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. Its capital, Sphaira, still gleams with domes and pillars that echo the grandeur of its past, though the luster has dulled. In its prime, Sphaira’s walls were said to be impenetrable, forged with divine geometry and guarded by the sea itself. Now, those same walls crumble in silence, their upkeep abandoned as the kingdom’s wealth and will waned. The city remains a monument to faded glory, where scholars whisper beneath shuttered temples and the scent of salt and parchment hangs heavy in the air.
Alendria’s decline was not sudden, but slow—a centuries-long unraveling of complacency, courtly indulgence, and internal strife. Its last sovereign, King Theodor the Dreamer, ruled not with iron nor intrigue, but 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 trees. Yet his refusal to remarry after the death of his beloved wife left the kingdom with only a single heir—Princess Elara—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, and counterfeit wares only heighten the value of the genuine. Its philosophers still quote 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. Some claim Eremos did not invent these tales, but merely recorded truths older than memory. In the ruins scattered across Alendria’s coast and hinterlands, archaeologists uncover mosaics of unicorns and priestesses, suggesting a lost religious order from a time when the veil between sea and sky was thin, and magic hummed in the air like song.
Today, Alendria survives in fragments—amber traded in quiet markets, paper pressed in hidden workshops, and marble quarried from hills that once bore temples to forgotten gods. Its scholars live under watch, its temples are silent, and its princess wanders in exile. Yet the soul of Alendria—its art, its memory, its music—remains unbroken. And in the hearts of its people, the dream of restoration still flickers, like a candle behind crumbling stone.