Camellia

**Camellia** is a location in *The Mystic Menace.* It is a kingdom hidden inside the volcano, Mount Sentensiya, with its location unknown to the rest of the world.

## History

During the First Great Fire, Aeric burnt down the library, destroying all of Camellia's records in the process. This allowed him to rewrite history as he saw fit, leaving almost no traces of the past left to recover Camellia's true history. Only oral tradition from the goblins, remnants of the royal graveyard, and ghostly extracts of Elisyan's memories reveal hints of the past.

### Founding

Camellia's population is made of wandering travellers, who either stumbled upon Camellia by accident or actively searched for it, attracted by the kingdom's sanctuary-like nature. It is unknown who was Camellia's first ruler, but it is said that many former rulers came to Camellia from other kingdoms, forming some of Camellia's oldest families. It is likely that an exiled ruler discovered Mount Sentensiya and established a small village inside the volcano, its population slowing growing over the years as more people immigrated to Camellia.

### The Hurricane Rulers

Luna's family ruled over Camellia for an unspecified amount of time. Being a family of powerful wind-wielders, they were able to protect the kingdom by creating impenetrable hurricane winds that bordered the rim of Mount Sentensiya, acting as barriers to any unwanted visitors. However, due to unknown reasons, Luna did not inherit her family's wind powers, and only had materia levels equal to a commoner. Being the blood heir of the throne, Luna was still crowned queen, but many doubted her abilities to rule. Luna herself worried about Camellia's safety, particularly since she didn't have any means of recreating the wind borders her mother made to protect Camellia from intruders.

After discovering Elisyan was a lightning wielder, Luna proposed that he rule Camellia alongside her and they got married. For many years, Luna and Elisyan kept Camellia in peace and prosperity, but they soon learned that Aeric and Kinarra were searching for Camellia. At the time, Luna was pregnant with Elisyan's son, Soran, so she and Elisyan decided to keep her pregnancy a secret, certain that Aeric would try to kill Soran if he found out about him. Luna died from childbirth, and as a final promise to his wife, Elisyan kept Soran's true identity a secret from everyone, including Soran. By the time Soran turned eighteen, Aeric invaded Camellia, and it was too late for Elisyan to tell Soran the truth. He wrote a letter to Soran, hid the letter in a rooster statue in Tempest Castle's garden, and told his advisor, Corvus Nominari, to bring Soran to the statue. However, Corvus Nominari had aligned himself with Aeric and Kinarra, and never told Soran about Elisyan's request.

### The First Great Fire

After entering Camellia with Corvus Nominari's help, Aeric set a fire on Camellia's library as a distraction, enabling him to fight Elisyan in secret while the people of Camellia tried to put out the quickly spreading fire. The fire completely destroyed the library and damaged a large chunk of houses and shops in the downtown district. Unknown to the commoners, the fire was also the trigger for the plague. Anyone that came in contact with the flames caught the plague, with a glowing four-clawed mark appearing on their wrists. From then on, anyone with the plague could spread it easily to another person though physical contact. People caught the plague through something as simple as holding hands, or even by touching something that an infected person had touched. Within hours, nearly everyone in Camellia had the plague.

With no guards to come to Elisyan's aid, and with Elisyan himself now old and weak, it was easy for Aeric and Kinarra to defeat him. They killed Elisyan and blamed the plague on him, since the commoners believed Elisyan had mysteriously disappeared. Because of the sudden plague, and because of the First Great Fire, both of which happened on the same day as Elisyan's disappearance, the people of Camellia believed that Elisyan had abandoned them. In the chaos and panic that ensued, they accepted Aeric and Kinarra's arrival with little resistance, desperate for new leaders to bring back order.

### The Eternal Rulers

On the surface, Aeric and Kinarra ruled fairly, keeping the peace as well as ensuring that the people of Camellia are well cared for. Kinarra created the Phantom Wolves, a covert organization meant to eliminate Camellia's biggest threats and criminals. Aeric protected Camellia with indestructible fire walls that bordered the rim of the volcano. Together, Aeric and Kinarra kept Camellia safe from outside threat, as well prosperous and thriving with wealth and riches. Little by little, however, the effects the plague began to show. The more lives Aeric and Kinarra took with the plague, the more they needed to retain their youth. More and more people kept dying, the numbers growing drastically over the years. Aeric banned the commoners from leaving Camellia, so that he could harvest as much lives as possible, though he claimed it was to keep the plague contained from the outside world. If anyone raised suspicions about the king's intentions, Aeric killed them in secret, hiding their corpses in the castle labyrinth. All the while, Aeric got rid of all records of Elisyan, any traces that he ever ruled there, slowly rewriting Camellia's history until nothing left of the past remained.

### The Second Great Fire

A nobleman, Taran Khan, grew increasingly wary of the plague's origins. He was unknowingly Soran's descendant, another powerful lightning wielder, though Taran never knew about his powers because they were suppressed by the plague. He may have also been suspicious of his own lineage, as he kept his family heirloom-a magical flying scarf, gifted to Soran by Elisyan-a secret from the rest of Camellia, and Taran also made his son, Terrance, promise to keep the scarf's existence a secret. After his wife died of the plague, Taran and his friends planned an assassination attempt against Aeric and Kinarra. They set fire on Tempest Castle, trapping everyone inside. Unfortunately, Aeric and Kinarra escaped, while everyone else still trapped inside the castle died. The fire was so destructive that the castle had to be rebuilt ground-up, a feat that took twelve years to complete.

After the events of the Second Great Fire, Taran and his friends were arrested and convicted for attempted regicide, arson, and the mass murder of the servants in Tempest Castle. They were executed by beheading at town square, before a large crowd of Camellia's citizens, a crowd that included the four-year-old Terrance. Once again, any suspicions about Aeric and Kinarra's involvement with the plague were quelled with the execution of Taran Khan.

### The Third and Fourth Great Fire

In the Third Great Fire, the phantom wolves set fire to a warehouse in downtown Camellia. Although the warehouse appeared to be storing lumber, it also secretly housed sweet-smelling hallucinogenic flowers that a merchant, Diarmad, had been cultivating. The ambitious merchant wanted to control everyone in Camellia, particularly the eternal rulers, and had planned to spread the flowers all across the kingdom, sending everyone who inhaled the scent into nightmarish hallucinations of their worst fears. The phantoms captured Diarmid, interrogated him on the locations of his miasma-flowers, then poisoned him and set the warehouse on fire, making it appear as an accident. Strong winds that night carried the flames to the rest of Diarmid's shops, igniting the street in an inferno. The fire spread faster than expected, engulfing half of downtown. Despite this, the phantom wolves managed to contain the fire, perform a rescue mission, and prevent any civilian causalities. No one knew what caused the fire, though many speculated that it had been the mythical phantom wolves.

The phantoms saved two of the miasma-flowers and gave them to the king, believing he wanted the flowers merely as evidence safely locked away. However, Aeric used the flowers to grow more of them and used the flowers as another deadly trap in the castle labyrinth.

Sometime before the events of *The Mystic Menace,* Isadora, a young farm hand, attempted to build 'self-lighting fireworks' with steel wool and copper wire. Unfortunately, the fireworks were faulty, causing hundreds of sparks to ignite on-ground instead of shooting into the sky. The fireworks set fire to the farmlands, causing the Fourth Great Fire. The suffocating fires destroyed half the wheat fields, the most profitable crop in Petrocious farmlands, and permanently damaged the already-abandoned portion of farmland. The fire was put out before it spread to the outskirts of downtown Camellia.

### Amber and Saros

One evening in the year 1355, a lightning storm causes the rooster statue in Tempest Castle gardens to nearly shatter. A fragment of the statue broke off, allowing the bright light of Elisyan's hidden opal to break through the gardens. While visiting the castle for a healing session, Isadora noticed the strange light and snuck into the garden to search for it. There, she discovered Elisyan's letter and the black opal. As soon as she touched the opal, it fused to her palm, healing her from the plague. The black opal also allowed Isadora to wield lightning, though the source of her newfound powers were unknown to her. Isadora fled the castle after the guards witnessed her summoning lightning.

After learning about a lightning wielder in the castle garden, Aeric and Kinarra issued an arrest for Isadora (giving her the alias 'Amber' since no one knew who the lightning wielder was), and banned everyone, the guards included, from entering the garden. Terrance Khan, now a nineteen-year-old solider working for the eternal rulers, found it strange that the king and queen didn't want anyone in the garden. He decided to sneak into the garden himself to investigate. Likewise, Isadora snuck back into the castle gardens to retrieve Elisyan's letter, which she'd forgotten there in all the earlier chaos. Terrance found Isadora in the garden, and having already met several times before, quickly recognized her, despite Isadora's face being concealed in the darkness. Instead of turning her into the authorities, Terrance let her go, much to Isadora's surprise. After reading Elisyan's letter together, they learned the truth behind the plague and decided to team up to defeat the eternal rulers, believing that Isadora was the true heir because of her lightning powers.

Aeric and Kinarra, on the other hand, issued an arrest for Amber and her accomplice (later named 'Saros'). They planned to kill Saros and capture Amber, hoping to use her powers to extract energy from the soon-approaching Dark Side of the Moon. From then on, Amber and Saros appeared at various places across Camellia, their true motives a mystery to the commoners. Though people feared Amber, they didn't hate her, an idea that troubled Aeric, especially if Amber revealed to the commoners that he was responsible for the plague. To prevent people from siding with Amber, Aeric spread rumours that lead people to think Amber was involved with the plague, the source of all the troubles Camellia has been facing. Once Isadora/Amber accidentally destroyed the healing sphere, these rumours appeared to be confirmed, causing everyone to openly go against Amber and Saros.

### The Thunder Festival

On the night of the annual thunder festival, the dark side of the moon became fully visible for the first time in 500 years. That night, Aeric and Kinarra called an audience to the amphitheatre to witness the execution of Sindak, an accomplice of Amber and Saros. This spectacle successfully lured in Amber and Saros, who put a stop to the execution at the cost of revealing their true identities and getting arrested. Kinarra stabbed Terrance with a ruby dagger, causing him to pass out from shock. Believing that Terrance had been killed, Isadora attacked the amphitheatre in rage, eventually fighting one-on-one with Aeric and nearly defeating him. However, Isadora's black opal, which was unknowingly infused with Elisyan's powers, had finally been depleted, allowing Aeric to gain the advantage and defeat her.

Aeric quickly realized that Isadora wasn't Elisyan's descendant, figured out that Terrance was the true heir, and tried to kill Isadora until Terrance stepped in to stop him. After learning the truth about his lineage, Terrance agreed to "help" Aeric extract energy from the moon in exchange for healing Isadora's near-fatal injuries. Isadora was sent to the castle gardens, where she healed herself using rubies from the healing tree. She explored the garden again for clues, discovering a secret royal graveyard hidden inside a large bronze tree. There, she met an invisible, ghostly figure—King Elisyan—who showed Isadora memories of the centuries past. Now knowing the truth, Isadora gathered forces and prepared to stop Aeric and Kinarra once and for all.

Meanwhile, on the castle rooftop, Terrance learned how to summon lightning from Aeric, stalling while waiting for Isadora's return. Isadora arrived at the rooftop, but too late, because Terrance had already unknowingly filled the Executioner with enough lightning energy to allow Aeric to extract energy from the dark moon all on his own. Theo, Chandra, Valerius, and Shuiyu arrived to help Isadora and Terrance, but Kinarra appeared as well, transforming into a sea dragon to hold them off. As the fight goes on, Aeric used lightning from the Executioner to extract aither from the dark moon and take it for himself, giving Aeric the ability to set fires that immediately drain the life energy from whoever touches it.

Although half the population of Camellia witness these events unfold, Aeric is unfazed, taunting them for never believing Amber's words. He leaves the castle with Kinarra (who is still in dragon form), summoning the impending eruption of Mount Sentensiya along with a massive wildfire that sets Camellia in flames. While Theo and the others rescue the people of Camellia from the fires, Isadora and Terrance fight Aeric and Kinarra head on. In the final moments of the battle, Aeric was about to call on the volcano to erupt when Isadora used Terrance's storm lightning to electrocute Aeric and Kinarra, killing them. Isadora and Terrance destroyed the Executioner, and the plague was finally lifted from the people of Camellia. The wildfires stopped and the lava froze over, leaving Camellia heavily damaged, but intact.

### The King of Thunder

With hundreds of people dead, thousands injured, downtown destroyed, the lake and river half-dried up, and the farmlands severely run-down, the King's court decided that Camellia needed an interim ruler, one that everyone would readily agree to follow. The court was torn between Terrance, the blood heir to the throne, and Isadora, Camellia's saviour.

Although Terrance was reluctant at first, he accepted the role as king of Camellia after being persuaded by Isadora, who was convinced that his cautious thinking and careful planning would be best for the kingdom. Terrance was crowned before the people of Camellia, sharing his coronation with Isadora, who he gave the title of Guardian of Camellia. Together, they ruled over Camellia with the support of the commoners. Since the plague was lifted, everyone was finally able to harness materia again, using their newfound powers to help rebuild Camellia from the wreckage. To commemorate those that had died from the plague, a memorial tower was built. In the months that followed Terrance's coronation, the kingdom began to recover, slowly returning to the peace and prosperity that it had lost centuries ago.

## Notable Locations

### Tempest Castle

A castle on a hill where the King, Queen, and courtiers dwell.

### Amphitheatre

Open-air venue used for entertainment, sports, and other performances. Its most prominent features are the giant bronze warrior statues flanking either side of the stage.

### Downtown

Makes up the majority of the kingdom. Clusters of streets, houses, mansions, shops, and other facilities vital to city life. Includes the Heli Bank and Library of Camellia.

### Town Square

The heart of the kingdom. A marketplace consisting of a square plaza surrounded by the Bell Tower, Drum Theatre, and various merchant shops.

### Petrocious Farmlands

Where the majority of Camellia's food is grown. Specializes in wheat, cattle, chicken, turnips, tomatoes, pears, and other fruits and vegetables.

## Features

Camellia is self-sufficient, having plenty of natural resources to keep the kingdom thriving without any need for exports or trading with other kingdoms. The Tunet River runs through Camellia and empties into Lake Taifun, providing plenty of fish and freshwater. A large forest encircles the edges of Camellia, filled with natural vegetation and lumber. A wide array of flora and fauna can be found in Camellia, such as camellia flowers (as the kingdom's name implies), orchids, silkworms, carabao, wolves, crows, bamboo, Narra trees, cherry blossom trees, koi, and so on.

The weather in Camellia is always fairly pleasant, similar to tropical weather but without the intense humidity or threat of typhoons. Since Camellia resides inside a volcano, the soil is fertile and rich, proving suitable farmland for growing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Man-made hills also serve as rice terraces, but these were long abandoned in favour of planting rice alongside other on-ground crops in Petrocious farmlands.

Mount Sentensiya's volcanic walls, made of obsidian, serve as natural borders to Camellia, preventing intruders from entering Camellia. Several volcanic gemstones like geodes can be found in Camellia as well as other gemstones like agates, pearls, quartz, amber, diamonds, sapphire, jade, and most notable rubies, which are grown from ruby trees. There is also a small coal mine that went out of use decades before the start of *The Mystic Menace.*

## Clans

The wealthiest and/or largest clans in Camellia include the following families:

* **Heli** - Owns and operates the eponymous Heli Bank.
* **Tomi** - A military family.
* **Nominari** - Advisors to the King.
* **Soarelui** - Nobility, including several chiefs and officials of Tempest Castle.
* **Petrocious** - Owns and operates the eponymous Petrocious Farmlands, the source of the majority of Camellia's food.
* **Khan** - A family of scholars.
* **Antares** - Cotton merchants.
* **Rei** - Landlords of several homes in Camellia's downtown districts.
* **Isagani** - Landowning nobility.

## Emergency Protocols

In the event of outsider/enemy invasions or natural disasters (e.g., volcanic eruptions), all bells and drums in the Bell Tower and Drum Theatre are sounded simultaneously. This alerts the citizens of Camellia that they must immediately vacate to Tempest Castle, the largest, strongest, and most structurally sound building in Camellia. All citizens are to wait inside the castle until the rulers or head officials deem it safe to return to their houses.

## Trivia

* The kingdom is named after the camellia flowers. Most types of camellias have no fragrance or scent.