Orzafeth, the Truth Revealed!!
by Geoff Gander And now for a possible reason as to
why Orzafeth was ruined:
In the final days of Orzafeth's majesty (it rivalled Shiell as the
main city of Frisland, don't forget), its highest wizards sought to
find a means to destroy the hated city of Shiell, and secure
rulership of the semi-barbarous Alphatian Northlands once and for
all. This was before the time of Alphatia's more recent
consolidations - in fact, the north of Alphatia largely consisted
of warring principalities and city-states for centuries after the
Landfall, and only recently were the last of these errant nations
brought to heel. Frisland was the very last of these "wild lands",
only "pacified" in the year AY 1556. But I digress.
So the wizards of Orzafeth plotted and schemed, and in time they
consulted dire books, books which no sane man should read, books
which ought not to exist in a sane world. The wizards read of the
wonders of decaying Astor-Tzat in the Sind Desert, of the crumbling
pillars of Yath-Khe in the forgotten Desert of Izonda, and of a
great power which caused the very world to tremble when all was
young, 'ere the Men of Blackmoor first placed stone upon stone, and
before the Men of Thonia pieced the first primitive syllables
together in their mouths.
When these lands were still in their infancy, the realm of which
the Orzafethians read has already drowned in forbidden seas in the
depths of antiquity. There was but one word that stood out in those
crumbling pages....
.....Y'hegg-T'uhath!
Before long the wizards had mastered the forgotten tongue of the
inhuman denizens of the lost isle of Y'hegg-T'uhath, and of its
greatest city, Y'hog. For months they practiced, beseeching upon
forgotten deities and forbidden beasts for unholy power with which
to crush their enemies and rule over all. Such would have come to
pass, were it not for the ravages of time.
For in those fateful rites, the wizards had overlooked a faded
drawing, that of a protective glyph, one of such power that even
the fabled Akh'All the Unmentionable would not dare cross it in an
hour of weakness. But it was for naught - the glyph was not drawn,
and the wizards, and Orzafeth, were doomed.
That night, travellers far outside Orzafeth's bounds recounted
tales of swirling maelstroms in the sky, of inhuman shrieks and
wailings, and of the sound of stone sizzling, as though baked in a
great heat. When all was done, Orzafeth was no more.
The successive rulers of Frisland knew something of the truth, but
did not dare share what they knew, until the present day, when all
have forgotten the details of that time, and so it was without much
difficulty that the proclamation banning visitors from Orzafeth was
passed.
And what lurks now within Orzafeth? I leave that to you...or
perhaps some day something will arise once more. Who knows? ;-)