The City of Spires

One of the grandest cities in the known world. The City of Spires was located at the crux of where the collective United Kingdoms and the loose Alliance of Borderland states met. As such, it was the one space generally avoided (at least, openly) by both sides during the war. Instead, the Independent City State would spend most of the war as neutral territory - optimistically as a place where both sides could ultimately negotiate for peace and compromise in their conflict. Cynically, it was mostly a place where they could play both sides off of each other and profit from the general ongoing conflict.
Under the deceptively calm surface, both sides in the war were locked in a struggle to increase their influence in the city, without playing their hand to their opposition and triggering full scale battle within it's walls. It was this "hidden war" that resulted in an unlicensed alchemical laboratory experimenting with the newly discovered Victaline Ore in an attempt to create a "super weapon" capable of winning the war. The laboratories goal was to sell the finished device to the highest bidder...In reality, it brought death and chaos to the world in a single night.
The device, unfortunately, was even more efficient than it's creators realised. A single tiny mistake led to the prototype detonating accidentally. The resulting energy blast expanded over 20 miles beyond the city limits, turning all living matter it encountered - from sentient creatures down to the tiniest fungus to ash, almost instantaneously, leaving every building and man-made structure perfectly intact.
This would have been horrific enough on it's own, but as soldiers from both sides of the conflict moved into the city to search for survivors, they reported strange, terrible things. Shades, spectres and other undead things were set loose in the eerily abandoned structures. When it was discovered that every - living - thing in the city and it's surroundings were dead, the investigators retreated to a safe distance and set up a permanent quarantine that is still active to this day.
Today, adventurers, investigators and scavengers all take an interest in exploring - and looting - the intact, haunted ruins of the city...but few of them emerge again after entering it's high walls and spire towers...

Geography

Situated in a flat plain central to the continent, Spire is now ground zero in a blighted, lifeless grey heath that stretches 20 miles in diameter to the city. Nothing grows or lives within that sphere of influence. The wide banked Feydwere river runs through the centre of the city ruins from the southern mountains to the coast next to Queensmarch itself. The second of the two rivers to run through the main United Kingdoms Capital.
Beyond the dead city's walls existed several smaller villages, farmsteadings and settlements. All of which are now as dead and abandoned as the city itself. Outside of the 20 mile "blast radius" several more settlements, Inns and populated areas were hastily abandoned, as people seem convinced that the blight is spreading, slowly outwards.
Most travellers into the Blight approach from either the southwestern road (from one of the loosely affiliated Borderland countries) or by following the Feydwere from Queensmarch if they are approaching from the UK side.

Fauna & Flora

Nothing now lives within the blast radius of the City and it's surroundings. Which is not to say it lies unnocupied. There are rumours of spectres, ghosts and other, nastier, undead....things...roaming the ruins. Whether these are the spirits of the dead citizens angry for revenge, or creatures that were drawn to the suffering from elsewhere is unknown. All that IS known is that few travellers who enter the gates of the dead city are ever seen again.
Even the mighty Feydwere is affected. Once a plentiful source of fish and River Crabs in Queensmarch, nothing living now reaches the shore within it's waters. It's not uncommon to see the bloated, oversized bodies of fish and other river life washed up on the shore within the capital itself. A sickness that is running through the lower classes in the city is thought to have originated in the drinking of the Feydwere's oily, brackish waters, resulting in a general ban on fishing or using the water of the river.

Natural Resources

None. Although despite attempts by both the United Kingdoms and the Borderland Alliance to curb attempts to loot the city for it's wealth and valuables, there is a burgeoning underground black market in goods recovered from inside it's dead walls. Occasionally this is financed by families of the dead in an attempt to recover heirlooms and items to remind them of their lost relatives, but mostly it is simply to profit from situation.

Alternative Name(s)

Spire, The Ruin, The Dead City, The Blight

Type

Plain