1: Place Description

1: Place Description
From the air, it doesn’t look like much.
An abandoned city in the midst of an abandoned coastline, inhabited by nothing but nature. It was abandoned hundreds of years ago, due to some plague or war or attack, and has never been inhabited since. The surrounding area—in fact, a huge span of the western coast of this nameless continent—is similarly abandoned, never re-inhabited out of fear spread by legends and repeated mysterious happenings to any humanoid who ventures in the area.
It lies behind a great, sprawling desert, and is separated from the coastline of the cold western ocean by a small range of orange mountains. Originally, it must’ve been a great city—not even decay and time can completely hide the former beauty of the crumbled walls and ruined buildings. Few of said buildings still stands—most are crumbled messes of rubble from collapsed ceilings, with the barest skeletons of walls still mapping their basic layout. Here and there some still stand, many on the brink of collapsing, and some missing corners or rooms but in over-all good shape. The city was apparently evacuated in a hurry, or the inhabitants died off before they could remove much, because in quite a few of the buildings are decayed remains of furniture and mundane possessions. It’s a large city, a couple miles in either direction, with a few abandoned houses and huts on it’s outskirts, in similar condition.
Walking through it is the epitome of eerie; you can almost feel the liveliness the place once had, and almost see the former decadent richness of the place. Nevertheless, if you can stand that nagging eerie feeling, it would make an excellent place to live—a few of the intact buildings must’ve been warehouses, and are the perfect size for a fairly large dragon. If one went through the minor trouble of cleaning one out and adding a few personal touches, it would be a quite lavish living area, fit for any king or queen. The untamed wilderness that has crept up to the city’s walls since it’s abandonment are full of various game animals and edible plants, with enough variety to provide nutrients and ward off malnutrition. A river runs through the edge of the city, and the water is clear and drinkable.
That is not the end of it, however—despite appearances, the city is not as abandoned as it looks. Should one pass over those warehouses the first time around and continue to explore, you might, quite literally, stumble into the entrance of a massive underground complex.
This complex must’ve once been catacombs, and quite lavish ones at that. They extend beneath the city on either side of the great river, connected by two tunnels that run deep below the river’s path. They actually extend far further than the city’s borders, and have various levels and twists and turns. It’s like some lavish underground labyrinth, very easy to get lost in. The walls, ceiling and floor are of cold, carefully laid stone brick, and etched in them are various mystical symbols and pictures. Beautiful and detailed statues line the walls of many halls, and loiter in the corners of most of the rooms. Large, imposing statues of strange beasts guard every doorway and entrance, and along the incredibly high ceilings rest a number of fascinating gargoyles. It’s been noted that every now and again these statues get up and wander around, but they’re usually back at their original stations in due time.
It’s very cold here, and slightly damp. The walls are coated in nitre buildups of various thickness, which only serves to increase the cold and add a strange smell. Nitre is the mineral form of potassium nitrite, and is quite common in underground complexes and caverns. This place is a eerie as the abandoned city above it, and with a distinctly magical air to it.
It’s also inhabited. Some time ago, a wandering dragon named December stumbled into it, and took to the place. She affectionately calls it ‘the underground’, and has since been living there on and off. In her travels, she meets quite interesting people, and has invited a number of them to live there with her. Currently, she’s in search of more residents, and preferably a sentry to live above, in the main city—though where exactly they reside will be up to the dragon, itself. This search brings her to the place of her hatching—Kalyturn’s Hybridization Center, in hopes of getting another dragon to inhabit her little macabre sanctuary.