The City of Steel
For centuries and countless generations, the City of Steel remained among the great unresolved mysteries of the old southern world. The surviving descriptions preserved within Ro’Edyne records spoke of impossible skylines, towering districts, elevated causeways, and colossal structures forged from steel and white alloy upon a scale no surviving civilization could easily reconcile. Even among the more educated restorationist courts of the later ages, many regarded such accounts with skepticism. Great cities might fall, certainly, but cities do not simply vanish. The absence of ruins surrounding the supposed site of Tykon’Mach became one of the principal arguments against the more extravagant southern chronicles.
As later inquiry would reveal, the truth proved considerably worse than the speculation.
It is now believed that portions of the greater southern territories survived the first violence of the collapse periods, though only briefly and in fractured form. What followed the arrival of DOOM appears increasingly distinct from the wider devastation occurring elsewhere across Vandyrus. Surviving reconstruction models suggest that a smaller fragment separated from the greater mass and descended directly into the southern continental belts at tremendous velocity, striking within proximity of the City of Steel itself.
The force of the impact exceeded anything previously imagined by the natural philosophers of the restoration eras. Modern geological examination suggests the temperatures generated during the strike vitrified enormous sections of the surrounding territory almost instantaneously. Rock formations became glass. Structural metals liquefied. The crust beneath the southern basin fractured catastrophically, opening vast fissures across the region. Much of the city itself, together with surrounding terrain and infrastructure, appears to have been drawn downward into the ruptured mantle zones beneath the impact region.
The unusual geography of the central Roedon straits had long troubled earlier scholars even before the southern impact theories gained wider acceptance. The depth, shape, and structural irregularity of the formation differed significantly from conventional marine erosion patterns observed elsewhere across Vandyrus. Early explanations ranged from tectonic collapse to ancient glacial flooding events, though none fully accounted for the scale or violence implied by the surrounding geological damage.
Remnants Beneath the Pines
The southern impact theory remained controversial for many generations. Many considered it an attempt to force mythological narratives onto natural history. Yet later sub-surface scans directed into the deepest portions of the fissure produced results that proved difficult to dismiss. Beneath layers of collapsed stone and vitrified material appeared massive concentrations of steel, glass, and artificial structural density inconsistent with any known natural formation. Certain scan returns suggested repeating geometric profiles buried far below the modern seabed, including angular formations later compared against surviving Ro’Edyne architectural records.
Most significant among these discoveries was the identification of Vandyrium signatures deep within the collapsed strata. Fragments displaying the unmistakable resonance patterns associated with the ancient imperial material provided the first widely accepted evidence that the southern records describing Ro’Edyne monumental construction had not been entirely allegorical. Among the more widely circulated scan reproductions was the partially exposed upper section of what many scholars believe may have been one of the great stepped pyramid complexes described within later imperial accounts.
No serious excavation attempts were undertaken during the early restoration ages. The depth of the collapse zones, combined with the instability of the surrounding geological structures, placed the remains well beyond the reach of contemporary mining capability. Even had such operations been possible, many scholars argued that the buried remains of Tykon’Mach no longer existed in any meaningful architectural sense, but rather as a fused mass of liquefied alloy, collapsed stone, and vitrified continental material compressed deep beneath the modern straits.
“Thus the City of Steel passed from history into a stranger category entirely.
Not ruined. Not abandoned. Buried beneath the wounded geography of Vandyrus itself.“
