Shinaelestra

• The Fading City is being reclaimed by the wilderness. Covered by trees and thick with undergrowth, Shinaelestra lies mostly in ruins, but that doesn't bother the rangers who live there. Every midnight, the Fading City appears in the midst of the Barlis Grove in the mortal world, and each dawn it returns to the Feywild. The greatest threat to Shinaelestra is the fomorian realm of Vor Thomil.
• Every midnight, after the stars have appeared in the skies of the Feywild, the eladrin city of Shinaelestra starts to shimmer in the darkness like the slow ebb of green-white ocean waves. The city, already overrun by wilderness, recedes from the Feywild and emerges in the Barlis Grove of the natural world.
• As an inhabitant of the Fading City, you are a creature of two worlds, each as perilous as the other. In the golden sunlight of the Feywild, you work through the day, cultivating the plump grapes of the hills for feywine, fletching keen-tipped hunting arrows with the feathers of homing pigeons, or patching the places in the city where the roots of strong trees have grown through.
• Yet beneath your feet in the caverns of the Feydark, the brutish fomorians of the evil Queen Connomae plot your downfall, emerging from their subterranean realm at dusk to attack. They seek to conquer Shinaelestra so they can raid the natural world each night when the fey city appears in the Barlis Grove. You are a veteran of dozens of fomorian skirmishes, fervently battling the twisted giants until midnight when Shinaelestra fades away into the mortal realm.
• Even after the worldfall leaves the fomorians behind, you cannot lower your guard. Creatures of the Barlis Grove cry their bloodlust into the night air, and the trolls, especially, have developed a taste for the sweet delicacy of fey flesh. You shoot them with a hundred arrows, and still they come crawling from the darkness to steal your people. And although it is true that fire will stop a troll, fire will also burn a forest- and all life within it-to ashes.
• Despite your troubles, the people of Shinaelestra are among the most valiant and vibrant in the Feywild. Constant adversity has made you strong and resourceful, and it has broken down the barriers of isolation that many eladrin place between themselves and other races.
• Some people refer to your home as the Fading City not because of its nightly worldfall but because they deem it a dying civilization. However, no one who witnesses your fighting spirit would dare make such a comparison. Under the able leadership of the ranger lord Calenon Thray, the people of Shinaelestra embrace the challenges they face, fighting more ferociously than drow and celebrating more vigorously than lusty satyrs. Wonder-struck mortals who chance upon your city pass on tales of elegant warriors, radiant as starlight, who hunt for the heads of giants. Ever victorious, the fey heroes feast and revel until dawn in marvelous halls arched by the boughs of trees, open to the night sky.
• Shinaelestra’s inhabitants have allowed the city to retreat before the wilderness. Shinaelestra is a city of rangers, and they long ago decided to let the forest reclaim the ancient walls. Many of Shinaelestra’s towers are broken, barely rising above the thick overgrowth of the forest. Stands of trees rise from within roofless mansions, and many streets are impassable beneath thick overgrowth. However, the wilderness encroachment is a harmonious fall into ruin.
• Every midnight, Shinaelestra shimmers into existence deep in the mortal realm’s Barlis Grove. Its rangers take advantage of this savage hunting ground, patrolling the depths of the black forest and pitting themselves against the mortal monsters who hunt its twisted paths. When dawn comes, Shinaelestra worldfalls back to the Feywild.
• The ranger Lord Calenon Thray governs Shinaelestra lightly. Some say he is the greatest eladrin ranger of them all. In the lands surrounding the city, Calenon personally trains a select few to become the most devout of the Feywild’s protectors. Those mortals who seek to master the ways of the ranger often make a pilgrimage to Shinaelestra to train with the ranger lord. Calenon welcomes all who manage to find the eladrin city, since the perils of the Barlis Grove discourage— sometimes lethally— all but the worthy candidates.

Type

Large city

Owner/Ruler

Lord Calenon Thray