Dead City of Ep
Ep is an ancient city of unknown origin and strange geometry built in ways that make little sense to most architects and scholars that have walked its desolate streets and crumbling (yet surprisingly intact) structures. There are some advanced (and slightly deranged) arcanologists that believe the city is so confusing because mortal creatures can only view it in the common four dimensions of everyday experience. No one is certain how old the city actually is or what its purpose must have been but for millenia it has been used by a variety of insane cults and power hungry arcane casters as a place of strange almost bacchanalian rites or sinister arcane rituals. Being situated so far from civilization the city sat on the sidelines of history, that is until the coming of Rhone the Reaper who, in 1022 CA, used the city's unusual properties to raise an army of dead minions to conquer Antanides. This led to the Black Crusade and eventually Rhone's apparent end at the hands of the Erabisian warpriest Dioclese the Stern, who drove his sacred spear into the monster and in a valiant sacrifice, managed to imprison him in a great structure that has become known as the Black Temple. From that time on Ep has been silent save for the herds of mindless dead wandering the mazelike streets seemingly without direction.
History
According to the fractions of written lore and mutable oral history of orc and human tribes native to the region, Ep was first discovered by the Aghenti humans that once ranged from the north-western shores at the mouth of the Inlet Sea in the west to the Thermal Sea in the East. None know exactly when this discovery took place but most scholars estimate that it was somewhere between -3,000 CA and -1,200 CA.
They large stayed clear of the place, and it has haunted their legends as a place of dark beings, ancient beyond comprehension that preyed on the warriors that got too close, taking flesh, blood, and souls for unknowable purposes. Later shamans, however, began dangerous pilgrimages into the city's depths when the Aghenti began encountering larger and larger numbers of enemy human and orc tribes that migrated into their lands and drove them away from their resources. To combat the more advanced weaponry of their foes, the shamans sought new power amongst the ruins, trading their souls and far too many of their people for strange powers. Despite these gains however, the combination of the sacrifices necessary and the amount of time needed to make any meaningful progress, the Aghenti were largely reduced in numbers and by the time of the Lattaneran Expeditionary forces led by the legendary General Solenus Remelius they were largely absorbed by other tribes or destroyed, their way of life and the secrets they had gleaned from the City lost to history.
Though the Aghenti were the main people to have contact with the City they were by no means the only ones in recorded history to set foot in the place. Countless stories exist of human, dwarven, elven, and orc heroes who braved the strange City, most ending in utter tragedy but also a precious few of people making their way out with their lives and even great artifacts and treasure. These small victories, however, were more often than not poisoned by later tragedies as the treasures were largely to the detriment of whoever owned them, bringing misery and madness to any in their vicinity and most were disposed of or sealed away.
