Stest
Stest has had a tumultuous history undergoing two major renovations, with the latter amounting to little and establishing the tangled nest of dockworks and scaffolds that in no way resemble the city they were built for, but are nonetheless the only vestige of it.
History
Ost-Corsovian Conquests
While on campaign in the Grey Downs, Prince Valdemarios ordered the construction of a fortified port in 452 or 453 SA 5, possibly on the site of an earlier, Pre-Corsovian settlement. This allowed for his supply lines to be conducted by ship from Legion's Landing, and would set the stage for the Hill Clans War just a few years later in 456 and 457.Decline Over the Centuries
In autumn 597, during the latter years of the Wars of Seven Emperors, general Cloridan Saverio—after accepting a bribe from Varnophon Varian—rashly defected to the side of Telas Varian, declaring Stest for the emperor. Saverio was perhaps overconfident in his position and in the young Varian emperor's readiness to march east. In response, King Belistan Ost-Corsov sent Cloridan a letter informing the general that he was committing treason against the empire by supporting a usurper and that Belistan himself was prepared to march west and make sure Saverio faced justice.Indeed, in spring of the next year, Belistan made good on that promise and with an army gathered from Markosia and Dennovar bolstered by dwarven mercenaries, won a decisive victory against Cloridan. However the treasonous general escaped with some of his forces and returned to Stest. They would not remain there however, as upon returning, Saverio discovered Markosian ships forming a blockade on the port. Fearing capture, Saverio fled the city with a small cadre of loyal retainers, and made for the Wastes of Nex hoping to lie low and await support from the Varians. The defenders of Stest did not immediately realize Saverio's absence, but when they did they turned the city back over to the king's authority.
Return of Cloridan Saverio
Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Stest however, they had not yet seen the last of Cloridan Saverio. More than thirty years after his disappearance into the Nexian Wastes, the general returned, stricken mad by the wasteland and leading an army of marauders, monsters, and scavengers. By the time they had finished with Stest, there was little recognizable about the city. It is said that the marauders had become so burdened with plunder and captives that they took with them nearly the entire city. There may be some truth to this as occasionally one can find masonry from Stest in the stricken lands of the Manaburn.Novo Stest
The year after it was sacked by Cloridan's horde, the crown of Acrad financed a rebuilding attempt. However this initial effort was abandoned in 630, just one year after it had begun, as funds had been diverted. The cause of this reallocation is believed to have been to support a war against Frorlendings who had gone around Verahd's wall.A later and more successful rebuilding effort began in 641 SA 5 and involved greatly expanding the port and repairing sections of the wall that had still not been properly secured since the departure of Cloridan's marauders. By 644, the walls had been completed and improved. And by 646, the town had largely been restored to a semblance of its former glory, though there were many buildings which had been town down to the foundations to be rebuilt with the population. After the completion of this work, the city took on the name Novo Stest.
Fall of the Imperial Dynasty
When the Blood Horde invaded the so-called "old kingdoms" of the western half of the Corsovian empire, refugees flocked by the shipload to cities on the northern coasts of the Corsovian Sea. Novo Stest was one such city, but tensions brewed between the locals—mostly Markosian and Dunnic—and the refugee people who brought with them ancient aspects of Corsovian culture that had not survived in the blended cultures of the much newer Kingdom of Acrad.These tensions came to a head when, in 833, a poorly arbitrated legal dispute between a wealthy Dunnic merchant and Solonese tradespeople turned into feuding in the streets after the tradespeople later cornered the merchant in an alley and beat him to death. This feud in turn, was escalated into a massacre at the hands of the city guard, apparently on the order of the mayor, Sarva Amallinus. The Massacre of Belistan Square resulted in riots that lasted for weeks and culminated in Amallinus being found headed for a private ship out of the city which the mob set on fire. The mayor did not survive and the ensuing blaze consumed much of the docks, spreading from the port and into Novo Stest proper. The city never appreciably recovered, and other destabilizing factors prevented a concerted effort to rebuild from the duke's court—for the Kingdom of Acrad had been reorganized into several duchies held in regency, at least nominally on behalf of the now extinct Corsov dynasty.
The Stays
Finally, in 861 SA 5, an esteemed graduate of the Corsovian University in Rainmont, Ruper Niplan, was awarded a commission as the master architect of the Toldain court to oversee the renovation of Novo Stest. Ruper had a grand and ambitious vision to further expand the docks beyond what had initially been laid out in 641, and then to carry on into modernizing the city. However, the gnome was bedeviled and so the project dragged on for twenty-six years without ever truly moving beyond the port and dockyards.In 887, Ruper Niplan was called to Ormen's Gate to answer for the tremendous costs in manpower, gold, and time the project was imposing upon the court. With so little to show for it beyond a massive—and confusingly messy—network of drawbridges, docks, and scaffolds that now extended so completely and recklessly offshore as to scarcely be connected to the mainland portion of the city, Ruper was stripped of his commission and sent to live in exile in the Boreal Vale. He never made it there, as he succumbed to pneumonia on the way, and died days before arrival. Since this time, very little attention has been paid to restoring Stest, and the land portion of the city fell further into disrepair until the last of its inhabitants moved to live on the docks, where the work and commerce was, or else resettled in Bathaine or Ormen's Gate or some large estate to find work. The portion of the city that Ruper had finished came to be called the Stays, as a way of distinguishing it from the city lying in ruins on the hill overlooking the sea.
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