ruins of southern Shandaular as burial grounds for their honored dead, but avoided disturbing the deeper areas beneath the hills.