I have to admit, however reluctantly,
that the visions of the fall of the majestic city of Eula took me
completely by surprised, as a wizard you live for an exhausting long
time, and you get used to certain things just being there. Eula was
one of these such things. Built near the end of the second era it
has been a consistent beacon of culture and magic for thousands of
years, and was also the premiere military and economic power of Amini
for centuries. The glory of Eula was two fold, first the area is a
glorious area for trade and defense, It is placed directly in the
middle of the only natural appendage between the twin continents of
the Amini kingdom. That means that any trade that goes between north
and south, has to pass through the city and a lot of that money would
stay in the trade quarter of the city, and due to the canal that was
cut through the center of the city any trade ships that want to cut
their voyage time must travel through the city as well, this quickly
made Eula a central hub. Second reason that Eula worked so well was
because of the defensive capabilities of the city, not only is the
city open on 4 sides, making it almost impossible for any single army
to surround lay siege, any land based siege is going to starve as
long as Eula has the seas available, and the logistics of having a
coordinated fleet attack both sides of Eula from the sea is almost
impossible, and even if the city was laid to siege by mortal weapons,
and the wizard tower ,which is the last defense of any city, fell
Eula was built by dwarves, originally, for dwarves, so there are
miles and miles of tunnels underneath Eula many of them emptying out
in satellite farms and villages designed to take in refugees if the
city ever was to fall.
Enough of the simple logistics of a city, this isn't an architectural journal. No. This is a BOOK OF MAGICAL HISTORIES AND LEGENDS! So... the legend of Grun Ironband, Grun was the son of an semi influential, but very rich merchant, and like all golden trust fund dwarves he was unhappy with his lot in life. So Grun started making regular expeditions to the north, and had many wonderful and sexy adventures that I am not going to bother repeating here. Go read the “Big Grun Book of Grun” if you want those “adventures” (assuming that all copies haven't been destroyed in what I can only assume is a TERRIBLE DYSTOPIAN WASTELAND of Tarzania's future.) So after Grun was beset by a particularly violent tribe of bug bears pirates (I swear to the 73 ¼ divines of this plane and the others this is what is written) He and his crew washed up on the shore of the current Eula city site and managed to hold them off for 3 weeks (I suspect this has been ridiculously exaggerated, dwarves are notorious liars, debt mongers, and they cheat at cards.) Noticing that this was almost an impenetrable place to hold a fort, and because of his merchant background he saw the potential in becoming a trade route. When he got back to his home he instantly became enamored with building a trade capital, and was constantly laughed out of the dwarven builder council. It wasn't until his father died under mysterious dwarf drinking circumstances that he finally had the necessary start up capital to begin construction. Originally the city was just a dwarven city, which is basically a mole warden with a bunch of interlacing tunnels that all fed into a central underground market place, unfortunately because of Eula's lack of proximity to magical ore and over proximity to ocean water, the great forge that is usually seen in the center of ever dwarven city was impossible to construct, this put a major kink in the dwarven community and Grun quickly began to notice that the movement of dwarves into his new city began to slow into a trickle. Grun began to send out expeditions to neighboring cities offering a place to work and grow to all the races of the natural world. Once again he was laughed at, no self respecting human or elf would live in a hole in the ground on purpose. So Grun went back to his city, and now began to build up, and build high, and build majestic. He had the foresight to realize that dwarven stone work would not be enough to make this city the beauty that would attract the population he needed, so he brought in mythical Shardminds from the City of crystals (these shardminds would be brought back at least once more to aid the wizards in the creation of the crystal council chambers) the novelty of the shardminds brought the wizards, and the wizards decided to stay. The reasoning for that is another chapter all together, another chapter and another day. Needless to say Eula grew tall, and grew in beauty and influence. The height of the cities towers, especially the beauties in the Highblood Terrace section for the rich and affluent members of Eula nobility, earned Grun the nickname of Skytoucher, a name that was meant in jest, but he bore proudly. Grun was a funny kind of dwarf in a lot of ways.
Eula spread and became more and more
sprawling, and the dwarves eventually became a minority in the city,
and as they began to depart for more traditional dwarven venues the
thieves guild began to take advantage of the sprawling tunnels as a
way to bring in smuggled goods and people, and after the thieves got
their hold in the assassins guild began to set up an arrangement
working in tandem with the thieves. It was after Grun, in his old age
and infirmity, protested the lax law enforcement that had grown to
become accepted in Eula that he was found dead in his rooms, drowned
in a cask of smuggled dwarven ale. This was a rather pointed
warning, and in the power vacuum that Grun's death left in the
ruling class of the city the Council of the seven came into
existence, this council is composed of the top field leaders in
Magic, Merchantile, Guards, Rural outreach (dirt farmers with
delusions of grandeur in my opinion), Dwarf ambassadors, Nobility
(almost always part of the assassins guild) and the Dock master
(smugglers to be sure). I will include some of the genealogies of the
current ruling class in a later chapter of course.
Little known fact; Eula actually means
“vindication” in the deep tongue.
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