Alendria in Brief

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, sits on @The Middle Sea and 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. Now, those same walls crumble in silence, their upkeep abandoned as the kingdom’s wealth and will waned.

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 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, 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 @Ruins of the Unicorn Sanctuary, 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.

Alendria' s capital, @Sphaira, still bustles despite the tension of Hesan presence. Amber traded in quiet markets, paper pressed in hidden workshops, and marble quarried from hills. Its poets live under watch, its temples are silent, and its princess wanders in exile. Yet the soul of Alendria—And in the hearts of its people, the dream of restoration still flickers, like a candle behind crumbling stone.

Sphaira

@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.

Within, Sphaira is divided by doctrine and desire. 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. Every stone bears a name, every oath leaves a mark. To walk its streets is to feel the weight of history pressing inward—beautiful, bitter, and alive.

Notable landmarks in @Sphaira

  • @Sphaira Palace

  • @Ancient Library

  • @Lyceum of Harmonies

  • @Sphaira Prison

  • @The Hestia Harmonia

  • @The Sunstone Well

  • @Kharidos’ Urn

Mount Pindaron Region

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. The marble here is pale gold veined with silver. The stone, said to sing when struck, has historically been used in temples, tombs, and the walls of Sphaira itself. 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, of statues that weep, and of a presence of @Aureleion (Ur-El) watching from above.

The path up Mount Pindaron is not easy. Its terrain requires a guide. Ancient beasts like @Harpys and @Lamias live within its rocks. Hesan soldiers occupy its @Marble Quarry, making Mount Pindaron a risky refuge for outlaws or those wishing to escape the occupation.

Ur-El

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 and echos forgotten languages, unicorns, and rituals. The town cascades down the cliffs like a frozen hymn, its structures etched with motifs older than the Hesan calendar—symbols of wind, stone, and silence.

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 who seek to extract the sacred stone for imperial projects. But the mountain does not yield easily.

Creation as told by @Mnairos of Ur-El.

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. This lends to the belief that Eremos wrote stories that were around centuries before himself.

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.

Zirra — The Ghost of Goli

Born among the terraces and ravines of Ur-El, @Zirra Theros grew up climbing the marble cliffs and foraging in the high groves. When the Hesans invaded and attempted to conscript her people into quarry labor, she vanished into the mountain. What emerged was not a soldier, but a shadow.

Zirra 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. Her villagers speak it with reverence, though she avoids praise and refuses titles. To Zirra, the mountain is not a battlefield—it is a body, and she is its breath.

@Mount Pindaron Peak and the @Aulonarch

( @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.

The @Ruins of the Unicorn Sanctuary

@Aletheia, the Last Unicorn of the Sanctuary

@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

The Cyclops of Thalorikos

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. His work was flawless—each block fitted without mortar, each tower aligned to the stars. 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. Others say he mourns, carving names into stone. A few believe he is awake—and angry.