#museum label

Slowly melting one hundred miles North of the Ruins of Tyralinthian, there has scarcely survived the gaunt remainder of a reinforced castle cut from primeval frost. In the Forgotten Times, it was a colossal fumarolic chimney in the very center of the Frozen South. Transformed by humanity thousands of years ago into a divine idol, this site of antiquity is internally carved out at its base to house medium-sized armies and externally fashioned to honor the harrowing faces of the flesh giants who ruled Atma’Zae for ten millennia. In an Age that came long before, the gryphons, the dragons of the sea and primates from the Northeast all worshipped the mighty and supposedly immortal ogres. Each race was eager to demonstrate fealty and ingenuity with their signature innovations, crafting and gathering styles. The Ancient Gods accepted enormous offerings of collected and carefully netted natural resources and food from the gryphons. The sea drakes presented powerful gifts of a far more ritualistic and magickal nature to their ten-millennia campaign to the North. But the ogres were most impressed with men and women of the Realm, and secretly feared them, for their natural talents in synthesizing raw materials and magic into systems and structures that were far more advanced than anything the mighty but simple-minded ogres could possibly conjure in their wildest and most dream-like machinations. Having only taken minor structural damage from recent distant seismic activity and sitting in the middle of a newly marginally toxified atmosphere, this already dilapidated construct was designed to stand strong by a species that was considered a simple and disposable ape throughout the previous Ages. Frequently retrofitted for multifarious uses by both the flesh giants and humanity over the course of eleven-thousand years, this site has served as a place of gaining divine favour, a military outpost for small and middle-sized armies of crusading ogrish soldiers, a research laboratory for a famous plague doctor, and most recently a mere landmark and iconic tourist attraction. In these, the Days of Ash, it has become the final residence for a hermitic order of high mages who have lost their ancestral home to the Nemesis.

Once known as Ugg-So-Gnixx, ogrish for The-Face-In-The-Southern-Frosts, crusader ogres passed over and ever northward through this harsh, bitter cold region, once noted geographically for its many tall fumaroles spitting out steam and gases directly from the Core of the World. While the ogres’ numbers diminished rapidly for their holy war with a species of competing giants, they became keenly aware of the existence of another smaller-statured species in the Far Northeast. Unlike the gryphons and naga of the World, this species of ascended and intelligent monkeys could not fly or breathe underwater, but possessed remarkably well-honed survival skills, versatile communication abilities and imaginative methods for crafting weapons and edifices from nothing more than hacked wood and rough stones. Around twelve thousand years ago, originally emerging from the Sapien Rainforest along the eastern continental coastline, these apes had come out from dense and wet tree lands to build their first settlement by the Eastern Sea, which had no name, and was landmarked by three emergent pyramids as an extension of their worship and reverence to the three closest stars: Xear, Nuc, and Qo. The flesh giants, although initially ambivalent toward the intelligent apes, quickly recognized this genus as a potential threat to their continent-wide reign. The ogres approached the apes with an offer; supplant sun worship for ogre worship and serve them in their war efforts against their eight-legged arch nemesis or be instantly annihilated. Under duress, 30,000 of these monkeys were uprooted from their new home and forced to travel over a thousand miles by foot to the Frozen South to prove their endurance and ability. The Gods instructed the apes to create a symbol in the frost that reflected the formidable face of their new deities. Choosing the region’s tallest natural ice tower as a construction site, humans quickly fashioned pickaxes and shovels to hallow out complex lower and upper tunnels and windows. Like worker ants, the monkeys from the Northeast reshaped its outer icy turret into something that would hopefully make the flesh giants appear aesthetically dignified. For the ogres were ugly, and nothing more than their slave masters. Using improvisational methods of formation and reinforcement, this tower would have long ago melted away if not properly internally supported by whole tree trunks, wood pulp and sawdust. Within months of its construction, the ogres became impressed with the pragmatic, quickly mobilized and artistic efforts of the apes. And the apes were kept alive allowed, for now, to serve.

Renamed Pschivraxx after the fifth God-King and the World’s most prominent plague doctor, this Great Scientist used this deeply secluded and distant tower to analyze and research unconventional alchemic methods to ward off the Second Contagion that ravaged the population of Atma’Zae approximately 400 yesteryears ago. While nearly one-third of humanity had been wiped out by this endemic disease, which turned veins black and caused one side of the neck to swell until asphyxiation, the God of the Infected invented sophisticated new herbal formulations in this location, combining common herbal ingredients and heavy metals broken down into powders such as magnesium and calcium to create a humble remedy. Known as the Pansy Pill, it was a mineral rich, swallowable and easy-to-mass-produce white tablet derived from this region’s own vitamin-rich arctic pansy flowers to ward and kill off the deadly bacteria that caused the great infection. Pschivraxx visited each of the major continental cities and townships of Atma’Zae and recommended elementary sanitation methods to purge build ups of the Second Contagion in local waterways, sewers and alleyways. Famously, Pschivraxx would goad and yell at town mayors and regional governors in front of their own citizens to get their hands dirty and personally help with the removal of trash, rat nests, and corpse-infested piles of junk from creeks and narrow passageways so that fresh water and foot traffic could safely pass through their townships once again. Now populated by around 150 surviving high mages from Tyralinthian, the highest-ranking wizards and sorcerers of The Triangle were called to this site by an unknown force only to discover Pschivraxx’s library, crafting facilities, study chambers, and laboratories in slightly scathed but serviceably working condition. This is now the last College of the Magi, and its few remaining conjurers work tirelessly to find the source of and solution to the Unlearning, which still remains a mystery after four decades of continent-wide decay.

Simlish Museum Wall Label

by The Jim07

Upon the Eastern Sea of Atma’Zae, and underneath seemingly permanent and highly acidic rainwater produced by a nearby volcanic plume, a new monument recently arose from the depths of the Deep Dark. Unmistakably constructed by the horned dragons from far beneath the waves, this single tower is isolated from the mainland and an alien sight for those who have neglected ancient history. For in the times before men and women worshipped themselves as Gods, similar oceanic spires once dotted world maps in droves and were a symbol of cooperation between humanity and a forgotten species of lizardfish that helped to overthrow the World’s first recorded tyrant. Nearly unapproachable for environmental and diplomatic reasonings, similar citadels at Sea were once representations of mutual admiration, respect and an antiquated confederation that gradually became outdated and obsolete. When humans proved themselves to be too selfish, vain and short-sighted for further alliance these towers retracted under the waves of the Four Seas, never to be witnessed again until very recently. In The Almost Forgotten Days evolved apes, gryphons, and magical drakes combined forces and strategies to score a triumphant trilateral victory over a bygone mutual oppressor. In these, the Days of Ash, a structure such as this is a rare reminder of the glory and seaward freedom that humankind experienced once they loosened the mental and physical shackles that had bound their potential for nearly ten thousand years.

Translated to the common tongue, this place is marked as Meturna, meaning ‘the observation deck’ or ‘the lookout tower’ depending largely on nothing more than slightly differing draconic dialectic. The base of this tower at Sea is clearly branded at its base with tribalistic symbols, dots and lines in Skealing; the nearly unpronounceable language of the lizardfish that populate the Deep Dark. Its visible, above-water 40-story summit is very likely the tallest structure in the center of a vast underwater metropolis. Signature to draconic design, its framework is largely made up of oceanic necromass and the remains of gigantic sub-aquatic carcasses. Its foundation appears to resemble the skeletal remnants of a Colossus Whale. Its mast contains the exoskeletal seashell types commonly associated with giant snails and large crabs. Its antennae are likely the whiskers of long-dead Eastern Sea millipedes and crustaceans. Pirate crews who discovered this site have reported movement on its exterior at daytime, and mobile torches along its periphery at nighttime. Maritime pilots always maintain a wide berth when they pass this place by, respecting the territorial boundaries of the naga and their newest pillar. Even brigands fear the consequences of broaching this place, acknowledging a historically significant desire to no longer be associated or directly involved in the self-destructive affairs of intelligent monkeys that once-upon-a-time demonstrated universal intelligence and reason.

In the four decades since the Undoing ravaged a once-prosperous and ever-developing continent, this single location off the Eastern coast has been the subject of constant acidic deposition. Mount Eve, once thought to be an inactive volcano in the Southeast, spits a smothering black ash into the winds and air which culminates over this portion of salt water. This unbreathable combination of volcanic gases, sulfuric smog, tephra fragments and ash has produced an incessant downpour which can corrode metal. This tempest has structurally weakened the entire outer hulls of approaching container vessels and amphibious warfare ships still utilized by pirate guilds. Longterm exposure to this rot at Sea has been shown to turn ships entirely white with accelerated rusting and expose whole crews to asthmatic fits and pneumonia. The naga, however, experience no such difficulties as their architecture and biology are more sophisticated and resilient in design. Likely enchanted with powerful warding magic, this naga tower arose at the very center of a ceaseless storm, signaling a strategic and favourable placement for only a species with scaled skin. As draconic history predates that of humanity’s by at least one decamillennium, the sea drakes have an ancient reputation for being the earliest sentient overcomers of the World and its many natural and unnatural cataclysms. There are no dockable ports at its base, and absolutely no signals indicating a need for imminent communication. No longer friends with the evolved apes that were not 1000 years ago close allies, the mere sight of Meturna offers at least a clear sign of basic interaction and presence in these dark decades.

Far, far east from the Ruins of Qraeto, and just past the peaks of the Eastern Mountains, there has gathered a new settlement inside a large hole in the World. This immense chasm was created by sheer accident and internally reinforced with massive stone columns made of boulders and mineral debris to prevent a further cave in. Its resident pioneers propped the ruins of this place upright and reinforced its structures with large metallic shards held in place by marine epoxies. Before the Nemesis came, the entire eastern portion of Atma’Zae was still largely unclaimed and unsettled, containing only a few small and now abandoned townships dotting the coast and a few fortresses inland which housed less than 100,000 souls. A little more than 10,000 of those souls and their progeny now thrive in this expansive grotto, which was once merely part of an underground highway dug out by giants made of flesh who ruled below before they ruled above. While eastern Atma’Zae was largely considered to be uninhabitable due to its poisonous wildlife, dangerous rainforests and impassable mountainy crags, which were extremely difficult to build upon and survive within, these sprawling and complex underground tunnels had supported sentient life before. Stretching over 900 miles from the Yawning Dens in the Frozen South to the High North, these vast shafts and conduits under the crust of the continent are popularly known as the Netheroads. This was the original home of the Ancient Gods, which was slowly depopulated in favor of a ten-millennia war to dominate the surface. There is a tall tale associated with this site of antiquity, which is at least partially true, and proves that this catacomb was the result of the World’s very first industrial disaster. For above this underworld, the pretender-Gods attempted to build a launching pad for a rocket-powered craft to make a speedy escape from the Realm which they had brought order to.

Once known as Dep-Vvr-Nezt, ogrish for Big-Hole-Above-The-Middle-Nest, this is where the three Ancient Gods gathered ancient blueprints and crude materials to begin the construction of a star rocket just over a millennia ago. While it is unclear exactly why the ogres felt a sudden need to leave the World, it has been understood by researching historians that this nearly extinct species had become bored and impatient after their long-fought ultimate victory over a competing race of eight-legged arachnid giants known as the Palyzexx. The Gods had no natural enemies left to fight, and no preconceived mandate to execute over the perceived lesser races they had enslaved during their campaign. The three remaining flesh giants; Appaxxis, Q’Er and Mer-Totha began to worry that their own reign would eventually be challenged by the smaller but more intelligent species they had subjugated over the epoch of the Almost Forgotten Times. And so, the three remaining ogrish brothers started a new campaign to requisition prehistoric schematics from an island still located South of the most southern continental coastline. It was here they located the Tomes of Foundation, a series of ice and stone writing surfaces supposedly left behind by a race of star-faring beings known only as the Sphere Steppers. The pretender-Gods, after transporting and clumsily translating the Stepper’s language on the mainland, determined some of these tablets to be drafts for the commissioning of a rocket-powered chariot capable of circumnavigating the starry heavens. Eager, but still lacking the aptitude or foresight to complete their new Great Project, the ogre giants quickly decided to build their launching pad somewhere to the East using reinforced concrete and rods of iron. Appaxxis, the eldest and wisest of the ogres, recommended building on the Eastern coastline where the ground was strong, the winds were normally low, and there was clear airspace. But Q’Er and Mer-Totha were anxious and foolish, and chose to start construction 300 miles inland, near the mountains, to save time. Appaxxis emphatically warned his brothers that the ground felt too soft and pointed to the hundreds of small sinkholes in the area. But Q’Er and Mer-Totha did not heed his words and began to stack an unbearable amount of weight on top of a structurally weak and thin deposit of porous limestone and metamorphic rocks.

Now known colloquially as Deepwrest, the survivors of the Undoing made their way desperately down into the crust and mantle of the East to escape the unbreathable, sooty smoulder of Mount Eve. Humanity found the wreckage of an ancient industrial experiment gone wrong and began to build pillars from it to house inside and persist. This subterranean city now glows inside the Netheroads with torches, oil flambeaus and wax candle holders. This grotto can be accessed by way of hundreds of above ground hollows, mines, and even some cellar doors, and until recently was perceived as nothing more than a fictional nonsense to everyone but a handful of antiquarians and excavators. Its new citizens regularly consume cave moss, mushrooms and insects to live on and stockpile an abundance of minerals and gems for the few that have the nerve to travel and trade with their new community in the ground. This fresh colony is barely held together by lime paste, slag and scrap metals to prevent the remains from falling into an underground river below. Before the ogre’s space craft could even be assembled, which would have been made up of a capsule that could detach from a large thruster powered by combustible magick, the Ancient Gods watched as their construction site fell into the World, creating a superdeep chasm roughly one and one-half miles in radius. Their construction materials, their archaic blueprints and their hopes of leaving the Realm crashed on top of their own old underground highway, and into the very Core of the World. When the pretender-Gods looked a mile down into a catastrophe of their own creation, they saw a colorful, mineral rich cavern which sparkled at them, mockingly. Appaxxis chided his brothers for their impatience and stupidity, proclaimed this was a sign that their fall from ultimate power was now inevitable, and began to search for his own method of venturing into the starry heavens by himself.

When the Unlearning came, it first presented itself in the form of tsunamis upon the Southern Sea. Underwater earthquakes and colossal tidal waves gradually claimed the continent’s oldest and most historically significant city, which now rests as peacefully as possible directly off the Southwestern coastline, right along the new edge of the Deep Dark. Unlike Archaenimo and Qraeto, which were burned and shaken to dust respectively, what was once the Pride of the South sank slowly into a glacial abyss over the course of two and one-half months. Its residents were largely comprised of healers, family farmers, academic students, wizards of nobility, and sorcerers in the ancient practice of esoteric artistry. While many survivors of the cataclysm made their way to the North as quickly as possible after the Undoing, a small contingent of master magicians had foreseen what was coming and left several days early to avoid a watery grave. Many conjurers refused to outright abandon their ancestral city during the calamity and spent their final efforts on doomed projects before drowning within continuous flash flood and tidal currents. Some chose to sink with the city as it slipped into the icy Sea, rooted by their very bloodlines into the weave of its millennia-old historical tapestry. With no plans for an emergency evacuation in place, and no structures built for protection against unexpected coastal flooding that has so far lasted for four decades, this place was ill-fated from its very foundation, and every year sinks 5 feet lower into the abyss. Soon, its remains will likely be claimed by the dragons that rule the Deep Dark. These scaled, horned creatures were once a powerful ally against Q’Er, the Realm’s first tyrant and one of the three Ancient Gods. But much like the gryphons, the naga cut off all forms of communication with humanity centuries ago, alienated and disgusted by their narcissism and megalomania. The naga that we chose to forget were also the first to teach the rest of the World how to safely and properly utilize magic.

Once known as Tyralinthian, this metropolis was incidentally established by the second God-Queen and the most naturally gifted wizard who has ever existed, Eoni, the Goddess of Enchantment. Eoni was a skillful pythoness who was taken on as the first and only human pupil by the Circle of the Sea Dragons in the early Enlightened Age. Eoni taught herself as a child how to harness simple, illusionary-based magic using small uncut gemstones, focus and energetic intent. Impressed with her extraordinary skills and thirst for knowledge, the dragons taught Eoni how to cast potent spells, and how to use her supernatural gifts responsibly on the land, as the naga did so in the Sea. As Eoni grew to maturity and continued her education in the schools of secrets and symbolism, provided by an eager school of lizardfish, she developed The Laws of the Triangle for her own apprentices to follow. Magic could be dangerous, addictive and abused in the wrong hands, and Eoni sought to invent three simple rules to follow for ethical purposes: I) Strict limitations over limitless power II) The acquisition and preservation of written magical knowledge for the purposes of higher learning III) The use of destructive magic, otherwise known as magick, only to defend the Realm. As her order grew, a settlement arose around her made of pykrete and stones. Its new citizens became devoted to Eoni’s teachings which were practical, just and good. Eoni perished at 152 years old, the longest surviving mortal-God, and she claimed that her constant study of the highest mysteries was what had had kept her going on so long. Near the end of her lifetime, Eoni became terrified at the prospect of death. She became so frightened by her own mortality that even her personal assistants reported that she was always reading this or that ancient text to research a cure for death itself.

The Ruins of Tyralinthian now lies on the foot of the continental shallows, once completely powered by the Eye of the Cosmos, a powerful crystal affixed to the Voltaic Spire, to permanently ameliorate regional power needs for the foreseeable future. This city once featured a breathtakingly exquisite governmental district at its center, which contained its most monumental and significant constructions. The Tower of Eoni, the Bard’s Bazaar, the Clockwork Shrine and the Citadel of The Triangle are likely still standing strong, submerged and torn apart by underwater currents they may be. Tyralinthian possessed the largest radius of urban sprawl in terms of sheer mileage, taking on a population of nearly one-half million souls not by way of building upward, but by expanding its infrastructure 75 miles to the north, east and west. Its residents used to enjoy a cold and slow southern lifestyle which emphasized agriculture, religion and sacred magical traditions. Most of the mages of The Triangle were direct descendants of Eoni, who were insular and possessed the unique gift of collective clairvoyance. The College of the Triangle had taught hundreds the ways of pragmatic magical applications throughout the Enlightened Age, and this place once represented the absolute apex of enchanted innovations in the World. While the naga who taught Eoni have long ago retreated into the deepest blues and blacks of the Seas, enjoying their place in history as a mere mythology to be dismissed as tall tales, they have likely sent scouts to discover this sunken place and realized that something has gone horribly wrong above.

Slouching infernally in a once-rivered valley just Northeast of Mount Eden, scraps of what was the most populated and technologically advanced city in the Realm persist in a lake of fire and perpetual lava flow. Where once stood nearly 80,000 blocks of densely packed skyscrapers, powered by geothermal steam and the energetic focus of helix-shaped plasma infused crystals, there is now only a river of hot red igneous rock and twisted molten metal. At the industrial North’s technomic peak, and in the centuries before The Undoing, men of the Realm dreamed of designing machines which looked like them, which could build smaller machines, which could in turn build tiny machines that may perhaps build extremely small machines that would quickly build very large machines that might compete with the staggering and monumental magickal innovations of the South. Originally settled by nomadic engineers, ingenious local crafts folk, and those who had stolen blueprints from the Ancient Gods themselves, settlers gathered ideas and resources to build a new metropolis made up of stone, cement, wires, steel and polymers that would stand for just over two hundred years before its sudden and violent ending. Now riling in a pool of molten rock and its own debris, this city is completely uninhabitable, and its only remaining citizens have been frozen into position, encased in layer upon layer of volcanic ash for nearly four decades.

Once known as Archaenimo, this was a metropolitan center of gadgets and industrial light which arose from the horizon of a slowly healing valley. The region’s previous volcanic eruption had occurred nine millennia previous. Thought to be nothing more than a mineral-rich province at the foot of an inactive volcano, men of the Realm rapidly formed guilds and masonic orders on its increasingly mechanized and rapidly developing roads. This was a Northern metropolitan center that was indirectly founded by the Realm’s sixth God-King, Rixves, who fell in love at first glance at the sight of a wide and beautiful vale unscathed by intervention. Rixves was the God of the Highways, who attempted and was successful in economically uniting the Realm by constructing the first freeways to accommodate traffic and regular commercial lanes to connect old and new continental cities. Upon his many travels, Rixves recognized this as a region flush with wood, ancient minerals and industrial potentiality. It was a vast, flat expanse in the middle of a chain of mountains with a singular but lengthy river, The Choral Rill, flowing through it. The Great Trader built his tower and home here, now known as the Column of Rixves, whose massive, spired basement would serve as the centrifuge of a continent-connecting North-South elevated highway a mere hundred years after his passing. As ore of all varieties were mined from crags and highlands nearby, common citizens would produce technological breakthroughs and wonderous innovations every week derived from nothing more than some copper, iron, enriched glass and a power source. Within its first hundred years of existence, this became a metropolitan hub defined by smokestacks and steam power. In its next hundred years, modernizations in food harvesting, cutting edge medical equipment, and life extension technologies made this busy city the undisputed Pride of the North in terms of sophistication, industrial advancement and high-technology infrastructure.

The Ruins of Archaenimo is now progressively melting in the Tears of Mount Eden’s never-ending bleeding inferno. Its streets, once bustling with productive and bright citizens, is now drowning inside a soup of superheated slag and fragments of an age that passed abruptly, unexpectedly and horrifically. What was once the most highly developed municipality on the continent was instantly incinerated through lack of foresight and poor planning. The Last God-King, Zyphrus, was reportedly present in the city during the cataclysmic events of the Undoing. When Mount Eden erupted it sent an explosive combination of toxic gases and a heavy rainfall consisting of glass and massive rocks onto the cityscape. Archaenimo was also struck with an estimated 5.5 billion gallons of magma, and the lava flow from Mount Eden has been slower but steady the decades since. Although his death was not directly witnessed or officially recorded, his nearly four-decade silence makes him one of the first victims of the Nemesis, and the Last God-King. It is rumored that, in his final days and right before the Catastrophe, Zyphrus was seeking to assist in the creation of a new power source for the Realm. But before the groundwork could be laid for a Great Project that would finally unite the North and South in peace, the Unlearning came to teach those that dreamed of utopian machines that their ends would be burned and swiftly ended by calamity in the overall histories of Atma’Zae.

Dangling off the permanent low tide of the southwestern sea, far Northwest from the Ruins of Tyralinthian there is a 550-year-old shoreside beacon. It is a 70-story tall glass, steel and silver tower recently and rapidly populated by tens of thousands of survivors from both the land and ocean. These are the mechanical and magickal remains of what was the only hydroelectric sea wall dam of Atma’Zae. This place once reliably powered approximately 55% of the western continent by way of underground cables which extended High North and into the icy heart of the Frozen South. This was a site of raw power production, capturing the energetic properties of strong over-and-underwater currents of the Storming West to generate an energy capacity solution for, at the time, a heavily expanding population. Although its infrastructure was nearly totally decimated by underwater earthquakes and tsunamis, and the northern portion of the dam is now laying entirely on the seabed, the wretches of the Frozen South made their way up the coast to escape drowned horrors and founded here a new settlement. This busy coastal outpost and naval colony is now the most active port in the known World, operating as a primary distribution center for erratic mass-produced raw materials and what remains of oceanic business endeavors of all varieties in the Days of Ash. Gambling, whoring and trafficking of both mind-altering illicit substances and slaves are its biggest current commercial attractions. This is one of the only locations in the Realm that has the technical-magical resources and sheer workforce to mass-manufacture rare and important goods capable of warding off the total environmental rot of the Undoing. Although the vast majority of its electrical sub-stations and main tower are too broken to create its own power anymore, the focal tower has recently been affixed with a potent artifact from the sunken and doomed city that was Tyralinthian; The Eye of the Cosmos, a magickal gem of inner chaos and outer balance designed to deal with the electrical yield of a city roughly eighteen times its current output.

Once known as the Orcinus Great Dam, frantic and frostbitten stayers from the melting South came to the wide mouth of the Choral Rill to hunt whales for food and lamp oil. When stragglers came to the Orcani Shallows and saw a metal tower left shaken and powerless on the coast, they recognized opportunity and quickly mobilized to serve a burgeoning population in the ruined and fractured Frozen South. Whaling, crabbing and fishing was their remaining long term viable food source in the region and as a pirate’s luck would have it, marine activity was in abundance after the Nemesis. The fat of the sea would become some of its most trafficked original resources. By land, survivors had to quickly construct narrow bridges made of ash wood and basalt to traverse the remaining crest of the dam, which is now known as the Freebridge District. The continental Navy once boasting 1000 total boats including longships, troop transports and supply ships had been cut in half since the four decades which passed since the Nemesis. Still a formidable force, captains desperate to make landfall would begin rumoring about a translucent tower in the Southwest and sail thousands of nautical miles here to congregate and plan for what little collective future they had left. Naval officers of high esteem agreed to abandon their posts, and the once-mighty Navy of Atma’Zae became a confederation of loosely organized pirates with small, loyal crews and completely selfish interests. With no official military at sea, a once proudly serving and highly trained marine army became nothing more than smugglers and scavengers picking at the corpses of what remained of nearby high civilizations. When the seas became lawless so did the ethics of the occupying continental Navy. Originally populated by surviving hedge mages and tradesfolk from the highway, the military and economic might of the Pirate Guilds became the organizing purpose of this region. Anyone from rich investors to lowlifes can find a life at sea here. As long as the bribes keep coming, the productivity keeps going, as there are trades and ample work for all that seek it. Guilds manufacture large panes of magically infused glass at the bottom portion of the focal tower, and distribute it through contacts North, West and in between.

Widely regarded as Orcaspiere, this tower of marine power and raw energy industrially blends into a heavily contaminated and multihued coastal horizon and has many names across the Ashes. This large settlement is known well by reputation across the World and has different names in different regions including the Chameleon Tower, the Unseen Keep, and the Glass Dam. Rummagers of the weather-beaten and eroded southwestern region pulled together resources and materials, some of them magical in nature, to cobble together a new community made of steel, silver and outwardly reinforced with its own flat sheets of thick and tempered industrial-grade laminated glass. The most precious artifact discovered from its commissioned oceanic surveys was the Eye of the Cosmos, found loosened from its facet deep below the Southern Sea. Some say the gem was freed by way of the Catastrophe, some say by way of the creatures of the Deepest Darks who humanity had long forgotten and largely regarded as mere mythological gobbledygook. When the Nemesis began, it first arrived in the form of earthquakes under the Southern Sea, causing sudden flash floods and tidal waves that sank a magically charged metropolis asunder. The Eye of the Cosmos, disconnected from its towered facet for three decades, floated atop the icy waters of the Southern Sea until it was scooped up inside a whaling net. Carefully designed and cut to store the concentrated and harvested energies of immediately neighboring stars, this brilliant and massive orange sapphire was twice cleansed with moon water and charged by the very solar flares of the three nearest stars: Xear, Nuc and Qo. When high profile magicians and pirates of Orcaspiere realized the raw power source they had accidentally skimmed from the skin of the sea, they had their hedge mages design an internally reinforced intake tower made of silver for super conductivity. They utilized the manpower of 10000 workers to build massive prongs made of copper wire and brass. The Pirate Coalition brought the stored energy inside The Eye back to roaring life with an earth burial, a third cleansing in moon water, and a simple flame cantrip. This thriving harbor is retrofitted for survival in the harshest of freezing and toxified coastal conditions. Immediately local waterways must be de-iced daily in every direction for miles to make the port approachable for travelers by the tranquil low tide. The new southwestern city, which houses and otherwise supports nearly 35,000 lives, relies on slave labor and large capital investments from wealthy pirates. The dam’s population celebrates being alive, especially at night, with the multicultural foods, colors and delights of a dead nation of wizards and technocrats.