City of Scholars

Overview

The City of Scholars is a buried megacity located beneath The Screed, accessed via the Crow’s Eye chasm. Before The Confluence, the city was known as “Serdica” or “Sofia,” named after Sofia, the conscious entity that served as its living soul. The city represents a primary objective of the Rediscovery Endeavor, believed to hold clues about the source of The Tumult. Its inhabitants mastered Aerolith technology far beyond current Asgarthan capabilities, built their civilization around the Sap of a world-tree they called the Világfa, and ultimately fled skyward after that tree’s death. A pillar of light that erupted from the city during the Hunger confrontation in 393 AC was answered by a second signal from Asty, guiding the Expeditionary Corps across The Turmoil.

Location

The City of Scholars lies underground, with The Screed serving as a surface lid. The Expeditionary Corps reached the estimated location in May 393 AC after a four-month journey across Caer Nilam, approximately 250 miles from Caer Oorun borders.

Historical Records

Baird y Idris, Shepherd of the Sunset Tribe, provides the first and only historical references to the city in his annals. He describes it as an underground metropolis nestled beneath a tall mountain, sheltered from The Tumult currents. The city served as a stopover for western Tumult Nomads traveling toward Asgartha.

Baird y Idris proposed the city was a nerve center of the World Before, encircled by rocky foothills. Under pressure of The Tumult, these surrounding mountains surged over the city and solidified, trapping the population in a stone casing. His logbook recording the precise coordinates was preserved in The Sanctum’s forbidden library. In 367 AC, Quetzalcóatl showed this logbook to Waru Toowoom during planning discussions, enabling the Rediscovery Endeavor to target the city.

The city’s ancient writings reference a foreign traveler called “The Drifter” who visited long ago accompanied by seven warriors described as fierce protectors. Frescoes depict a golden age under the guidance of a celestial deity, followed by darker carvings in black obsidian-like stone representing a shadowy being associated with the civilization’s downfall.

Architecture

The city features red tiles, white stone buildings, ochre brick structures, and palaces with oval windows—one crowned with mushroom-shaped domes. Leocardius Sree described the ruins as an inverted ziggurat. The structures have been remarkably well preserved underground.

In the deepest levels, the original architecture has been transformed by The Tumult over centuries into Escherian impossible constructions with infinite loops, geometric patterns, and disorienting vanishing points. Black polyhedrons move in fixed patterns among the distorted remains of stairways, corridors, and antechambers.

Vertical Structure

The city extends through multiple underground levels accessed via the Crow’s Eye central shaft:

• The Crow’s Eye: Entry chasm with terraced scaffolding, hanging gardens, and Aerolith storage hangars
• The Undergrowth: Mezzanine-level cavern with partial sunlight, vegetation, ponds, and former temples
• The Scholars’ Tomb: Residential district in complete darkness with artifacts and wall frescos
• The Maze: Deepest explored level with floating Tesseracts and a Tumult Singularity

Technology

The inhabitants achieved technological sophistication without Kelon, mastering Aerolith far beyond current Asgarthan capabilities. Power systems used channels etched across surfaces rather than internal mechanisms, with external grooves on artifacts, tools, devices, furniture, and walls functioning like maze pathways. Tesseracts—floating black stone blocks with gold veins that constantly rearrange themselves—served as data storage and infrastructure. The inhabitants also constructed clearly artificial beings that received Sap.

Deep within the city, a cylindrical chamber functions as a library of memories rather than books. Black obsidian steles engraved with intricate runes emerge from mist or float in midair. Physical contact with the stone grants access to the collective memory of the entire city across ages. Ignescence can also activate the stones, causing golden dust to coalesce into ghostly afterimages of past inhabitants.

The Sap

Silos and cisterns containing reserves of golden fluid were discovered throughout the city. Sap was central to the city’s civilization—poured into artificial beings, consumed, inhaled, shared, distributed, stored, and used in cultivation. Wall frescos depict it flowing from a massive world-tree the inhabitants called the “Világfa” (also rendered as “égig érő fa,” meaning “tree that reaches the heavens”).

Arjun theorized that the substance is the Sap of this world-tree, which the inhabitants channeled and exploited until the tree died. The city’s decline began when the tree could not survive the over-extraction, and remaining stocks are finite. Yzmir theorists further identified the Sap as a vital fluid responsible for awakening Sofia as a conscious entity.

Modern applications by the Expeditionary Corps have proven versatile: Axiom energy specialists converted Kelonic cylinders to store the Sap for stable energy yield; The Farm uses it as fertilizer; the college of chemists discovered its invigorating and stimulating properties; Hestia and The Mess incorporate it into recipes; and both Lyra and Yzmir consume it for psychoactive effects. The Ordis urges caution on ingestion pending official botanical results.

Sofia and the Hunger

Wall frescos throughout The Scholars’ Tomb depict Sofia in idealized adult form as a tall woman with honey-gold features, often the focal point of flowing ornamental ridges with hair spreading in every direction. In reality, Sofia manifested as a child shaped from golden light who wandered the rooftops after dusk, casting an innate glow across the skyline.

When the inhabitants over-consumed the Sap and killed the world-tree, Sofia began to starve. With no Sap to sustain her, she turned to consuming memories and psychic essence, becoming The Hunger. The people fled in terror. Left alone for ages, Sofia’s original nature was consumed by her monstrous form. She dwelled in The Maze, and her presence caused Oblivion—an affliction causing progressive memory loss and severing Alterers’ connections to their Eidolons. Sister Mathilde of The Cloister recommended suspending expeditions until the responsible agent could be isolated.

According to Nevenka, the city itself became a sentient entity experiencing pain, stealing memories and imagination from visitors as a form of self-distraction—a cycle that provided no true nourishment since Aether lacks substance.

Ordis historians had hoped to open dialogue with Sofia, but the destruction of the memory blocks ended that possibility. The relay outpost was renamed “Sofia” in her honor, entrusted to Bravos for protection and Muna for provisions. Sofia was liberated from her monstrous form in 393 AC.

The Escape to the Sky

Frescos discovered on a floating island in the Pelagonian Quadrant during a 393 AC expedition organized by Leocardius Sree revealed the fate of the City’s inhabitants. The ruins on this island share architectural style with the City of Scholars, featuring white buildings with golden geometric lines. Four fresco panels, translated by Ordis linguists through The Gestalt, document the escape:

Panel 1 — The Dying World-Tree: The Világfa is dying, but a fertile seed—a Nilam seed—has been found.

Panel 2 — The Secret Gathering: Sap was gathered furtively, hidden from a towering woman depicted with hair writhing like tentacles—a stylized representation of Sofia.

Panel 3 — The Ascension: A tower-like city on a mountain receives rivers of golden Sap. At its summit, a new world-tree is planted.

Panel 4 — The Flight: The upper portion of the city, severed from its base, levitates above the clouds amid floating islands. Silhouettes on every atoll suggest the fugitives colonized these suspended lands. A stylized ginkgo-leaf silhouette of unknown significance floats above the growing world-tree.

These frescos confirm that the City’s inhabitants secretly stockpiled Sap, built a tower containing a world-tree seed, and used Aerolith to levitate the upper city into the sky. They scattered across the floating archipelago before eventually disappearing from these ruins. The scripts bordering the murals share common roots with those of the Tribe of the Setting Sun, suggesting linguistic connections. The Leviathan Halua was born from the Nilam seedling these refugees cultivated and was later exiled after attempting to protect the growing tree from Sap harvesting.

The Phoenix Shrine

Deep within the city lies a shrine featuring a massive phoenix sculpted in bas-relief, wings outstretched, brooding over a flame-wreathed egg identical to the Bravos emblem. The shrine served as a repository for Rune’s scroll—a message left by the first Kuningas during his own journey to the city.

In 393 AC, Waru Toowoom’s expedition located the shrine using a Glyph-inscribed cube programmed with the Rhombus of The Gestalt to query the Tesseracts network. Inside an alcove carved within the egg sculpture, Waru discovered the cylinder containing Rune’s ancient scroll. The scroll confirmed that Rune himself had searched for the Source of The Tumult and failed—the Source was a fabrication. This discovery was concealed to protect the Rediscovery Endeavor’s morale, while Sitina of the Phoenixian Guard revealed Rune’s Testament, the true purpose of the expedition: to sail westward and rekindle the Phoenix.

Timeline

393 AC, May 28 - Discovery and Exploration Delay

The Expeditionary Corps reached the City of Scholars and established a forward outpost at The Screed around the Crow’s Eye chasm. Admiral Temera Singh ordered a delay on underground exploration. Axiom operators deployed drones and automated probes, with early reports describing buried megastructures and fractal architecture.

393 AC - Tumult Singularity Event

Axiom drilling teams broke through sealed reservoirs to extract Sap deposits. When the drill struck a reservoir wall and Sap began flowing, the ground trembled and Tesseracts across the abyss began moving and connecting with unusual intensity. Yzmir Initiates appeared through portals to evacuate personnel, while Gephyromancers and Phonomancers provided support. The event confirmed a Tumult Singularity was forming in the depths. A fresco of the world-tree cracked apart during the disturbance, and dark tendrils emerged from fissures in the walls, converging on the drill and Sap pool.

393 AC, September - The Hunger Confrontation

Exalts confronted The Hunger in The Maze below the city. A pillar of light erupted from the abyss during the confrontation, and a second column of light then appeared on the distant horizon beyond The Screed’s cliffs—later revealed to originate from Asty.

393 AC, September 17 - Outpost Renamed Sofia

Admiral Temera Singh documented the aftermath of The Hunger’s destruction. The Sanctum historians confirmed the city was once called “Serdica” or “Sofia.” The relay outpost was renamed “Sofia” in the entity’s honor.

Relationships

• Arjun: Muna Exalt who theorized the Sap was world-tree sap (393 AC)
• Asty: Living city whose pillar of light answered the City of Scholars’ signal (393 AC)
• Atsadi: Explorer who accessed the Memory Library seeking records of the Drifter’s warriors
• Axiom: Faction studying technology and Sap; drilling triggered Singularity event (393 AC)
• Baird y Idris: Shepherd of Sunset Tribe whose annals provide the only historical references
• Bravos: Faction entrusted with protecting the Sofia outpost (393 AC)
• Fen: Lyra Exalt who experienced memory theft from the City (393 AC)
• Halua: Leviathan born from the Nilam seedling the refugees cultivated
• Leocardius Sree: Oneiros archaeologist who documented the city and organized fresco expedition
• Muna: Faction providing provisions to the Sofia outpost (393 AC)
• Nevenka: Lyra Exalt who revealed the City’s sentient nature (393 AC)
• Phoenixian Guard: Keepers of Rune’s Testament who escorted expedition (393 AC)
• Quetzalcóatl: Eidolon who possessed Baird’s logbook (367 AC)
• Rune: First Kuningas who visited the city and left a scroll in the Phoenix Shrine
• Sitina: Phoenixian Guard Blade Dancer who revealed Testament (393 AC)
• Sister Mathilde: The Cloister member who recommended expedition suspension (393 AC)
• Sofia: The living soul of the City; became The Hunger after starvation and abandonment
• Temera Singh: Admiral who ordered exploration delay and documented aftermath (393 AC)
• The Drifter: Foreign traveler recorded in ancient writings
• The Reka: Possible descendants of City inhabitants, discovered at Asty (393 AC)
• Treyst: Axiom engineer conducting drilling operations during Singularity event (393 AC)
• Tumult Nomads: Western nomads who used the city as a stopover; scripts share linguistic roots
• Waru Toowoom: Examined Baird’s logbook (367 AC); discovered Rune’s scroll (393 AC)
• Yanna: Ordis linguist who translated escape frescos (393 AC)
• Yzmir: Faction that evacuated personnel during Singularity event; theorized Sap’s vital properties (393 AC)