La Pierre
La Pierre (Gothique: the stone) is the outcrop the city of Montréal sits on. Appearing to be a large wedge-shaped rock formation of ferrous ore jutting from the desert, La Pierre is not a natural formation and is in fact the rusted and eroded remains of the crashed starship that brought the Damia to Zion. To the south of La Pierre are what are popularly supposed to the ruins of ancient buildings, but are in fact the remains of the starship's city-like superstructure.
Geography
La Pierre has been eroded by millennia of wind and water and is no longer distinguishable as the starship it once was. It appears as a wedge of iron-heavy ore rising at approximately a twenty-degree angle from the desert sands, pointing north. It is half-buried in a mass of metamorphic rock and the portion above ground is about two and a half miles long. Roughly two miles to the south are vast ruins, now much eroded and destroyed and canted at an angle - these were once the superstructure of the ship. A long track of metamorphic rock and glass microspheres to the south suggest an impact track and Outremarin scientists have (correctly) surmised La Pierre came to Zion from outside its atmosphere but (incorrectly) assume it is an asteroid rather than a crashed starship. The similarity of angle of both the ruins and the rock have been noted but the truth eludes the Outremarin. The accepted theory is that the rock was originally flat and a city was built using it (rather than the desert sands) as a foundation. Volcanic activity then heaved the rock and destroyed the city, causing its abandonment. This explains the metamorphic rock surrounding La Pierre it is buried in - the Outremarin do not realize this was caused by venting plasma from the ship's dying fusion reactor. Seismic scans show the region is stable and so the Outremarin were content to build their capital atop the rock - not understanding the region was always stable and they have misinterpreted the evidence.
Over the millennia the heat of re-entry, erosion, accretion and the actions of ferrophageous fungi have removed all visible external signs La Pierre was once an Ironclad starship - weapons, antennae and docking ports have been destroyed and the tens-of-meters thick alloy armor has corroded into oxide carbuncles and weird wind-carved formations of iron-rich sandstone. All that is left is a massive wedge of red-gray stone rising from the desert. In the shadowed angle beneath the rock's northern point sand gathers in deep drifts, periodically been swept away by the desert siroccos.
The ruins are shattered and barely recognizable as buildings - compared to the armored hull of the ship, they were comparatively fragile and did not survive re-entry as well. They are choked with sand and are considered a haunt of ghosts by the Outremarin; how much of that is due to superstition and how much to the Damia snatching visitors for grisly experiments is anyone's guess. The shafts and stairwells leading into the hull of the ship are clogged and filled with sand and debris, but it the Damia have dug some clear to give themselve entry and egress to their stronghold.
The body of La Pierre - the hull of the starship - is riddled with a network of tunnels. Near the surface the corridors and compartments of the ship were damaged by exposure to super-heated atmosphere forcing its way in and they are melted into fantastic shapes, twisting crawlways and great caverns filled with iron stalactites and stalagmites - to anyone not aware of La Pierre's true history these would appear as natural formations. But during the calamity the Damia sealed the interior, protecting it from destruction, and there the structure is that of a human starship of pre-Imperial design. Reactors still generate power, powering lights and heat, and allowing oxygen scrubbers and water reclamation facilities to function. Here the Damia live and work on their blasphemous genetic experiments, periodically releasing some monster into the sands of Zion and obsessively documenting its progress.
Atop La Pierre is the city of Montréal, built to Imperial specifications in the Norman style. There the ruling elite of Outremer live - La Reine Melisende, Le Haute Cour and other organs of royal power. Les Chevaliers d'Outremer journey the desert sands in Le Kerak de Chevaliers, but return to Montréal periodically to pay homage to Melisende. Also living in the city are tens of thousands of ordinary Outremarin - former Astra Militarum and their descendants, former Gue'vesa and other exiles from both the Imperium and the T'au Empire.
History
During the Dark Age of Technology the Selenite gene-cults spread out from Luna and journeyed far across the galaxy. One group of Selenites travelled to the eastern fringe, crossed an empty gulf of space and came to what would later be known as the the Damocles Marches. There their starship - an ancient Ironclad design - was damaged by an unknown catastrophe; unable to maintain orbit gravity pulled it into the atmosphere of the planet later called Zion. Although atmospheric friction super-heated its meters-thick armor the ancient alloys were were designed to withstand planet-killing weaponry and merely softened. The ship crashed into the planet's surface, gouging a kilometers-long track through the equatorial jungle and sending up a vast cloud of dust and debris. The impact ignited the atmosphere and a continent-searing fireball blossomed, incinerating everything within a thousand-mile radius. The ship came to rest half-buried in molten slag, jutting from a lake of cooling lava as the climate of the planet was forever changed.
The dust brought nuclear winter to Zion and xenos creatures died in their billions, thousands of species becoming extinct almost overnight. The once-lush jungles withered and died, a carpet of rotting fungus spreading in their place and covering the Ironclad starship. Within its twisted hull, the gene-cult sealed itself off from the ecological disaster and pursued its obsession in secret, its science becoming more corrupt and debased until it was a twisted shadow of its former glory.
Millennia passed and climate stabilized but did not revert to what it had been before. The area where the Ironclad had come down was no longer a jungle - now it was a desert, with the starship jutting from the end of a long scar of igneous rock it was half-buried in. Weathering, erosion, even the actions of fungi that had evolved to eat the metal of the hull had scoured the ship's prow to an unrecognizable wedge looming over the sands. Behind that, the broken remains of the ship's superstructure rose from the desert.
The Damia, as the Selenites now called themselves, emerged from the ruins of their ship and struck out across the surface of the planet, moving beyond the desert and into forests, grasslands, steppe and tundra. Taking as their raw materials the surviving xenos creatures on the planet they conjured monstrosities using their gene-alchemy, the descendants of which became known as the Gryphs.
Millennia later the T'au Second Sphere expansion came to the planet. The diplomatic overtures of the Water Caste were refused and the Damia were declared antak'ya (non-compliant; lit. "resisting" in the T'au lexicon). Because of self-imposed chimerification and their subsequent genetic debasement, the Damia were not recognized as being of the same species - human - as the T'au had encountered over the previous century. Fire Caste forces made war on the Damia, seeking to cleanse them from the planet, but the need to respond to the Damocles Gulf Crusade forced a redeployment to meet the Imperium's invasion.
As part of his strategy General Gage, the Crusade's overall commander, assigned troops to the conquer the area to the galactic west of the Sept world of Dal'yth (a region later known as the Damocles Marches. This military force occupied Zion and other planets, establishing the realm of Outremer. The Damia were defeated and driven into hiding - like the T'au, the Outremarin did not recognize them as human and thought they were a xenos race of the multi-species T'au Empire. The conquest of the Damia was all-but-complete - many of their gene-constructs escaped and became the feral Gryphs, but most of the Damia were destroyed. Those that were not retreated to their crashed starship base and, sacrificing many in a showy last-stand atop the "rock", managed to obscure the fact their leaders had sought refuge in hidden caverns (actually corridors and holds of the starship) within what the Outremarin took to calling La Pierre.
As the site of their final victory and a place of great strategic strength, the Outremarin built their capital city Montréal atop the high plateau, little knowing the Damia lurked in a hidden stronghold beneath.
