Sly-Var

Sly-Var serves as the base of operations for Hazlik’s most trusted—or dangerous—apprentices. These Red Wizards have been granted autonomy to conduct their own research, so long as it furthers Hazlik’s ultimate designs. Their rivalry is bitter and often violent, but bound by fear of their master.

Each laboratory-compound within Sly-Var is both residence and research sanctum, warped to reflect the obsessions of its inhabitant:

• Vaustra Null, obsessed with temporal magic, lives in a spiraling structure where time flows irregularly, and guests may lose or gain hours simply by entering a room.
• Zarika the Bound Flame inhabits a basalt forge-temple built into a lava-vented cavern, where fire-elemental spirits are bound in chains of molten brass.
• Mekoruun the Quiet rules a silent, mirror-walled monolith patrolled by silent golems and filled with disembodied runes that float in the air like predatory birds.

These wizards’ enmity often spills into the streets of Sly-Var, where magical duels, sabotage, and even summoned horrors erupt in sudden flashes, only to be swiftly contained by Hazlik’s overseers.

Few ordinary folk live in Sly-Var. Those who do are often:

• Indentured apprentices, kept in magically enforced servitude.
• Arcane constructs or flesh-crafted beings, created for menial labor or experimentation.
• Survivors of magical accidents, malformed or cursed, given sanctuary by one master or another—for a price.

Most residents dwell in spartan quarters carved into the bones of old towers or buried beneath laboratories. Their lives are ruled by schedules of research, test runs, magical brewing, and the constant awareness that a misstep may result in transformation, incineration, or worse.

Hidden in the burnt-red hills of Hazlan, Sly-Var’s skyline is a jagged silhouette of crumbling ziggurats, spindly observatories, and crystalline domes. Each structure pulses with latent magic—some glow softly, others hum with unstable energy or emit strange gasses that drift through the air like serpents of fog.

Sly-Var is not open to outsiders. Access is granted only by invitation, or at the behest of Hazlik himself, and even then only under heavy scrutiny. The settlement is protected by wards, arcane traps, and constructs, many of which have gained partial sentience over the years, making them even more unpredictable.

The very land of Sly-Var is alive with residual arcane energy. Strange phenomena occur regularly:

• Gravity may shift sideways for a few minutes.
• Time loops back on itself during certain storms.
• Lightning arcs from tower to tower with no source cloud.
• Whispering winds speak in voices of the dead—or the not-yet-dead.

Animals, plants, and even insects within Sly-Var show signs of mutation. Some glow faintly. Others blink with too many eyes. All seem to watch.