For seven hundred years, Eldaarich stood closed. Its
mighty stone doors remained sealed, and its people
huddled behind the walls in fear of what awaited
them outside. Those who approached found no
answer to their hails, and those daring to scale its
walls were never seen again. Over time, the city-state was forgotten. Located far to the north of the
Tyr Region, almost out of the reach of dune traders,
the city was too distant for the trip to be worthwhile
once the gates were closed. Eldaarich faded into
myth, and then all but the sorcerer-kings forgot
about it.
As silent as it was, someone still lived in Eldaarich.
The client villages and outer fortifications continued
to serve the city’s mad king, Daskinor, and they still
guarded the ancient roads leading into and out of the
island city-state. Slaves hauled foodstuffs to waiting
baskets hanging from giant-hair ropes, loading up
their bounty and withdrawing only to find the baskets emptied and waiting once more the next time
they checked. But no proclamations came from the
sorcerer-king, and few templars emerged to enforce
his will.
And then, the stone doors opened and a bridge
lowered. A single figure strode out from the city to
cross the causeway and assert the sorcerer-king’s
will once more. Messengers to distant Kurn invited
the merchants from House Azeth to bring those
goods the city demanded in exchange for gold and
silver, and thus Eldaarich stepped into the world
once more, blinking and terrified by the changes all
around it.
Eldaarich’s conditions and character stem from
its sorcerer-king’s madness. Never a lucid monarch, Daskinor displayed uncertainty in his early reign, and
he was given to strange, unexplainable delusions. He
saw conspiracies in every face and daggers in every
shadow. He knew enemies loomed to all sides, and so
every decision he made about his fledgling city-state
served to bolster its defenses. He raised a powerful
army and constructed walls and fortifications so
tall and thick that even the Dragon of Tyr would be
daunted. War machines stood atop the battlements,
ready to rain pitch, stones, and spears on the phantom enemies Daskinor knew would come across the
horizon.
Not content when those defenses were established,
the sorcerer-king ordered new fortifications built
on the surrounding islands, and he linked them by
bridges that would collapse or retract to protect the
city in case of invasion. Daskinor also fortified key
access points to ensure that any enemies would first
need to besiege the smaller outposts before crashing
against the city’s ramparts. Fort Holz garrisoned an
entire legion on a small island to the northeast, and
South Guard blocked access to the city’s bridges while
also managing the extensive fields that produce the
crops needed to feed the city. The third and newest
outpost, Silt Side, serves as the only trading post permitted near the city-state.
The city-state’s shift to open trade with Kurn has not
changed conditions in the city. No one enters Eldaarich
and no one leaves, aside from Daskinor’s templars. It
has been seven centuries since a foreigner walked the
city streets.
The truth is that Eldaarich is a rotting city. When its
doors were sealed, residents had to survive on only
those resources present in the city. Aside from food
brought over the walls, almost nothing has made its
way inside. Buildings show their great age, disease
haunts the city streets, madness is widespread, and
the people are deranged, malnourished, and fraught
with hideous mutations arising from generations of
inbreeding.
The cobbled streets twist and wind between the
crumbling buildings. When structures collapsed, new
buildings were erected atop the same foundations,
using salvaged brick and timber as building material.
The result is a city of leaning, sagging towers made of
cracked, mismatched stone and brick. Some buildings lean against each other to form shadowy alleys
underneath, while others have collapsed altogether
under the great weight above. No rubble lingers long,
because the people salvage what they can to repair
structures and raise their towers ever higher.
Eldaarich once had distinct quarters and districts divided by trade and social class. The steep
walls that separated them fell long ago, and the city’s
inhabitants incorporated their stones into the tangled
structures that compose the city proper. The upper,
more perilous chambers house the nobility, who live
high enough above the streets that they escape the
city’s appalling stench. Tradespeople and artisans
claim the middle levels. The destitute, the enslaved,
and the most wretched occupy the lowest levels amid
the filth and squalor dropped from above them.
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