Rio Seco Established

The founding families of Rio Seco, including the Winifreds, set down roots in the rocky desert valley scattered with stone ruins.

During the Age of Expansion, families set out from all along the eastern coast of Veraqez, from all five Nations, and made their way into the unsettled regions to the west of the Vorok Mountains and into the southern deserts. Most of these settlers were poor families without land or means of their own and were forced off the barren east coast in hopes of finding greener pastures. Often these settlers left with little more than they could carry on their backs or in the small carts and sleds they drug behind them.

A few of these families, believing a young priest who claimed he was receiving visions from the Five Saints, followed him into barren tracts believing he could lead them to unknown oases in the red stone deserts of the Scarlet Wastes. Tragically, the priest was touched and led them astray. Soon the settlers were wandering aimlessly without water and low on food. Just when hope had deserted them and the priest had wandered into the wastes following his visions, the settlers came upon a ruin built into the walls of a red stone canyon with a well which still tapped into an underground stream. Taking this discovery as a sign, the settlers decided to claim the canyon as their own and set about exploring the ruin...

What the settlers found in the ruin remains unknown to this day. Old journals say that about a dozen men and women went into the ruins. They were gone for more than a week, their families fearing that something terrible had befallen them. But all the explorers came back after about ten days. Some had white hair or had gone blind. More than one was struck catatonic and would never recover. But all came back.

Those who weren't maimed or driven mad by their experience were taken by a fervor for innovation not seen before by those who knew them. They set about drilling more wells and building aquifers, constructing a system of aqueducts to support a series of hanging gardens planted along the walls of the canyon. None of these explorers had any experience with large scale construction or engineering of any kind; most were simple farmers before setting out to find new homes for their families. But most curiously, they had the ruins buried and filled in, covered over with dirt and stone displaced by their civil works projects and forbade anyone from entering them ever again.

Within a years time, the village of Rio Seco was thriving, inviting any settlers who wanted to join the community to call it "home". Red brick walls were being laid to protect the fledgling community from roving bands of Sreksians, stalking sand drakes, and enormous black scorpions that hunted wild camels and livestock on the Scarlet Wastes.

Soon after this, the mines of Reyo Seco would open and, after that, the foundries. Within five years time, the community of Rio Seco would be one of the greatest centers of industry in all of Veraqez, all thanks to the innovations of its founding mothers and fathers who went into the ruins beneath the city...