Walstein
Walstein, once a large city within the Bürach Empire’s northwest, was razed during the Gods’ End. Norden mages burned it to ashes in Ulmyr’s name. The event left a permanent scar on the landscape and a deep cultural wound for which the folk of Abendland have never forgiven their northern kin. The city’s fate helps justify the strict regulation of magic.
Today, Walstein is a giant cemetery, a silent labyrinth of fire-blackened buildings and empty windows, grown with moss and haunted by ghost stories. Monstrous horrors lurk within the ashen ruins. These twisted aberrations skulk into the surrounding countryside, leading to the terrible rumor that Walstein’s destruction was the first visitation of the Great Beast.
The monsters that emerge from Walstein make the region a gruesome but lucrative hunting ground for mercenaries and monster hunters. Such guilds occasionally use the old buildings as bastions. Walstein also attracts treasure hunters looking to plunder its forgotten secrets.
Vagrants and criminals with nowhere else to go camp inside the city to shelter from the wilderness and from the soldiers stationed outside the ruins. Even a makeshift market has been established by travelling merchants and swindlers, who trade in rumors, equipment, and treasures plundered from Walstein’s dark corners.
Soldiers of the Imperial army are also garrisoned at Walstein. Recruits are sent to perform training exercises and help slay the monsters that emerge from the ruins. Though the soldiers’ presence deters the city from festering into a haven for brigands, their numbers are too few to enforce the Emperor’s laws effectively.
Academics of the prestigious Erlefurt colleges are occasionally seen practicing their mage-craft in Walstein’s ruins— the very city their forebears destroyed. The mages’ interest in the city is known only to themselves. Yet they appear to be searching.
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