With one final kingdom to explore fully for the first time, it's one with many mysteries, including one of the biggest mysteries of all time. Maybe I will uncover what really did happen to Santua ol'Claira — excerpt from the closing paragraph to The Adventures of Hajar Stoutsong Vol 14: The Quitapha Dynasty
Overview
Santua ol'Claira translates directly from the Old Tongue to 'Sanctuary of the Glade', but it's believed the correct context is 'The Sanctuary in the Glade'. Either way, the Sanctuary no longer exists and no one knows what happened to it. At some point in the latter years of the Cataclysm Wars it simply just ceased to exist.
Origin
Santua ol'Claira was first formed not too long after the first settlers landed on the continent of Suriima. It was built in a clearing in the jungles of Northern Suriima, around five days ride south-east of the initial landing town of Ellaluna, which is now the capital city of The Couvalon Kingdom. Unlike other sanctuaries in the region, Santua ol'Claira was not dedicated to a particular way of monastic life. However, parallels could be drawn between the lifestyles of druidic settlements like
Foracor in Aldenia and how the people of Santua ol'Claira lived. There seemed to be a heavy focus on living
with the land as opposed to
off the land. Foracor, however, is a heavily elven town. Whilst elves formed a reasonable proportion of the early settlers, they were by no means the predominant species.
History & Disappearance
By their very nature, Santua ol'Claira was barely involved in major conflicts, even typically avoiding getting caught up in any of the regime changes of Northern Suriima, of which there have been several in the millennia since the beginning of the Age of Discovery.
It is a great irony and tragedy then that the one time the sanctuary is affected by war, it is seemingly wiped out entirely. In 2BCE (the penultimate year of the Cataclysm War), the vicious green dragon, Emirdon, which had been plaguing the continent for years at that stage swept through the region where Santua ol'Claira was located. When people went to see how badly the sanctuary had been affected by the dragon's wrath, they found nothing but the acid burns in the earth where the sanctuary had once been. There was not a single structure, intact or otherwise, remaining in the glade.
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