Hesmar Ruins
Remains of an abandoned city in the savanna of the Sirta Plains, northeast of Sirta.
Description
The ruins show through the grass a day’s journey northeast of Sirta, near the coast that faces Felgrum. Two hollow towers remain, broken stretches of wall and a few fallen columns. Sand and grass have buried almost everything else. The herders of the plains do not camp among them. The people of Sirta take dressed stone from there for their houses.
History
Hesmar was a small city of Cirda, raised by ordinary humans on the savanna, near the Ambel Salt Flats. For its first generations nothing set it apart from the towns around it.
Then the skin of its children began to come out more weathered than it should. The sun of the savanna and the air of the salt flats took the blame, and no one thought it a sickness. The trait deepened with the generations. The skin hardened, and the body with it: the people of Hesmar grew broader and heavier, of another build.
No one knew the cause then, and no one knows it now. In Hesmar they told versions, and the one that has lasted speaks of a neighbor who worked the essence in a way that reached the whole city. Children hear him called the Old Man. It is a tale, and it may be false.
Fear that the change would not stop emptied the houses, family by family. Some left early, for other parts of Cirda and Felgrum. Others stayed many generations, and some took the change as a pride of their own. In time too few remained to hold the walls, and the last died or went. The Hesmerites of today descend from those who left first.
Today
Expeditions from the Vesper College of Mages are often seen working the site. They look for the cause of the change. Treasure hunters and adventurers follow them, drawn by the stories of the place and by whatever the townsfolk left behind in their flight. The college would like to protect the ruins, but it lacks the strength to do so alone, and the crown cannot guard much of Cirda.