Satium

"I know many don't believe in the idea of gi-ya. As a man of science, the idea seems ridiculous to me as well. But I have lived in the Forests of Crimson and Gold, and walked the wandering trails through Gibila. Gi-ya is as real as any of us, and I say with certainty that a part of our world died on that day, murdered by the Kudz."

— Roderick Rothwald, Reflections on What We Lost

In the south of Iginim, isolated behind a towering mountain range from the rest of the Adinites, once stood the smallest but most beautiful of the Five Nations. Satium was an idyllic fertile peninsula that housed the administrative center of Eridu, the crown jewel of the Adinites.

The Crystal City

Eridu was located on an island just off the inner coast of Satium, governed by the immortal Lugal Tamzal. It was the epitome of Adinite architecture, with gleaming buildings featuring marble columns, crystal towers, all inlaid with shaped gemstones and precious metals. The city was built into the sides of the rocky island as well as the top, with walkways and buildings extending out from beneath cliffs looking down on the water below.
It was dedicated to, and contained the only temple to, the Unseen God An, father to the other Gods who remained in his Temple in Heaven for the duration of their time on Adin. Tunnels dug into the rock comprised their very own Underworld, but the city was built up to so many levels a kursu could walk the surface from one end to the other and never see daylight.
Shapers of water and metal maintained pump systems that kept fresh water flowing to all the buildings, fountains, and lush gardens around the city, and split the city's sewage into clean water and fertilizer for the farmlands to the east, with a minimum of actual waste sent back to the sea. While most Adinite cities have these systems in place, the sheer size and vertical construction of Eridu required an intricate network of plumbing, and innovations the other nations used to model their own.
Eridu was also the heart of the Five Nations' communications network, maintaining a log of every transmission sent and received by the mysterious wave shapers. All wave shapers were trained in Eridu before being posted at a transceiver in one of the nations.

Satium and Its People

The rest of Satium consisted of rolling hills, vast meadows dotted with groves of trees, and winding rivers. The mountains to the north held three entrances to the vast Underworld connecting Satium with Urubarra on the other side. In the high plateau region nearby stood the Forests of Crimson and Gold.
There were 32 settlements across Satium, ranging from villages of a dozen people to Eridu's population of nearly 50,000. Exports included many types of ingots pulled from the ground by shapers, fruit from the numerous orchards, Satium marble, as well as fish, crabs, and shellfish from the bay around Eridu.

The First Casualty of War

The Sherdasans had been preparing for war against the unsuspecting Adinites for years. Nommo spies had infiltrated each of the Five Nations with their shapeshifting abilities, and the Sherdasans had picked their target carefully, arriving first at Satium with well-armed, experienced warriors and an ironclad naval fleet equipped with the latest in Sulmu weapons.
Their landing party began in the north, attempting to cut off escape through the Underworld and releasing the Kudz in the Forests of Crimson and Gold. These forests were a central focus point for gi-ya, the elemental spirit of Adin, and revered in the same way as the jungle of Gibila. Kudz spread quickly throughout the forests and the surrounding area, obliterating three villages before its growth was stunted by the death of the powerful Udug shaman directing its rampage.
The Sherdasan horde swept through towns inland while the navy moved swiftly along the coast, bombarding the coastal settlements and sending in raiding parties to finish the job. The survivors fled in the only direction they could, towards Eridu. This went exactly to plan.

The Siege of Eridu

Once the navy arrived at Eridu, they blockaded the bay and cut the island capitol off from reinforcements. As refugees arrived at the shore hoping for sanctuary in Eridu or escape by ship, with the horde on their heels, the fleet opened fire. Thousands were killed in the massacre, with the ground troops sweeping over the survivors as soon as the fleet turned its attention to Eridu.
The transceiver tower fell early in the battle, but not before the wave shapers were able to broadcast a brief warning to the other nations. All told, only fourteen ships full of refugees were able to break past the slower Sherdasan warships and escape Satium. Many others were sunk in the bay while Eridu watched helplessly.
The shelling of Eridu continued for a full day, as Udug cannoneers took great pleasure in watching parts of the city collapse. When they finally sent in the troops, the remaining populace were found sheltering in the small Underworld below the city. They put up a fight, with a last-ditch defense led by Lugal Tamzal, but were highly outnumbered and mostly defenseless. The Sherdasans left no survivors.
The destruction of Satium took a mere four days. Historians have pieced together a precise timeline from the stories of those who escaped, and many Adinites still obsess over the few actual battles that took place, the cities that fell, and the names of influential shapers that were lost to the slaughter.

Present Day Satium

There are currently no permanent settlements in Satium. The treaties signed at the end of the Great War forced the occupying Sherdasans to leave, and the Adinites declared it uninhabitable. The cities are not to be repaired, the ruins standing as a monument to those lost.
The Kudz continues to expand slowly, now occupying more than half of the peninsula. The Forests of Crimson and Gold are said to still survive despite the Kudz, but the few adventurers that have ventured that far north into Kudz territory say the land is full of strange creatures, mycocephs as well as aggressive monsters that were not present in Satium before the war. The Sherdasans maintain they did not unleash anything apart from the Kudz, and despite numerous theories no good explanation has been found for their presence there.

Type

Geopolitical, Kingdom