Once hailed as the cradle of civilization, @Alendria was the beating heart of the ancient world—a realm where philosophy first found voice beneath marble colonnades, and poetry was considered the highest form of truth.
Alendria’s decline was but slow—a centuries-long unraveling of complacency, courtly indulgence, and internal strife. Its last sovereign, King Theodor the Dreamer, ruled with verse and vision. A patron of the liberal arts, Theodor believed that beauty and meaning were the true pillars of civilization. He held garden salons where actors recited tragedies beside fountains, and philosophers debated the soul’s shape beneath olive, fig, almond, and citrus trees. Yet his refusal to remarry after the death of his beloved wife left the kingdom with only a single heir— @Princess Elara of Alendria —and no clear path of succession. His aversion to conflict and his failure to surround himself with shrewd advisors left Alendria vulnerable. When the Hesan Empire came, it did not storm the gates—it simply walked through them.
Despite occupation, Alendrian culture endures. Its pottery, famed across Skybride, still bears the spiral motifs of ancient artisans. Its philosophers still quote Thalor and Eremos, the legendary poet whose epic Aionitita describes a universe composed of music—nested spheres of heaven, sky, earth, and man, each vibrating with divine harmony.
Alendrian culture places high value on oral and written storytelling, viewing it as a sacred art that preserves history and identity. Poets like Eremos the Poet composed epic cycles such as the Aioniotita, which weave cosmic themes with human experience. Storytelling is used in public salons, religious rites, and family gatherings to reinforce communal bonds and transmit cultural memory. The tradition emphasizes lyrical language, musical cadence, and the use of mythic archetypes to convey moral lessons.
@Sphaira, the capital of Alendria, stands like a weathered jewel of stone and memory on Alendria’s southern coast, its crumbling walls once gleaming in the sun like the rings of a divine harmonic sphere. Legends its walls were once built by a cyclops in the city’s founding age, though they had been crumbling for years before the recent Hesan takeover. The city's architecture remains grace—marble colonnades, bronze gates, and mosaics that whisper of the music that holds up the spheres of the universe. Sphaira is home to some of the great landmarks of civilization in Skybride, including the @Ancient Library, @Sphaira Palace, and the @Lyceum of Harmonies. The city under Hesan occupation is a place of paradox: sacred and profane, open to trade yet closed in spirit, its walls both protection and prison. The ruling Hesan elite enforce order through ritual, surveillance, and civic pageantry, while poets, merchants, and dissidents weave their own truths in the shadowed arcades.
@Sphaira Palace
@Ancient Library
@Lyceum of Harmonies
@Sphaira Prison
@The Hestia Harmonia
@The Sunstone Well
@Kharidos’ Urn
The @Mount Pindaron Region rises like a sentinel to the north of @Sphaira. The mountain’s lower ridges are sunlit and Mediterranean—dotted with olive trees, dry grasses, and ancient shrines—but its upper reaches are steep, wind-scoured, and veiled in mist. Hidden within its heart lies the @Marble Quarry, a vast excavation site, now under strict Hesan operation, where Alendria’s finest stone is drawn. It now moves eastward to @Hesa. The quarry is both a source of pride and a site of quiet dread: workers speak of echoes that answer back.
The path up Mount Pindaron is not easy. Its terrain requires a guide. Ancient beasts like @Harpys and @Lamias live within its rocks, making Mount Pindaron a risky refuge for outlaws or those wishing to escape the occupation.
Perched high on the veined slopes of Mount Pindarion—called Goli by its inhabitants—lies the ancient cliffside town of Ur-El, known formally in Alendria as Aureleion. @Aureleion (Ur-El) is carved directly into the mountain’s marble face, Ur-El is a place of harmonic resonance and architectural wonder, it predates the Eremic age.
Though sparsely populated, Ur-El endures as a living monument to Alendria's belief of music being the material that holds the universe together. The people here sing with old meaning, tend olive groves clinging to the rock, and listen for the mountain’s voice in the echo of footsteps. Below them lies the @Marble Quarry now occupied by Hesan forces.
Mnairos, the elder in Ur-El, says this story has been with Ur-El since the beginning. Scholars from Sphaira who have heard it notice its similarities to Eremos' creation in the Aioniotita, which tells of a universe made of sound and sphere.
Before the mountain rose, before the marble dreamed,
when the world was still a hush of breath,
a sound was struck—not sung, but struck—
like flint on flint in the hollow dark.
That sound cracked the silence,
and from its echo came the turning.
Not one sphere, but many—
not light, but weight,
not fire, but form.
The spheres did not sing.
They hummed.
A low, living hum,
like wind in stone,
like water in roots,
like breath in the chest of the sleeping world.
And in the center, where the hum grew still,
a garden coiled in silence.
There walked two—
not man and woman, not yet—
but two whose names were not yet needed.
They moved like thought before speech,
and the garden moved with them.
Born among the terraces and ravines of Ur-El, @Zirra Theros became a guerrilla defender of Ur-El, striking from the cliffs with brutal precision and vanishing before alarms could sound. She uses the terrain, the echoes, and the forgotten paths of her ancestors to harry the occupiers. The Hesans call her the Ghost of Goli, a name spoken with fear and frustration.
( @Aulonarch becomes hostile to those that harm the mountain or suppress music. Those who try to destroy it face the monster @Aulonarch)
At the peak of Mount Pindaron is a strange hewn arch etched with writing from a forgotten age. Scholars have called it the @Aulonarch. The People of Ur-El say it was built by giants. It sings the songs of the universe, its tune woven into the mists of the mountains. But Hesans take too much from the mountain, and the Aulonarch is angry. @Mnairos in Ur-El says the arch is angry. @Mnemosyne in the @Ancient Library says its purpose has been disturbed by infection.
Northern Alendria is known for its wool, @Tiefling population, and Melianthos, an ancient trade capital turned modest northern town. Northern Alendria borders the kingdom of Thelidor to its northwest, and imperial Hesan frontiers to its northwest.
In ancient days, Melianthos was once a jewel of northern Alendria, a powerful trade city whose markets thrived along the Boreias Hodos, the great road binding Alendria to Thelidor’s southwestern territories. In the kingdom’s high age, caravans laden with grain, wool, bronze, and northern wine passed through its gates, and its agora rang with both commerce and song. The city’s amphitheater was famed for poets and musicians, earning Melianthos a reputation as the “flower of the north.” Yet as Alendria’s wealth waned, so too did Melianthos, shrinking from city to town, its marble porticoes cracked and its colonnades quiet. Today, under Hesan occupation, Melianthos is a guarded outpost. Imperial soldiers control the flow of goods, watch the road, and send spies northwest-ward, testing Thelidor’s resolve. Still, the town endures in muted dignity, its people trading in whispers and verse, its memory preserved in the crisp air of its meadows and the Unicorn Sanctuary a day’s journey away.
At the foot of the northern Alendrian mountains lies Qeren, a @Tiefling settlement. Their founding story tells of Kadmios, a wandering mortal who came north in search of peace, and Harmonia, a horned daughter of the valley spirits. Kadmios carried the discipline of the south; Harmonia carried the resonance of the land. Together, they forged a bond that was said to weave harmony from discord.
From their children came the Tieflings of northern Alendria—marked by horns. The Tieflings of Northern Alendria are known for their combat prowess and animal husbandry.
@Aletheia is a living echo of the Song of Creation—born not of flesh, but of resonance. Her form resembles a unicorn, but her presence is older than the word. She dwells in the shattered sanctuary of Alendria, where sphere stones hum and vines bloom in her wake. She does not speak, but those who approach her with truth in their hearts may hear music—notes that stir memory, awaken grief, and sometimes, heal.
She is the last of her kind, or perhaps the first. The kore monokeros once walked beside her, sang with her, tuned the world through her. But that lineage is broken, scattered into bloodlines and bridal veils. Aletheia remains, waiting.
Hesan forces have tried to tame her. They have failed. Their blades rust. Their mages go mad. Their rituals fracture. Aletheia does not fight. She simply is. And in her presence, the world remembers what it was meant to be.
@Aletheia can gift the following items to a worthy person (kore monokeros or otherwise). Or @Aletheia will drop sone or all of these items when defeated.
@Aletheia Armor
@Aletheia Crown
@Aletheia Cuisses
@Aletheia Gauntlets
@Aletheia Sabatons
Legend has it that long ago, when Sphaira was young and vulnerable, the city’s founders sought protection from sea raiders and inland warbands. They turned to a wandering cyclops named @Brontes , a stonemason of divine descent, said to have shaped fortresses for the gods themselves.
Brontes built the walls of Sphaira in seven days, using stone from the seabed and fire from the Mount Pindaron's heart. In return, he asked for solitude and a promise: that the city would never raise its walls against its own. That promise was broken during the first civil purge.
Brontes left Sphaira and rowed to @Thalorikos, The Builder's Grave, where he built @Brontes' Arch and vanished. Some say he sleeps beneath the island, waiting for the city to redeem itself.