[MelancholyFae]

Lore of the Lost City of Ravenna

~ first draft by Mcmanusaur ~
~ edited by MelancholyFae, Conradian, SentaiPink, Azmythera, Zarkaylia ~

The Founding
Deep inside the Forbidden Lands, far north across the Sands of Tribulation, there lay a region of unparalleled abundance and fertility. A few millennia ago, the Vagrant people roamed these lands freely, and eventually they stumbled upon this bountiful domain. Bounded by yellow sands to the South, blue seas to the West, white snow to the North, and green forests to the East, the expansive region lay ready for settlement. This might have been a slow and disorganized process in most cases, but the moment these Vagrants came upon it they knew this was the paradise they were looking for.

Snow-topped mountains leveled out into pine forests on top of a plateau, with a lake that forked into two large streams. The streams both etched themselves along the edges of the sheer cliffs, creating two beautiful waterfalls and two gently flowing rivers. These two rivers created a moat for the lower lands, which eventually merged into one expansive river that continues out toward the sea.

Along the border of the plateau between the upper streams and waterfalls, was a naturally formed stone outcropping that greatly resembled a raven as it overlooked the lands below. This magnificent sight was seen as a good omen, and was unrivaled in its majestic beauty and potential.

And so the Vagrants settled at the foot of the cliff, with the stoic Raven watching over them, ever vigilant. They built their homes and established their markets, and for a time reaped the benefits of nature’s gifts. Trade and business flourished, the government was an egalitarian meritocracy (equal society with power given to those who merit it), and the wider populace led happy lives. However, this new paradise gave way to moral shortcomings.

The Time of Oppression
Free trade gave rise to great profit, and soon enough a few of the families began to accumulate great masses of wealth at the expense of the poorer classes of citizens, who found themselves increasingly resigned to debt and to servitude. Rather than use their wealth for the betterment of all citizens’ lives, the rich few preferred to put on bold displays celebrating their status. This risky process continued unchecked for many generations, and eventually these greedy aristocrats hungered for even greater glory.

To these ambitious ends, the nobles initiated a series of extravagant construction projects on the clifftops, creating an acropolis. One by one, a great citadel, a council house, a marble arena, and a temple to the primal deity of Time towered above the residential quarter. To supply this project, laborers from the poorer citizenry were rounded up and forced into the mines where they produced the raw materials needed for this monumental architecture. This was the way that they would pay off their families’ debts, or so they were told. Instead, upon the completion of the acropolis, the nobles’ ambitions only heightened, and so they went back on their word.

The laborers became trapped in the mines indefinitely, doomed to lifelong servitude while the elites lived in luxury. Working conditions were extremely dangerous, and their tiny dwellings were crowded and poor. The only time that they could spot even the faintest glimpse of sunlight was whilst loading the elevator platform that brought the ore they had mined up to the acropolis. However, it was the cruel discipline that constituted the worst part of their already miserable lives; the miners were subject to all manners of corporal punishment. Any suspicion of wrongdoing, and they found themselves condemned to fighting wild beasts in the arena for the nobles’ entertainment. Worse still were the fates of those accused of heresy, who according to rumor fell victim to unspeakable evils at the hands of overly fanatical priests.

This was truly a miserable existence, and successive generations of captive miners gradually began to lose hope. But in the course of their labors, they uncovered huge runic ore formations that exhibited rather strange-looking veins of an unknown substance... some whispered that these crystals possessed the power to right the grave injustices inflicted upon them. Other rumors accredit similarly immense potential to the impressive formations, but for the time being nothing changed.

Lorimar’s Rebellion
A great hero was born among the downtrodden; his name was Lorimar, and he was said to be particularly attuned to the energies emanated by the rune formations. His colossal physique is was said to have dwarfed anyone standing next to him, and Lorimar’s mind was every bit as keen as his body was strong. Through a great deal of effort, he managed to rally the battered minds of his fellow miners, preaching liberation and promising a better life to all those who joined him.

Finally, a couple of centuries after the class divide had first begun to develop, he had acquired enough of a following to strike back at the nobles.The timing of the rebellion was perfect, and after a few days of fighting the miners had liberated themselves, slaughtering their oppressors in the process. Of the male members of the upper class, only the doctors and scholars were spared, and the original residential district of town at the foot of the cliff was razed to the ground. Needless to say, Ravenna’s society would need rebuilding.

The Time of Reclamation
Like any truly great leader, Lorimar knew that he had served his purpose, and once things settled down he retreated from public life, letting new leaders come to the forefront. It was these people who set up the new system of government, which utilized a democratic assembly in place of the old elite high council. A new criminal punishment system was also created, with gallows for supposedly more humane executions, while the old arena came to be used for performances of theater. The once-oppressed peoples built new houses for themselves at the foot of the cliff, and once more the Raven guarded over them, but the rest of the once-wealthy residential quarter was left in ruins.

Rumors buzzed that it was the mysterious rune formations that enabled the miners to overcome their wicked oppressors, and word of these natural wonders spread far and wide. Not long after, Ravenna found itself becoming an increasingly popular destination for those inclined to embark upon religious pilgrimages. To facilitate this business, which came to support the new economy, beacons were constructed to guide travelers across the Sands of Tribulation. This rebirth would usher in a new age of happiness that would last several generations.

The Great Departure
Unfortunately, this newly remade utopia was also not destined to last. Trade routes became more dangerous with undead creatures and frenzied wild animals, almost to the point of closing Ravenna off from the rest of the world. Superstitions and accusations arose, along with rumors and myths as to the cause. The energies that Lorimar had mastered to win Ravenna its revolution and which its rebirth was built upon became the target of the blame for the escalating strife. This caused people to scatter what they could outside of the city as atonement, leaving only traces of information in various hidden places for the possibility that these energies would be needed once more.

Eventually, the truth came in the form of two powerful people - one with red eyes and the gift of fire-working, and one with eyes of glowing blue, who controlled water. They had called themselves Sages, but the Vagrant folk believed them to be sacred messengers from the gods, here to save them from the growing terror.

These Sages had talked to the frightened people about the increasing number of Dusk creatures and the corrupting forces that were becoming more evident every day, and implied that doom and destruction were unavoidable without intervention. The Sages knew how to stop the approach of the Nether Realm, but it required the people of Ravenna to abandon their town, and even the prosperous continent itself, never to return.

And so with great reluctance, the people bid their Raven farewell, after many generations of fighting for prosperity and freedom, and took with them back to the mainlands the stories of the now-Forbidden Lands and its people.

Ravenna became abandoned, and thus it remained for centuries. The buildings aged and entered into varying states of ruin, and overgrowth enveloped the shambles. Even if the location had been utterly forgotten, the legends surrounding the lost city continued in quiet whispers and rumor.

The Rediscovery
After many centuries, the Lucins broke the treaty between their Xitian counterparts, and went to look for land to settle in the Forbidden Lands. They came upon Ravenna’s ruins and its surroundings, and saw great potential. They took the time to rebuild what they could of the great city, aided by the remnants left over by time. Most of Ravenna’s upper section was rebuilt true to its original structures, with the marble buildings and statues and fancy fountains, and the lower city’s housing and gardens were redone for the lower bred Lucins and some of their Mesalian servants.

The challenges faced by these Lucins did not deter them from making their homes here, and they even spread out further in each direction, recreating trade routes to and from Ravenna on this side of the Forbidden Lands. But it was their overconfidence in a land of snow that hastened their downfall, for after a hundred years, their display of land-claim was finally discovered by the Xitians. The Lucins retreated back to the mainland as war was unavoidable, leaving those that stayed behind to be slaughtered after the Xitians struck at the heart of the Celestial realm. This became known as the betrayal that triggered the time of slavery, and cast the Middle Realm into war and darkness.

Thus Ravenna was abandoned once more, left to the wild, for another few decades.

Ravenna Lives Once More
Despite the violent aftermath of the War of Veld that afflicted the Mainland, the resettlement of the Forbidden Lands moved slowly, but even so Ravenna was eventually rediscovered by a group of wandering explorers. They set up camp in the old port district, and began to rebuild in the hopes that Ravenna would reclaim its former greatness. However, it came time for the group to restock their supply, and to these ends half of them set out on a journey back to the Mainland.

Tragically, mere months after this expeditionary group had departed from their new outpost, the remainder of the party who stayed behind in Ravenna met their end; centuries of neglect had left much of the city thoroughly unfit for habitation, and disease and other hazards took their deadly toll. Meanwhile, the news of Ravenna’s rediscovery reached the mainlands.

Eventually Xitian guerillas, desperate due to being stranded in the Middle Realm, caught wind of these rather intriguing tales and dispatched a makeshift task force to investigate. This group successfully intercepted the returning supply train before it could reach the Mainland and, after finding the interrogation process somewhat unrewarding, eradicated any trace of its existence. Unfortunately for them, a group of Lucins had already taken notice of their movements, and responded by sending their own makeshift crew to investigate, even if they felt that these rumors were probably a waste of time...