The Scar

Art Credit Denis Loebner, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/58WKZA

History

The Scar is Spirix's most important, and most mysterious location. It resides at the very heart of the desert, though modern maps may bias toward Des'dorakha, it is the true center of the sand. Before histories were written and tribes were named, before the sand spread, there was but a single building that existed between the mountains and the wheatlands. It was named Aden, after the hermit who received divine inspiration from Thassa and constructed it himself. The building was the greatest shrine in all the lands, made of limestone and whale bones, it stood taller than the highest point of The Green Line. Legends say the bones at the very summit of the shrine were Aden’s own. It had many purposes, serving as a port for sailors before the seas became restless, and a point of pilgrimage for holy men from every corner of the ancient world. The shrine was also home to the most powerful clerics in all of Eniea, a group of scholars who were unchallenged in might and divine favor.
The power of this seat was vast, but not everlasting. Doomed by the disrespectful few who traveled through it, they began to draw the ire of their prime god, Thassa. It is often repeated that she redrew the Map of the Seas, taking the flow of water that went through ancient Spirix and diverting it along the coasts in her anger. What is often forgotten is that she worked even more laboriously and spitefully to remove the water that was already here. As the god of the seas, her very body was the ocean, and it needed to be forever altered to withdraw the rest of the sea. She took her mystical bident, her very own weapon, and carved a gash across her stomach, cutting an unhealing wound into the seafloor itself. The center of that cut was the almighty shrine. Perhaps its remains and ruin can be found deep beneath the earth in an underground sea.
None know how deep the Scar truly goes into the earth, and all who have braved into its recesses have been taken by it, swallowed into the dark, and sent to the ancient sea that Thassa jealously hoards. As long as tribes have existed in Spirix, tales of woe and undoing have surrounded the Scar, and all have been warned to stay away from the areas that surround it. It is a consuming wound, a place of deep anger that has been left to fester since time immemorial. The Scar is cursed, an omen to remind all who still live in Spirix to obey the tenets of their faith and to respect the traditions of their gods.

Climate

The Scar is a howling canyon, a place where the winds often dip deep down before being bellowed back out. There are stories of an elemental spirit of the air that was once worshiped by sailors who traveled from afar to visit the shrine that once sat in the Scar's place. That spirit was called Dika'a, a lesser creature of trade winds who used her winds to guide boats from all over the world. Now her lonely breezes circle the site of the only shrine that she ever called home, without any sailors to guide.
Because of her wailing winds, the areas around the Scar are cool at all times during the day, and freezing during the night. Many have been led astray in their search for more hospitable climates while traveling across the desert. Dika'a, now desperately in need of the faithful and the foolish alike, entices these would be sailors to her call, captures them, and never lets them go.

This entry is narrated by Sishara Viyen.

RUINED SETTLEMENT
When the waters receded

Founding Date

Many thousands of years ago, before histories were recorded

Location under

Spirix, the Glowing Sands