The Flooding of Istragolis
"Today we demonstrate to the world the strength of our Empire! Today we show that in partnership, there is nothing that humanity and dragons cannot achieve. Never again will any elemental force be a hindrance to our progress!"
~ Emperor Khoras I on the completion of the Sea Wards
Songs of the Empire say that the hero Istrago fled from the destruction of his home and found refuge on an island in the swampy lowlands of a great river. In that swampland he made the first pact with a dragon and began his conquests. As the kingdom grew, land was reclaimed from the low swampy land by way of dams and canals, but in the time of Khoras I, the Empire dreamed of more. Out beyond the river mouth in the bay stood a chain of small islands, and on those islands were constructed mighty towers bound with runes for the governing of the seas, ensuring that storms could never reach the shore, and indeed drawing the sea further back in its bed to provide still more land for use by the swelling population of the Imperial heartland. And for centuries the Sea Wards kept the wrath of the sea from interfering with the Empire's coasts and harbors.
When the Dragon Madness came, the heartland was the first to burn and the least prepared. Many dragons had lairs or in great imperial cities, and dragons were stationed in most imperial fortresses. When they went mad, the vast urban populations and the rich farmland surrounding them had no way to escape. How exactly the Sea Wards fell is lost to time. Were they attacked by dragons in an act of wanton destruction? Perhaps, though some ask how beasts stripped of their intellect could be vengeful. Other claim that with the Empire in ruins, the mages and wrights who maintained the great towers departed and time simply took its toll. By the time they fell, records had become few. Even Mordâd and Emberhold had not begun a detailed recording of events after the fall. Most agree it was within the first generation after the fall that the Wards failed. When that happened the Seas rushed back into their beds, and huge terrible storms arose as if centuries of wrath had been merely pent up and was now released. An earthquake shattered the great Island of Naroxia and a vast wave swallowed Istragolis, the heartland district of the Empire surrounding the capital. Some of the few cities that had endured that long were devoured by sea and storm, and when the wrath of the Elements abated a vast bay remained covering most of the river lowlands in the heart of the Empire. We call this the Bay of Ashes, and any who sail it find not islands, but the pinnacles and spires of loft towers and fortresses of the old Empire, broken and ruined but still visible above the waves. They are now naught but a somber reminder of our hubris, and the disastrous force of our fall.
~ Emperor Khoras I on the completion of the Sea Wards
Songs of the Empire say that the hero Istrago fled from the destruction of his home and found refuge on an island in the swampy lowlands of a great river. In that swampland he made the first pact with a dragon and began his conquests. As the kingdom grew, land was reclaimed from the low swampy land by way of dams and canals, but in the time of Khoras I, the Empire dreamed of more. Out beyond the river mouth in the bay stood a chain of small islands, and on those islands were constructed mighty towers bound with runes for the governing of the seas, ensuring that storms could never reach the shore, and indeed drawing the sea further back in its bed to provide still more land for use by the swelling population of the Imperial heartland. And for centuries the Sea Wards kept the wrath of the sea from interfering with the Empire's coasts and harbors.
When the Dragon Madness came, the heartland was the first to burn and the least prepared. Many dragons had lairs or in great imperial cities, and dragons were stationed in most imperial fortresses. When they went mad, the vast urban populations and the rich farmland surrounding them had no way to escape. How exactly the Sea Wards fell is lost to time. Were they attacked by dragons in an act of wanton destruction? Perhaps, though some ask how beasts stripped of their intellect could be vengeful. Other claim that with the Empire in ruins, the mages and wrights who maintained the great towers departed and time simply took its toll. By the time they fell, records had become few. Even Mordâd and Emberhold had not begun a detailed recording of events after the fall. Most agree it was within the first generation after the fall that the Wards failed. When that happened the Seas rushed back into their beds, and huge terrible storms arose as if centuries of wrath had been merely pent up and was now released. An earthquake shattered the great Island of Naroxia and a vast wave swallowed Istragolis, the heartland district of the Empire surrounding the capital. Some of the few cities that had endured that long were devoured by sea and storm, and when the wrath of the Elements abated a vast bay remained covering most of the river lowlands in the heart of the Empire. We call this the Bay of Ashes, and any who sail it find not islands, but the pinnacles and spires of loft towers and fortresses of the old Empire, broken and ruined but still visible above the waves. They are now naught but a somber reminder of our hubris, and the disastrous force of our fall.
Type
Natural
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