The Revised Reflection of the Voyager Miara written in the 1,307th year since the fall of the Etriad cities

There is no telling how long the city will endure. Null is cold, yes... cold because it dwells in a land where the water meets the ice and the ice digs furrows in the earth, but colder still because hard, practical men built her. Many are surprised to hear me describe the Axalanar family as practical when they fled the temperate cities of Alron to come to this stunted promontory lashed to the north by ice and to the south by furious sea, but they had their reasons. After all, they built their city well. This is the only harborage between Benar and the Dreamer's Empire, and the sheer stone walls that rake high and shelter around the city keep it safe from the furious winds and the frantic seas that slowly tear this finger of land down even as Etrea itself thrusts it forth into the water.

What crime did Ferris Axalanar commit to cause him to flee the southern lands and bring his family to this place? No one I've talked to knows, and I've talked to Hentilar pirates and refugees from the Inoan to the west, who were among the first to do trade with the fledgling city as it grew. Ferris Axalanar and his daughter Min and her daughter Shosan dealt with Nordar on their way south to reave among the fat treasure houses of the warmer coasts, they dealt with the degenerate Beharion who infested the mountain paths that were and are today the only overland routes to the city, and they found a way to attract not only the desperate and the exiled but tradesmen, slavers, thieves, merchant princes, craftsmen, fishermen and assorted flotsam of the waking races to their last bastion of the aware in the claws of the north. It became a hub almost because it had to: ships had always sheltered from the storms and great beasts of the ocean in the half-crescent cove the city rose to dominate, and their trade and lusts made it grow as sure as a mountain of dung, spread properly, will grace a garden with verdant growth.

I write now from a balcony overlooking the palace. It is in flames. The last Axalanar, Mirtus Teries, Axalanarchos of the City of the Axalanar is missing or dead. His Somnomantic advisors put to the sword or dragged down the Passage of Coin to the docks to be tossed into the water, weighted down with sacks full of lead coin of the kind preferred in far off Sarmunad. The supposed heart of the city is wreathed in blue fire, and yet I can hear the fishmongers crying out their wares as their wagons rumble down the coal roadways, and boats continue to limp their way into safe harbor. I have no idea how long the city will endure, but I am sure that it will endure for some time yet: the last Axalanar is missing or dead, but the greatest creation of his line brawls on.