Arkan

"The first Keepers were chosen; now the great city of Arkan and the desert nation of Ara are in ruins. The second generation of Keepers arose after the destruction of Khiloa Woln - my ancestors' home. You claim to be the third generation... so what great civilisation's collapse does your arrival herald?"

- King Elesbaan of Axu

The ancient city-state of Arkan was once a beacon of human creativity. Its adamantine walls defended it against countless threats - but physical barriers were no protection during the Lirustime. The first Keepers' battle with the emerging Dreamer of Ruin tore apart Arkan's seemingly unbreakable walls and shattered its foundations, and through its destruction created the Archipelago which exists today. Even the sea-loving wyverns and emikun have never found its remains. And yet, even the sea cannot keep such a momentous secret forever...

The Great Citadel

Towering Dreams

The scholars aspired to something greater. They wished to build something which, like the rock it was made of, would never break or be forgotten.

- Books of the Eternal Seafarers

Arkan was constructed on a land bridge between the southern and eastern continents. It began as an institute of learning, but unlike their relatively primitive contemporaries, the scholars here made a discovery which still has not been replicated by modern mages: stone which was reportedly unbreakable. Although the stone's secrets are now lost, texts suggest that it was at least functionally indestructible - no available methods of the time were able to shatter it. This resource allowed Arkan to grow from a college that studied the sea and stars into a towering citadel almost as wide as the land bridge it sat upon. The scholars guarded their secret jealously, to the point that it is unclear whether the stone was naturally unbreakable, or if some kind of processing was required to reach that point.
The general structure of Arkan, however, was well-documented outside the city. At its heart, the original college was expanded to accomodate all the scholars who flocked to the new magiscientific centre of the world. Around it, however, the city was haphazard and disorganised. The sudden influx of people looking for security meant that Arkan's walls were soon filled to bursting, so much so that some inventive immigrants began to build down into the land bridge beneath.

Into The Dark

But as we know, the Ruinous Seva does not suffer mortal things to endure. The Seva delights in the eternal decay of this world - and It did not spare Arkan.

- Books of the Eternal Seafarers

Arkan did not panic like other nations when the Lirustime began and the Midnight surged into reality. They accepted refugees but otherwise trusted their walls to keep them safe. And they did, for the first few years. Many of the aberrations which rampaged across the world were kept out by Arkan's magical and physical barriers, leaving the scholars within free to devise some way of reversing or at least mitigating the Midnight's sudden nearness. But when the first Keepers arrived in the city, warning of destruction to come, it took the Domina of Arkan far too long to deliberate their next course of action.
Then the walls crumbled.
The Dreamer of Ruin's arrival tore into the city's foundations from within, shattering even the unbreakable stone of Arkan. Like its contemporary, Ara, Arkan had significant blindspots in its design - in this case, it had very few defences besides its walls. But the creatures of the Midnight, and especially one as powerful as a Dreamer, are not so easily contrained by physical barriers. By the time the Keepers had begun working to seal the breach and contain the disaster, much of the city had simply fallen into the Midnight, or decayed into dust.
But Arkan's walls were still strong, even under the decay-inducing influence of the Dreamer of Ruin. The four Keepers, knowing that they were too inexperienced to defeat such an enemy, chose instead to trap it. They inscribed Aspects - simply speaking, castings that encompassed the power of their patron Wolves - on the seals granted by the Steadfast Earthrise Wolf, and set them in the central college of the city, where the wards were just barely holding. The power released by these castings, combined with what the Dreamer had already done, physically ripped apart the land bridge and scattered pieces of it across the ocean, like so many scraps of paper. What remained of Arkan sank to the very depths of the ocean, and its location is still unknown.

Legacy

The exact details of Arkan's destruction have, for the most part, been hidden from the general public - both thanks to the lack of witnesses, and thanks to night mages' efforts to dissuade a certain cult from believing that the Dreamers ever existed. Most people simply believe that the Keepers' battle with an unknown, long-dead evil resulted in the city's fall and the creation of the Archipelago - which is technically true.
Despite this, Arkan had undoubtedly left its mark on the world by the time of its destruction. Even now, millennia later, many regard it as a place blessed by the Wolves, or even a city where the mortal and celestial planes had collided to enlighten their ancestors. Both are ostensibly untrue. That did not stop many civilisations from trying to follow in Arkan's footsteps, notably the human nation of Ekos - whose capital city is the modern-day magiscientific centre of the world.
But there is a dark side to all this fame - the constant interest in this once-great city inevitably led to some of its darker secrets being uncovered. The truth of Arkan's destruction was only discovered recently, but its location has come closer and closer to the light. As the emikun of the Archipelago grow restless, trying to take back the lands that Ekos took from them, they have taken to battle in the oceans and retaken islands... yet the tales they tell to their children still hold strong, and they refuse to even come near a certain isle with a blasted surface. Even the untamable wyverns avoid that place, and the Eternal Seafarers have taken notice.

RUINED SETTLEMENT
1323 B.E

Founding Date

1980 B.E (Before Endwar)

Alternative Name(s)

The Drowned City

Type

Citadel