Xorvintroth

Xorvintroth was an ancient dragonborn city of Abeir, the sister-planet of Toril.

"To deny the radiance of the stars is to walk forever in darkness."

- An inscription written in draconic, found within a shrine in Xorvintroth.

Description
Xorvintroth comprised a network of walkways and colonnades that wound around and connected narrow and angular buildings. The city's structures were made from a translucent, viridian stone that appeared as an alien form of stained-glass. They featured intricate and over-adorned architecture, with forms that arced and crested over other like static waves.

Tableaus and engraved murals of daily life in Xorvintroth could be found throughout the city. They often depicted poised dragonborn scholars dressed in elaborate robes. Aspects of these murals flickered and shifted when not viewed directly, but remained static when focused upon.

Atmosphere
"Those willing to deny themselves the radiance of the stars would be better to pluck out their eyes and cast them away."

- A more accurate translation of the shrine's inscription.

The residual Far Realm energy that permeated Xorvintroth caused mild visual and auditory hallucinations to some that traveled within. Trespassers may have seen phantasmal darkness pass over them, heard faint and indiscernible clicking sounds, or witnessed the twinkling of malicious stars across the ceiling. This alien force, combined with the debilitating surrounding chill could be exhaustive for anyone not immune to their effects. It also inspired paranoid and delusional fears in the minds of many that entered within.

Etymology
The city was named after xorvintaal, the ongoing and ever-present contests of will and power between the dragons and dragonborn of Abeir.

Geography
On Toril, Xorvintroth lay situated in the center of a large, crater-like valley in the Spine of the World mountains. Over the years it had become blanketed with so much snow and ice, that only its tallest structures could be seen.

A massive crevasse formed near the ruins of Xorvintroth, within which formed a spectral echo of the destroyed city. While a layer of ice formed above the chasm it could easily be cracked with enough pressure or weight above.

History
Millennium before the Era of Upheaval, Xorvintroth was a destination for scholarly pursuits and arcane research. The city became doomed however, when a sect of powerful dragonborn wizards―known as the Inquest―began research into the Far Realm, and opened portals to the aberrant plane of madness.

Xorvintroth lay dormant on Abeir until the Spellplague rejoined the planet with its sister-world Toril in the. The city was expelled from Abeir and transposed to Toril the depths beneath the Spine of the World mountains in coldest reaches of the North.

In the, a group of neogi aboard a deathspider touched down in the mountains near where Xorvintroth was buried, and abducted a group of goliath hunters as slaves. The neogi and their captured goliaths wandered into an area in Xorvintroth and were horrifically dismembered, and their remains strewn across the city's floor. Evidence of the slaughter was found by the giff Lieutenant Prook and group of adventurers that went searching for the missing goliaths.

Rumors & Legends
Former inhabitants of Xorvintroth were believed to haunt the city in perpetuity, continuously reliving the events of their day of destruction forever among horrors they released.

A tiny sculpture in the city depicted a figure that resembled Fizban, an avatar of the platinum dragon Bahamut, with his trademark floppy hat and canary companions in tow.

Notable Locations

 * The Orrey, a -wide device featuring a series of interlocking rings that was used to observe celestial bodies. It was constructed within a spacious domed building about in diameter. The word iskirthos, meaning "secret star", was inscribed upon one arm of the device.
 * Shrine to the True Father, an open courtyard with a -tall statue of anelderly man carrying a lantern out before him. The figure's visage had bulbous eyes and was adorned in a robe that hid five of his six arms.

Inhabitants
After the portals to the Far Realm were opened, Xorvintroth became overrun with aberrant and monstrous horrors,  including star spawn, and at least one skittering horror.

The cabal of dragonborn that doomed Xorvintroth arose after death as mindless ghosts with blazing stars in the place of their eyes. These ghosts haunted the frozen necropolis, and the adjoining chasm that manifested a spectral version of the city. Spiritual echoes of the city's dead were doomed to enterally enacted scenarios in which they fled from these ghosts.

Appearances

 * Organized Play & Licensed Adventures
 * A Plague of Ancients (Into Darkness • Volatile Thoughts • Recipe for Retribution • Burying the Past) • Dreams of the Red Wizards (The City That Should Not Be • Frozen Whispers • Uprising • Expedition to the Supreme Forge • Against the Machine)