Noxi

***Noxi, The Jewel of Night***

**Brief History:**  Once the seat of Power for House Benedictus. Noxi, The Jewel of Night, was the Capital of the combined Principalities of Eras. The Great Houses gathered at the tributary of the Three Rivers and held a Council of the Great Families. From this Council a Kingdom was born.
The Great Houses comprised of; Andrazzi, Orsino, Volante, Urso, Juventii, Accardii, Ovindraenus, Praeconis, Remulanius, Salvino, Tuccio, Verressi and the Cognitus.

The Council went on for weeks as the Great Houses debated and set the structure that would become the laws of the Kingdom. The clear favorite to emerge with the Throne was one of the Eldest House Leaders, Verinus Andrazzi. Known for his mastery of both arcane arts and sword play, Verinus Andrazzi was said to be a cunning warrior and an unforgiving adversary. A man that was nearing sixty summers and with no male heirs, he was pushed aside for a much younger House Lord in a surprise vote. Vittellius Cognitus was voted in as the First King of Erasti. In order to appease Verinus Andrazzi and make sure the newfound Kingdom would remain at peace, Verinus’s daughter, Junia was to be wed to the young Vittellius.
Upon taking his crown, Vittellius Cognitus dissolved his House and took the name Basileus Benedictus, First King of Erasti and his first act after marrying Junia was to name the twelve remaining Great Houses, Grand Duke’s. Verinus Andrazzi was granted a place of honor among the new ‘Duca’s’ and named Royal Advisor. This tied the Andrazzi House and the Royal Line until it’s end, at the Field of the Broken Crown by the hand of Sillah Irah, known as the Vampiric Queen of Ashes, Wife of Modius the First Kindred. A fortnight after the King’s Death and end to the Benedictus Line, the Jewel of the Night, Noxi was razed and cursed by magic of unparalleled magnitude. Thus it remains today.

***Noxi Today:***
 A murderous looking storm hangs unmoving above the city darkening all below it.  A dead grey fog covers Noxi in a permanent, obscuring haze making the city appear no brighter than a dim twilight at the best of times. It is said that even the Sewers, catacomb, Under Caverns all bare the curse of the perpetual fog.
 The city is devastated and remains so after many decades of abandonment. Like a wound that cannot heal, the Wards of Noxi remain broken and neglected. The last day of Noxi and it’s brutal end can be seen should one enter the city. Bodies, eighty years in the open, have not decayed. Blood runs in the streets as if freshly spilled, weeping from the walls itself. Magic spells have taken on a life of their own and roam the city. Incurable diseases, blight’s and poxes spawn from the most innocuous of places. Monsters, aberrations and the undead are rumored to be skulking about and things much worse and darker have been rumored to find a home in the city. The Southeastern portion of the city has become an unstable zone where the veil of the Planes seems spread thin and is vulnerable. The area, once known for several schools of arcane study, seems to have a random Juxtaposition with different planes, both Inner and Outer. It is believed that many a ‘thing’ has escaped during these overlaps. Making the city even more dangerous with each passing week.
For reasons unknown to all and a question even Divine Guidance will not answer, the maladies, death fogs, living spells and monsters all seem to stay within the crumbling wall of the cursed city. The incurable plagues would take root with those that returned from the city, thus a heavily enforced and permanent quarantine was placed on the city many years ago and remain in effect today on pain of death.

The city of Noxi is a festering malignancy where natural laws have been bent and cursed into a warped darkness.

**Living Spells:** Living spells are not a natural form of life. They have no need for self-preservation, and communicating with these creatures is nearly impossible. They have no earthly needs: They don’t eat, sleep, or reproduce. They are drawn naturally to sites of arcane power. Commonly found in the Manifest Zone, they have been spotted in all corners of Noxi, above and below.

**Poxes, Plagues and Curses:** There have been an untold number of new maladies originating from Noxi. Each ward seems to generate its own category of incurable magic resistance diseases, but it is the Pestilence Ward that seems to have the worst of the worst. Whether it’s the Red Pox, Rotscale, Blight Maggots, Blackwort Phage or the Screaming Sickness, the diseases of Noxi are a healer’s worst nightmare and seem to generate and spread with complete randomness.

***DM Notes for Noxi***

**The Sky Above ~** In the sky above Noxi hangs a perpetual storm. The wind seems not to move it and it churns upon itself endlessly. While the violence of Peace Storms have all but become a memory on Clayth, they hit Noxi with regular abandon. It has also been reported that Living Spells and worse make their homes in the clouds above the city making them all the more dangerous.

**The City ~** Cursed, tainted, forever changed. The former Capital of Erasti has become a quarantine nightmare that is mostly ignored by the Nation's people. For reasons unknown, the calamity that corrupts and ruins the city seems to remain contained. Most of the darkness only extends to the immediate area past the walls.

 Just after the city's fall, many of the remaining noble lords and citizens took to the city. Some for reclamation and resettlement, others for loot and easy spoils. What they found was far worse than anyone could imagine. Most did not return after entering the city, those who did would be tainted, diseased and driven mad. Soon only paid adventurers would enter under official business. After most expeditions failed and the survivors returned with incurable magical, horrific diseases. The City declared a Quarantined Zone by order of the newly formed Gov’t that emerged from a noble Civil War. Over time, the Wards and locations of the city have been renamed to better reflect the twisted visage it currently displays.

**The Sewers ~** No longer maintained, they have become a drak ruinous series of twists and turns with who knows what lurking in the darkness. Clearly, creatures unknown now call these tunnels of filth home. How they got there, or how they flourish in the extreme circumstances in a mystery. Many of the walled tunnels have collapsed, some exposing once hidden caverns.

**The Under Caverns ~** The City of Noxi always has had a series of deep, natural caves running underneath it. These caverns were the earliest catacombs for settlers of the regions. At some point in the city’s early history, the caverns were sealed off and built over. Now exposed to the calamity of ruination of the city, a whole expanse can be explored, though not without the normal issues found in the city above. Here too, underneath the sewers and catacombs the curse of the city lays waiting for those who venture forth.

**The Underdark ~** There are no known entrance points to the underdark from Noxi, yet no records exist why the under caverns were sealed off. Could it have been that the natural caves lead to the darkest and deepest of areas on Vir’Exalon? Strange rumors swirl about from the journals of the early expeditions to reclaim the city.

* **The Manifest Zone**
* **The Stoned Garden**
* **Ward of the Shattered Crown**
* **Pestilence Ward**
	+ Keep of Entropy
	+ House of Andrazzi
	+ Soul Weeper Tree
	+ Fountain of Calamity
* **The Sundered Ward**
	+ House of Poisoned Hope
	+ Millpond of Misery
	+ Grove of Chaos
	+ House of Decay
* **Fortress of Prophets**
	+ Tomb of the Unseen
	+ Cells of the Damned
	+ Rusted Pits
* **The Shattered Ward**
	+ The Sting
	+ Keep of Unheard Prayers
* **Scarlett Markets**
	+ Well of Sorrows
	+ The Vortex
	+ Blight Rock Keep
* **Ward of the Coven**
	+ Widow Maker's Alley
	+ Temple of Bane
	+ Misfortune's Malice
* **Omen's Blight, a Ward**
	+ The Darkmist that Dreams
	+ Catacomb's of the Endless
* **The Scourge Ward**
	+ A House without Tomorrow
* **The Unhallowed Ward**
	+ Cathedral of Malignancy
* **Ward of Living Rot**
	+ Maiden's Pain
	+ Grove of Lasacrium
	+ Strife's Manor
	+ Colosseum of Ashes
* **Wailing Ward**
	+ Catacombs of Walking Rot
	+ Keep of Tears
* **Skittering Steps, a Ward**
	+ Gate of Anguish
	+ House of the Nameless God
	+ Cold Iron Keep
	+ Conquered Way
* **Unchained Ward**
	+ The Maw
	+ Keep of the Iron Thorn
* **Village of Whispers**
	+ Shambling Graveyard