Cythurus

From RPGwiki

Cythurus is a rather interesting place, full of archeology but not much life. It is only a few hundred meters across, but it contains a fascinating temple complex. The building style links it to the Sylvanus-Khazad Empire, and the construction work appears to have only been partially completed. The statues and carvings are beautifull, but this otherwise ideallic sceane is marred by the numerous skeletons that litter the ground.

Exploring off world locations is expensive, but King Kel thought Cythurus worth the investment. His team uncovered some rather disturbing conclusions. The skeletons (of which there are precisely 30 in total) are entirely dwarven, without a single elves. Combined with the tools scattered around the place, they concluded that this was a labour crew of some sort, almost certainly engage in constructing the temple.

Objects found at the site and the architecure corespond to that found amidst the youngest of ruins of the Sylvanus-Khazad Empire. If so, the construction work may have been ongoing when the floods that destroyed the Sylvanus-Khazad Empire occured. It is not known how the work force reached Cythurus, but is not a huge leap of the imagination to assume that the flooding destroyed their means of egress, leaving them stranded to face a slow death by starvation. That supposition is reafirmed by gnawing markes on some of the bones indicating that certain members of the work force resorted to cannibalism.

Sad as this story might be it brings to light an interesting point - the Sylvanus-Khazad Empire was capable of breaching the BLR. Given that their Empire ended up under water, it has been speculated the the Merfolk acquired their plane hoping abilities by shifting through the rubble that was left behind. Then again, the Merfolk claim to existed at the same time as the Empire, so it's possbile that the transfer of knowledge went the other way. Cythurus has raised many questions.