Mockensteinn
The ancient city of Mockensteinn was one of the ancient refuges against the Cursed Storms built by Ustav and other ancient heroes. Like the other sanctuaries, Mockensteinn bloomed into a city when the Storms ended. It transformed into a city-state and kingdom that controlled much of what is now Northern Graefsher.
Mockensteinn was a realm once known for its focus on merit and specialized skill. Legends say that the city celebrated, even worshipped, those who won great competitions and proved their superiority in their craft to all the realm. Semi-legendary history says that Yeffra Musechosen, a powerful sorcerer from the chaos wastes who gained favor from the Lunar God Hiku the Muse, proved her magical competency in one of Mockensteinn's great contests. Yeffra requested a prince's hand in marriage as her victory prize and married one of the Monarch of Mockensteinn's sons. Yeffra, ever the trickster, positioned her new husband to inherit the throne while she fought to claim the throne of nearby Geinsteinn for herself. By uniting Mockensteinn and Geinsteinn, Yeffra and her husband began a power bloc that evolved into the First Empire of Andrig.
From 444 to 519, Mockensteinn remained an important city in the Empire of Andrig, even if Geinsteinn soon overshadowed it. When the Kivish Horde invaded during the First Kivish Scouring in 519 ME, Geinsteinn rallied to fight to the death. Mockensteinn's leader, meanwhile, soon recognized that the Kivish Horde could not be defeated and surrendered the city to the Horde. Many of its residents were enslaved, but the city was not exterminated and the Mockensteinn elites found an insulated position in the new regime. Many in the city resented this choice. When the Kivish Horde finally lost inertia and began to lose battles in the 560s ME, the people of Mockensteinn prepared for revolution. In 564 ME, following a brutal Kivish defeat in the South, the people of Mockensteinn rose up and slaughtered their Kivish masters. The Kivish Horde responded with incredibly violence and brutally destroyed the city the same year. This is considered the start of the Second Kivish Scouring.
Mockensteinn's ruins were tainted from the brutal extermination and the horrific tortures of the rebel leaders (which involved Ederstone, turning their suffering into literal physical poisons and monsters). Over the centuries, that old corruption has faded in a way that the Geinsteinn Ruins have not. Now, the ruins of Mockensteinn lay forgotten and buried under a Graefsher village. Bits of ancient ruins, aqueducts and fragments of once-great walls, litter the landscape. Signs of the ancient corruption linger in bits of old poison bramble, but the land and people have mostly forgotten. Only the ancient buried crypts, which preserve the old ghosts and spiritual venom, remember. And the peasants who farm the land know better than to disturb ancient cairns and crypts. One day, maybe one day soon, the last traces of the old tragedy will wash out entirely. Maybe people will make something beautiful there. One must hope they do.
RUINED SETTLEMENT
574 ME
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