Endless, barbaric, irredeemable.
During the early periods of the Detriment era, shortly after Arcania was razed by the Pantheon general Ymir, the Praenorian Elvina established a new seat of power to replace their lost glory: Elvina’s Rise. From here, she commanded the Circle during a pivotal span of the war, a point where they realised with growing horror that after centuries of Vanguard dominance, they were somehow losing the war.
Elvina led similarly to Raikoh. She commanded respect and authority, encouraged cooperation, peace and civility between units and tribes, and focused on leading by example, hoping to guide the Vanguard back to victory. When she was compared to Raikoh, she said simply of the comparison, “It would be like comparing a sunrise to a thorn, a sweet melody to thunder.”
When she marched on Damasceyr, flanked by her elite guard, she met the Pantheon in open battle, throwing high and loud a warcry that instilled hope and passion in the bloodthirsty Vanguard, wielding her famous scythe, Moonsliver.
While the battle progressed and the troops were stirred into vicious frenzies, Elvina was betrayed suddenly by one of her elite guard, a young creature who took advantage of the chaos to remove the Praenorian for reasons unknown. Though the attack was dealt with swiftly, it left Elvina too weak to fight, and the ravenous Pantheon consumed her.
Elvina died on Damasceyr. But her death fanned vengeful flames within the Vanguard. Enamoured by her hope and her passion, enraged and maddened by the betrayal and her premature death, the Vanguard turned Damasceyr into a brutal, endless battlefield, where both they and the Pantheon poured infinite troops, each hoping to outmatch the other with pure brute numbers.
The battle rages on still, with both sides too afraid to withdraw their forces, from fear that the millennia-old battle has been too long in play to stop now. To surrender Damasceyr would be an embarrassment that no one is willing to concede.
The Vanguard treat it as a dumping ground for the psychotic and the deranged, and for criminals they deem too unworthy, or perhaps too important, to directly execute. Damasceyr has descended into a frenzied, endless, bloody battle, raging in its infinite chaos. The Pantheon general Valad Mahor once said, “If all the dead on Damasceyr were to rise from their graves, there would stand an army to fill the multiverse, and an army to conquer it.”
Following her death, Elvina’s Rise was abandoned, the seat of power moved to the fledgling Vanderfjoll. In the years since, the Rise has slowly fallen into ruin and decay, its once golden halls and silver spires crumbled into dessicated husks, its lavish gardens dried and emptied.
Since its abandonment, the Rise has inherited some troubling rumours and legends, and an aura of fear surrounds the derelict.
On the rare occasions the Vanguard have visited there, they find only dead Pantheon, unlucky trespassers fallen victim to some unknown peril. Although no discovery has ever been reported there, many have commented astutely on the Steward’s reluctance to visit the Rise, as if they fear trespassing on its revered grounds, and view this reluctance as evidence that something hostile resides within the Rise.
The Network claims that no such haunting exists and encourages Vanguard to reject such superstitious notions. It also strongly recommends against visiting the Rise for undisclosed reasons.
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