Ansaran Sul

Thick in the jungle on the southern end of Lo Dokh is the remains of the throne of one of the first great dominions known to the world, the Empire of the Sea. Nestled in the city of Anlo Saran, which had been built specifically to house it, Ansaran Sul—the Palace of the Sea—still retains some fragment of its former splendor, if one can see past the giant colony spiders, the lurking flora, and of course its current ruinous state. Though cracked and faded, the paint of its murals still depicts their victories in war, the faces and forms of their rulers, and an interpretation of the Heart Unceasing.

— from To Rule The Waves: The Dokhar Diaspora, by Andoloros Bag Dolmoron

Purpose / Function

In its day, the Ansaran Sul was the formal meeting place of the Anmenghar, the council of seven which led the Empire of the Sea. It was its administrative center, a storehouse of records, and a symbol of the Empire's wealth and splendor.

Architecture

Before its ruination, the Ansaran Sul was a very large building, built from materials extorted from the Empire of the Sea's many tributaries. Walls and pillars of marble hold up floors made from expensive hardwoods, and everything was decorated in rugs of colony gossamer, precious metals, and fabulous jewels. Beneath the ground, behind hidden entrances, is the chamber where the Anmenghar met aroud the perfectly circular pool of seawater, lined with sliver.
Most of that opulence still remains. The upper floors have collapsed in places, rent by time and the creeping jungle, and some has been scattered or displaced by wildlife, but the inhospitable nature of the modern Lo Dokh has warded of the majority of looters, and killed most of the remainder.

History

When the Empire of the Sea was first ascendant, the Anmenghar had no set meeting place, gathering instead in the palaces of its members on a rotating schedule. It did not take long for them to discover their own dissatisfaction with this arrangement. It was thus resolved that a meeting place be chosen for permanent use. As it would give undue prestige for this location to be built in one of the city's ruled by any of the Menghar, a site far from any of them, on the southern coast, was chosen. The construction was long, and a settlement sprang up around it—anlo saran—to accommodate first the construction crews, and then the palace staff.
Ansaran Sul was the place where decisions were made to direct the future of the Empire of the Sea, but the building itself remained relatively unchanged over the years. The only significant event which happened to the structure itself was when it was abandoned, alongside the rest of the entire island, when Lo Dokh was overrun by flora and fauna under the direction of the Spirit of the Green Khoron Lodovar, a lieutenant of the Enthroned Shadow. There have been a handful of expeditions over the years to find artefacts of historical, cultural, and/or religious importance, but few have been successful.

RUINED STRUCTURE
359

Type

Palace