The Ruins of Carathenga

The ruins of Carathenga is the currrent name given to the land once known as the carathen peninsula, which is situated in southern Arros, just north of the Carathen Strait and north of the Island of Velcaan. The largest city in the region, Carathenga, was once the capital of the powerful Carathengian Empire until it collapsed from an outbreak of the Blight. The capital and the towns and cities around the peninsula were left abandoned for the past 4 centuries. Since then, the land and cities in the region is plagued by a large amount of highly infections blight mass that covers parts of the land.

Monster invasion

Infected individuals transformed into Rekyans  inside the city, and began to spread throughout the peninsula, killing tens of thousands of inhabitants in their wake. Then, they tried to spread onto the rest of the continent during the period known as The Fall. The Arrosians fought back hard, lead by the most famous warrior of the period: Eremir the Great, who would eventualy loose his life while fighting the strongest among them. Eventualy, the combined force of multiple allied armies and nearly all mage guilds managed to eliminate all of the rekyans outside of the peninsula.

The Wall

Inspired by what the Taonese had done on the other side of the world to protect their western frontier, a large wall was erected by the Stonemages Guild of Vrahlis which cut off the peninsula from the rest of the continent as the land behind the wall was left abandoned. Large watch towers, occupied by skilled archers from the newly founded Wall Watchers spent the next years picking off any blighted monsters who tried skalling it. A single gate allows travel back and forth through the wall, but it has been closed for hundreds of years.

Avoid at all cost...

Very few people have since ventured inside the peninsula as the environement is extremly hostile to nearly all life. Most of the ground is covered by the hightly infectious substance known as the Blight. Trees, grass, plants and even some buildings have been converted to the same black opaque substance. The few animals that are still alive behind the wall are all highly agressive and will try to infect anything they see. This makes travel by foot or horse back nearly impossible without getting infected. Fly-overs by Winged ships are avoided as much as possible, as crashing down there would mean certain doom for all passengers.

...Unless you're a Soulmage adventurer

However, the very few that go exploring the region are soulmages, as they cannot get infected by the blight. These Adventurers are payed, usualy by scholars of the nearby University of Vrahlis, to go into the city to takes back some objects from the tresury or records from the archives. But even if they can't get infected, they can still get attacked and killed by the Blighted monsters. But that doesnt stop some from going in, especialy as rumours of large tresures still hidden in the city still persist to this day. Indeed, Carathenga was an extremely wealthy city, even as a capital, and was known that vast amounts of wealth were held in the banks and vaults inside. But, while the rural land surrounding the city is known to be dangerous, the city itself is even more deadly.

Inside The city

The city's large stone walls are crumbling as the blight seem to overflow out of the gates and spread themselves beyond the walls, while attaching itself onto the exterior stone like shadowy vines. The only way inside the city is by climbing one of the rare clean section of the wall, then drop down onto the streets below as silently as possible. Inside the walls, the city's streets are lined with burned building and litered with rotted trash and patrolled by Rekyans, infected humans and animals that act as soldiers to protect and spread the blight. During the day, the monsters hide inside the crumbling buildings, away from the sun, while during the night, they prowl the streets, looking for any potential victims to infect/assimilate. In the centre of the city, inside the large Solian temple, a large blob of blight, slimy and pitch black, resides. It is believed that this super-organism may have some kind of controls over the monsters in the city, and some think that controls extends to all monsters on the peninsula. The port, once one of the greatest on the continent, now lays dormant, choked with dozens of rotten, half sunken war and merchant ships. Nearly all of them covered in the black, slimy Blight. Most of the city itself is left in ruin, slowly rotting away as the very stone that make up its impressive towering buildings and monuments are consumed by the blight and wethered by time.