Ruins of Sharzelad
Ruins of Sharzelad
Ruin Formerly artisan city with numerous artworks in renaissance style art
The graveyard that is Sharzelad is a dangerous place for many reasons, one of the most commonly seen are the large amount of arcane weather patterns. As the central point of the Cataclysm; powerful energies still linger where a literal god walked and brought his vengeance upon the world. Wild magic storms, rain of molten glass, or worse can happen in this land. Even amongst the sparse ruins, the remains of the dwarven walls can be seen mostly intact, this is a result of the dwarven stonemasons who were hired to make the city unassailable, while the stones may remain the city they were meant to protect certainly does not. Some organizations attempt to set up a foothold in the ruins for trying to find artifacts or as a place they figure most won't go to given pervasive superstition that the place is haunted. It is rare any force remains there past one of the Harrowings either disappearing entirely or being runoff.
Geography
Inside the Ring of Spears is a largely flat area worked down to be that way, the only things that break up the flat landscape are the few bits of ruins that remain and the trees and plants that have reclaimed some of the area.
History
Early in the Second Age the city of Sharzelad was founded to provide a more central and defensive location for the capital of Rhyderia, contracting the aid of dwarves the city was created and great walls built on the only side that did not have mountains to protect it and a landbridge formed to connect the city with the rest of Rhyderia with a single way in or out.
When the Sultans took over as the ruling body of Rhyderia the city became the new hub of Dragonslayers from around the continent, the dragonslayers brought wealth and glory to the city and it rose in prominence even more in the world on the backs of atrocities committed against the dragons with public executions of captured dragon young being the least cruel fates inflicted on them. These all culminated with the cataclysm.
The Cataclysm is the name for when the draconic god of vengeance brought his wrath upon the world for their crimes against the dragons. In particular, Rhyderia suffered more than the others for at one point Rhyderians had sided with the god before his ascension. For their crimes Sharzelad was wiped away in a moment with the defining roar of rage and a bolt of red lightning the city was gone, some say vaporized, others transported to suffer eternally for their transgressions. All that remained were a few bits of rubble, the outer walls of the city, and chunks of stone suspended up to hundreds of feet in the sky for the next hundred years.
Now on the nights of a Harrowing the city returns in spectral form, the soul of its people enduring the rage of dragon-wraiths that enact a mockery of the crimes committed against them. It is a place of pain and rage now and most of the living that find themselves observing this event have never come back alive to give their account. A few have come back raving like madmen with fatal wounds that end their life before they could make sense of what they saw.
Tourism
Standing at the entrance to the Ring of Spears is about as close as even the more daring will do, it is enough to be able to see the outer walls and the void that remains behind them.
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