Zaun

Zaun, also known as the City of Iron and Glass, is a large undercity district lying in the deep canyons and valleys threading Piltover. What light reaches below is filtered through fumes leaking from the tangles of corroded pipework and reflected from the stained glass of its industrial architecture. Zaun and Piltover were once united, but are now separate, yet symbiotic societies. Though it exists in perpetual smogged twilight, Zaun thrives, its people vibrant and its culture rich. Piltover's wealth has allowed Zaun to develop in tandem; a dark mirror of the city above. Many of the goods coming to Piltover find their way into Zaun's black markets, and hextech inventors who find the restrictions placed upon them in the city above too restrictive often find their dangerous researches welcomed in Zaun. Unfettered development of volatile technologies and reckless industry has rendered whole swathes of Zaun polluted and dangerous. Streams of toxic runoff stagnate in the city's lower reaches, but even here people find a way to exist and prosper.
Zaun is a polluted undercity located beneath Piltover - once united, they are now separate, symbiotic cultures. Stifled inventors often find their unorthodox research welcomed in Zaun, but reckless industry has rendered whole swathes of the city highly toxic. It is a place both supported and ruined by unchecked industry, mercantilism, and magic run amok. The pollution from the countless factories and laboratories is constantly spewed into the environment. The urban heart of the city is often choked with smog that blocks the morning sun and drains the sky of its pastels. Visitors have called the sky the 'Zaun Gray', and describe staring up at it akin to seeing the beginnings of a cosmic disturbance. As polluted as Zaun is above-ground, its subterranean levels are far worse. All of Zaun's runoff waste pools together in its sewers, mixing together into toxic and mysterious concoctions. Even so, thanks to a thriving black market, chemtech, and mechanical augmentation, the people of Zaun still find ways to prosper.
=== Foundation of Zaun ===
More than three thousand years ago, a port was founded in the isthmus in the would-be present location of Zaun. It would later become part of the ancient Shurima empire. It is unclear if the name of mercantile city was Kha'Zhun or Osha Va'Zaun, but over time the name was changed to Zaun.
During the Great Darkin War, Janna shielded the city from their conflicts.
=== Birth of Progress Day ===
: Zaun finalized its plans to destroy a portion of the isthmus connecting Valoran and the Southern Continent, allowing for safe sea passage between eastern and western Valoran. The plan involved using thousand of chemtech bombs to crack open an area of the land so that a cavern could be created, but the results were catastrophic, as in what seemed to be an accident the bombs triggered a series of earthquakes that completely destroyed the isthmus and sank large districts of Zaun and thousands of its citizens, while also leaking poisonous gas into the city's surviving areas.
Janna, empowered by the prayers of Zaun's people, arrived and blew away the gas, saving many lives and being eternally remembered by Zaun's denizens, converting her from a goddess of faith for sailors to a guardian deity for Zaun. She has yet to leave Zaun following this event.
Eventually Zaun was rebuilt. In order to regulate the oceanic passage they were built over, the Sun Gates were constructed, forcing all transport through the waters to be regulated by Zaun. This brought immense wealth to the city and likely led to Piltover's construction and elevation from Zaun, as the merchant clans were in control of most of the money coming through this trade route.
Construction of the Sun Gates led to great changes in eastern Valoran and the eastern seas, as Noxus was from this point on able to more easily pool together resources from across its empire without needing land travel, and Bilgewater's pirates found the seas brimming with trade ships waiting to be plundered, feeding in to the criminal underbelly of the city.
=== Explosion of the Dredge ===
Urgot, a noxian headsman who took the control of the Dredge, a chemtech prison mine, after being a prisoner of the mine himself, started a riot that ignited a chemtech vein within the mine, Urgot shook the city above, and cracked the prison open in an explosion that rivaled the birth of Zaun itself. Many prisoners died, and thousands more disappeared into the Sump beneath the city. But the strong, as ever, survived.
Category:Locations