Cenobek

"'Our Axan quen* made many mistakes, but their insights into the soul of man, those were spot on - never has a creature so thoroughly corrupted by Valatë walked this earth. You think our homeland cousins are bad? Take the trip all the way north sometime - if you can navigate the raider vessels and ice floes, follow the old Axanaira west coastline north until you find a city called Cenobek. Trust me, it's impossible to miss.""'Stare upon the marbled city; consider that it was the first construction work that took place after Axan collapsed, whilst the rest of humankind still scrounged a bare existence on frozen dirt; ponder the mortal man it was built to commemorate; wonder how much bloody bigger and grander it was 800 years ago. Gaze at the dark heart of the creature that you consider an equal, and if you still want to jabber about comradery when you return... maybe I'll listen.'""Dathel Bloodbraid, North Shattered Sea pirate, overheard in conversation with a fellow elvish pirate captain" * Quenda means elves in Quenya, with "Quen" translating more informally to kin - elves always use this word to describe themselves even when speaking in other languages

Cenobek, commonised from Zærnɵbek, meaning Town of Gold in Old Mortaani, was the birthplace of Saint Azur, and where he spent much of his free life preaching and performing miracles. Whilst it was just a small port town under elvish rule, used as an administrative hub for the north-eastern reaches of Axanaira, following Azur's death it became the spiritual hub of Tor Morta'an.

Queen Ida Azuria initially considered making it the capital of the new kingdom, but ultimately decided it was too far at the fringes for administrative efficiency. Nevertheless, it was the first home of the established Azurite Church, and bloomed under their control into a towering marble metropolis devoted almost entirely to church bureaucracy.

When the river Cvyk, which ran through the centre of Cenobek and kept it and numerous northern towns supplied with clean flowing water during the long winter months, begun to freeze further upstream and for longer periods every year, the creeping cold, which had for the most part been treated by the Morta'ani establishment as little more than an extended period of bad weather, was finally acknowledged for the existential threat it presented to the humanity.

The downsizing and ultimate relocation of Church infrastructure resulting from the decision to slowly abandon Cenobek lead almost directly to the declaration of the First Crusade, which was directed by the Quadrum from their second home, the Isle of Folly. Just a hundred years later, all mainland Karanothi cities had been effectively abandoned.

Unlike many settlements on Karanoth, which were constructed mostly of native wood, cobbles stacked without mortar, and coarse thatch, Cenobek was built almost entirely out of carved, quarried stone, particularly marble and basalt, and thus stands as one of the most complete ruins on humanity's native continent.

It is still visited every year by a handful of pilgrims, mostly from the Revenothi mainland, since islanders more local to the location have long treated it as a cursed place, a giant, profane temple to mankind's pride, and generally steer clear of the western coastline it squats on.

As it is more often than not these very islanders who are tasked with the job of ferrying pilgrims, most trips to the old ruin never set foot on land - and there are stories, naturally, of those few who do, which tell that the moment they stray from the waterfront into the city's marbled labyrinth they are never seen or heard from again. Just folksy superstition, naturally.