Lore:Tear

Tear (also known as Dres)  is one of the eight major cities on mainland Morrowind.  Tear is the capital of the Great House Dres, whose sphere of influence revolves around an agrarian agricultural society, building its vast fortune from the export of saltrice and its grip on the slavery industry.   Tear is also known as the Jewel of the East and it is the most open to trade and commerce compared to other cities on the mainland. But even so, strange happenings occur in the night and few people ever complain about it.  
 

Layout & Geography
The Tear region is notably hot and humid, given its proximity to    and the greater Dres District, which mainly sweeps across the province's southern borderlands, is a blend of the central plains in   and the swampy interior of Black Marsh. Tear is the epicenter of a series of plantations  that harvest everything from    to  .  These plantations are walled-off and heavily guarded by Dres spearmen, sometimes riding on large  -like insects.  Tear is neighbored by several settlements, including   to the north-northwest,   to the far west-northwest, and Black Marsh to the south,  toward  . 

Notable Locales


History
It is currently unknown when Tear was founded, but House Dres was given its status of a Great House sometime before the 84th Year of the Golden Peace after a slave-raid on Tear's neighbor, Thorn orchestrated by Grandmaster  . This event was what also established House Dres' role as a predominant supplier in the slave industry.   Scholars from the   have stated that House Dres had been at the forefront of the Dunmeri slave trade since the mid- . 

Ten years after his initial battle near  , the Warrior-Poet,   re-encountered the   near Tear, who already ransacked three villages. The monster's carapace was now worn by a wayward shaman of the  . The   had imbued the armor with mythic inflexibility, making it molt onto the shaman and have their bones stretched. Vivec defeated the monster with the   and entrusted the carapace to the loyal mystics of the  . 

At some point in the  , Tear was caught amid a conflict called the  , between the   and Morrowind. The   defeated  's fleet at the Battle of Tear Harbor and even took one of their ships and gave it to the legion, the  . It later perished during the chase for   in  . 

Sometime in the late  , the  i crime boss,   sends his band of brigands to a plantation outside of Tear to free his kinsmen from the Dres slavers. The  ,   was able to free some of the slaves and it caused a giant revolt across the plantation. In the end, the Dres slavers were freed and the slaves were liberated but Cyrus went down his own route alone after that and it soon brought him to  . 

During the   in the late  , the city-state of Tear was an active settlement. It was ruled by King Niasth and had a rivalry with  .  When   erupted in  , cities on the mainland like Mournhold were mostly unaffected,  however, Tear suffered greatly from the cataclysm. An account from the farmer,  , claims that the ground turned into mush and the swamp essentially swallowed up half the city. Earthquakes tore through the ground and caused water to spill in until people were knee-deep in muck water. People tried to save their families and livestock from the flooding water and when the quakes stopped, the city's southern wall crumbled. Other farmers tried to help everyone they could in Tear's destruction, poor and wealthy alike.  It is unknown how Tear faired during the  , which saw the  s cut a bloody swathe across southern Morrowind until they were put down by  . 

Gallery
 

See Also
For game-specific information, see the Arena article.
Books


Notes
The   of   would sometimes make routine trips toward Tear to buy slaves from House Dres. There is a rumor that the Sload practice their   on the races of Tamriel, which the author of   believes is why they purchase as many slaves as they do from Tear. 
Arena was originally conceived as a fighting game featuring a tournament that took the player to each of Tamriel's cities to challenge different gladiatorial teams. According to a file from that stage of development left behind in the final game, Tear was known as the "Jewel of the East", and its gladiatorial team would have been called "the Immortals". 

References