Flame's Providence

Life From The Ashes

(Content of article is completely out-dated. Moved to non-canon while it awaits rework.)
Situated near the heart of the salt wastes of Zemet is a visibly unnatural ring of mountains, known by the locals as the Holy Ridge. Erected in haste more than two thousand years ago as a barricade against a terrible power, they served to shield the small region inside of their boundaries from the devastation wrought by the Great Wasting. The red mist called forth by the Leskeln's chief divinity swept through the rest of Zemet, transforming all it touched to salt and sparing nothing, living or dead. By the time it had dissipated, only the small patch of land nestled safely inside of the Holy Ridge was left unscathed.
Standing intact at the centre of these lands was the former capital of the Ormr and the greatest dwelling place of Arcadia, Varosok Hold. A city chiselled into the side of an active volcano, its ashes kept the land around its base fertile, and allowed for crops to grow there, even in the wake of the dire conditions brought on by the Great Wasting. In the centuries to come after that cataclysm, humans would through a series of strange turns find their way to the Holy Ridge in Zemet, and find at the base of the volcano a place which they could make their home. Thinking that it was the mountain's fire that had saved it from whatever mysterious curse had transformed the rest of the plains into salt, it had now saved them too from what had seemed certain starvation and death. And so, when the time came to pick a name for their settlement, they decided upon one that would honour all the volcano had done for them: Flame's Providence.

Foreign Cultural Conceptions

Flame's Providence is often considered to be the most important city in Pretheya due to its proximity to the purported entrance to the Heaven of Flames in the Shahru religion, and the fact that it is the seat of power for the Alight and the Vestaltir. However, in addition to this, it is often seen as a somewhat mysterious place, owing to its remoteness. It is the only major city in the whole of Zemet, and its location is considered by many to constitute the north-western edge of Pretheya, with maps often putting it on the very edge and leaving the area further west blank.