The Dead Cities: Reophis and Nuathys
by WingofCootFor fifty miles of coastline between the fortified borders of the Middle and South Districts of the Magistracy of the Coast, the oldest and most dreadful region of Accursed Barrens in Deshret touches the Moonslight Sea. In the heart of this awful wasteland, home to unnumbered and nameless monsters, lie the Dead Cities of ancient Deshret: Nuathys upon the coast, Reophis forty miles inland.
Today, Nuathys' twisted, half-melted, shattered ruins lie where a dead land meets the sea; Reophis is home to the deadliest collection of monsters anywhere in the Accursed Barrens.
Before the Union of Deshret and the building of Protia, Deshret was a collection of six independent city states: Dathys, Thetophis, Pflaaopolis, Ankhata, Reophis, and Nuathys.
Nuathys was Deshret's port at this time, while Reophis was a small oasis city-state, scarcely larger than Pflaaopolis today, which was located much nearer to the coast than the other oases.
Nuathys was occupied by the Empire during the First Deshret War; after three attempts to recapture it failed, the great strike of ancient Nithian war magic descended upon the doomed city.
Destruction engulfed Nuathys and the Imperial ships in its harbor; elementals, invisible stalkers, and more raged across the dying landscape with wind, fire, quake, and flood, hunting out anyone who had been protected from the initial blast. Nothing survived.
But the destruction did not end at the city's walls. The four elements were stirred, and magic itself was strained by the terrible forces conjured. Huge waves lashed the coast; storms spun outward from the stricken ruins, bearing wind and lightning; earth tremors raced outward. But worse than these, waves of raw magic spread from the wreck of Nuathys. These clashed with the ancient Nithian magic underlying the oasis of Reophis.
The Warping fell upon the land and people for the first time as the Accursed Barrens took shape. The other city-states of Deshret, in dread of this unknown blight, refused to take in those who fled. A very few were able to use powerful magic to flee Deshret entirely - even to other planes or worlds beyond Vaniae. All others died or lost themselves to the Warping.