Alkenstar

The arcane wars between Nex and Geb were not kind to the surrounding regions, often reducing their captured territories to blasted wastelands where warped radiation prevented all magic from functioning. The nation of Alkenstar arose in such a place, beneath the shadow of Dongun Hold—a dwarven Sky Citadel sealed by its former occupants to prevent it from becoming a prize handed back and forth between the two warring powers. Though the dwarves had abandoned their fortress more than a thousand years earlier, the surrounding ruins became a haven for a ragtag settlement of refugees and vagabonds. When a renegade engineer named Alkenstar fled from Nex to avoid criminal charges, he discovered the shattered ruins of Dongun Hold ALKENSTAR

and used his technology to fortify the settlement, bring agriculture to its nearby plains, and transform the powerful Ustradi River into a literal engine of creation.

Not content to simply live in the shadow of the mighty Dongun Hold, Alkenstar devised an ingenious method to open the dwarven Sky Citadel and explore its many mysteries. He and his followers eventually tracked down the missing dwarves themselves, who now resided in an isolated vault deep in the Darklands where the practice of magic had died. A bargain between Alkenstar and the dwarves provided the fledgling city with a dwarven innovation perfected during the dwarves’ time in the vault and destined to change the course of history: firearms. These weapons ensured that the refugees would never again be caught defenseless in the battles between Nex and Geb. And over the last century, the Grand Duchy of Alkenstar has grown into a powerful, if isolated, kingdom in its own right.

While Nex still claims the settlement as a nominal vassal, since its armies were the last to claim Dongun Hold in the Age of Destiny before the dwarves’ retreat, no one takes this claim seriously outside the governmental halls of Quantium. Alkenstar currently operates as an independent city-state with holdings that include Dongun Hold and the town of Martel. The city of Alkenstar itself stands atop the Hellfallen Cliffs, overlooking a narrow valley where the Ustradi River plunges hundreds of feet over the massive Alken Falls on its journey into Nex. A layer of soot covers most of Alkenstar’s brick-and-iron buildings, but elegant brass decorations shining through the grime hint at the grand architecture beneath. Voluminous clouds of steam hang over the city and sometimes cover its streets, mixing with the thick fog banks drifting off the Ustradi and the acrid black smoke churning from the city’s omnipresent factories. At the southeastern shore of Lake Ustradi sits a massive castle called the Gunworks, where metallurgists and engineers of Alkenstar labor to develop firearms technology. Their proudest achievement is a massive cannon known as the Great Maw of Rovagug—an enormous bombard with a range measured in miles that is often used against the mutated giants of the Mana Wastes who raid the city nearly every summer. founded; construction of the Gunworks begins.

4620 ar

The Gunworks of Alkenstar are completed. The first firearms begin emerging from Alkenstar to be purchased by rich collectors and curious scholars.

4690 ar

The Gorilla King of the city of Usaro in the Mwangi Expanse, Ruthazek, attacks Alkenstar and seizes the Gunworks’ largest bombard as a trophy.

4716 ar

The gates of the Refuge of Nex once again open in Quantium, stoking rumors regarding the archmage’s imminent return.

4718 ar

A grand disqualification of all of the Houses of Perfection leaves the Challenge of Sky and Heaven incomplete.

4719 ar

Arazni abandons Geb, leading the ghost necromancer to return to active management of his undead realm.

NOTABLE FIGURES

The following are key public figures in the region.

GEB For an ancient ghost born of anguish and resentment, Geb currently seems more engaged with his kingdom than at any point since Nex’s disappearance.

KHARSWAN Thakur Kharswan, the smiling ruler of Jalmeray, must balance obligations to the island’s mystics, monastic grand masters, and powerful spirits.

NEX The immortal archmage Nex vanished so long ago that he is more legend than man to the citizens of the nation that bears his name.

TRIETTA RICIA The popular scientist-duchess of Alkenstar honed her zeal for invention and cheerful demeanor while studying the notes of the city’s founder.

The inventiveness that raised Alkenstar into a nation now permeates the attitudes of the country’s residents, and its technological innovations keep it economically and politically relevant despite its seemingly precarious position. The city’s famous clockwork sentries are only the most visible of Alkenstar’s wonders. Guilds of enterprising metallurgists, alchemists, and engineers collaborate or compete to produce increasingly extraordinary discoveries. Alkenstar’s status as a haven from the prying eyes of Nex and Geb has also attracted refugees and immigrants in a flow that rivals the mighty Ustradi, swelling the city’s population and spreading knowledge and political philosophies in their wake.

Yet this rampant growth carries a price in exchange for Alkenstar’s nigh-miraculous ascension into a global power. Though the nation’s High Parliament and elite police do an admirable job enforcing law and order, Alkenstar remains a frontier boom town in a harsh and hostile land. The city’s government and industries are convoluted and disordered, riddled with flaws and redundancies that have cropped up as organizational need outstrips bureaucratic capacity. Corruption and rivalries abound between clans, guilds, and families, with factions struggling to increase their own influence within the nation. Common folk rarely see the benefits of the city’s industry, left behind by the rapid march of progress to eke out hard, short lives within the heavy smog from the workshops. Crime plagues the nation’s outcasts, orphans, and poor, especially preying on the financial insecurity of desperate refugees from other nations.

Firearm and siege engine production has vastly increased over the last decade, thanks in no small part to the leadership of Grand Duchess Trietta Ricia, who is both a canny politician and a scientist in her own right. Guns, already popular among smugglers and revolutionaries in the Mwangi Expanse and the Shackles, have begun to trickle into northern Garund as well. Ricia urges greater contact with the outside world by exporting Alkenstar’s fabulous creations far and wide, drawing even more customers, vagabonds, and would-be technologists to the city-state, despite the considerable dangers of the journey.