Bassuras

In 836 P.D. ...

This city in 836 PD was sited on a large plateau rising from the valley floor, surrounded by a sprawling exterior city of small tents, hovels, and stone buildings, and also by a tall stone wall rising 30 to 70 feet high. A metallic tower in its center, the Tahdiq Glow, was topped by a green-ish spotlight that can be centered on approaching skyships. Bassuras was around 900 miles away from Jrusar by road or 700 miles by air. It took a skyship four to five days to traverse this distance. However, because of the frequently dangerous weather in the Hellcatch Valley, Bassuras did not have a skyport.

Situated as it is in a desert region, Bassuras collected as much of the monsoon rains that fall on the city as possible, storing it in massively tall and sturdy metal tanks (known as the Storm Cisterns) scattered around the city, rising at odd angles above the rooftops. They held the city's entire water supply, and are therefore covered in ladders and platforms that are guarded and patrolled by the Gajakhandas. Bassuras did not have sewers in the common sense of the word but certain areas do have "dumping zones". Some inhabitants make a living by picking up refuse from individual zones and "carting it to the outside of the town and then dumping it all off the side of the ravine on the eastern side of the cliffs outside of the Skids—a slum of tents, huts and hovels just outside of the outer ring of what was Bassuras.

This all changed with the Apogee Solstice in 836 P.D. The effects of the magical energy caused a blast of force that flattened everything for miles. All the man-made structures in Bassuras that were ground level were leveled in this blast of force. Nothing of the original city is left intact. The tower is in pieces, the walls crumbled, and all the rest of the tent city or wooden construction, what wasn’t scavenged is now buried by sand as time passed. If the tower and other stone structures were not as tall they might be buried at this point as well. As it stands, about half of the original height has been covered by the sands in the storms that rage in the Hellcatch. Only the top 2 feet of the bone tree remain above the sands.

In Amonkhet: Upon completion of the machine, the god-pharaoh had started to siphon magicks that was not theirs into their realm, causing the stable reality to shake and quake. With other parallel events occurring at the same time, the amount of power allowed the god-pharaoh’s city to rip through into the plane of Exandria. Becoming the lowest tier of the subterranean city, and bringing with it, a mysterious spiritual atrium, placed directly beneath the crater.

As for those in the Ravine and those who had taken to living in the crater next to Bassuras, there was damage, but those parts were still standing. This prompted the remaining peoples to seek a sub-terrainian option, as the force was dispersed rapidly and had little to no impact on the mines or the structures that were already below ground. Over the next 70 years, the city of Bassuras migrated to below the crater/ravine. The Ravine remains as an outpost, but if you do not know what you are looking for, you will pass by it or pass through not thinking a city thrives underneath the ground. Only those with the knowledge of how to find or access the city are able to enter or seek passage. Yes. This means code words. For each large organization they will be listed with the org. For the tradesfolk, it was usually finding a few of the Passagers. Those with access to the passageways that led to the elevators.

Refer to the Pocket Guide to Bassuras for the map.

Now in 900 P.D. ...

The city underground is unable to build directly below the crater due to a Central Atrium that has some sort of ethereal mist, that anything constructed over it would deteriorate, and any who tried to enter were not seen from again. This would be referred to as the Spirit Pit, Spirit Column, the Atrium, by various groups of the locals. In the construction of the city, this center column was built around, in 5 tiers, to connect the lowest portion to the upper world, and even with its properties being misunderstood, is one of the uniting factors that garners respect across all the different organizations that exist in this city, Bassuras. This is a city where many undesirables find home. It is home to many crime organizations. It’s a city of criminals, run by criminals.