Aeor

Aeor was a flying city from the Age of Arcanum that crashed in Eiselcross during the Calamity. By 836 PD, Aeor is being excavated by a few outposts for the ancient relics to be found there.

Cognouza Ward
One section of the city of Aeor was called the Cognouza Ward, and the leaders of that ward were called the Somnovem. The Somnovem orchestrated Cognouza's escape from the destruction of Aeor, and wish now to return. They betrayed Aeor to ensure their survival.

Praesidis Ward
The Mighty Nein entered the Praesidis Ward during their exploration of the ruins of the city. The location was identified as "Convocation Grounds, Central Deliberations", and held a large amphitheater with hundreds of mummified bodies surrounding a raised dais and podium. A central figure near the podium was caught in a stasis bubble at the moment the city was destroyed and the rest of the crowd annihilated. The neighborhood also held several other official-looking buildings among the homes.

Genesis Ward
Much like the Praesidis Ward, the Genesis Ward, when the Mighty Nein found it, was an open neighborhood. It appeared to be more of an industry-focused section of the city, as opposed to residential, and had fewer adornments than other wards. It was also the ward that appeared to have seen the most destruction.

The center of the ward was a massive crater with high, jagged walls, as though something beneath it had detonated. However, the shape of the crater did not always seem consistent with the damage. When Beau looked down into it, she saw a number of waterfalls and the subterranean levels of the city, lit by faint lights. She could not see the bottom of the crater. Some of the structures floated in place without visible supports. Beau realized, from the shape of the crater, that it had not been a simple explosion, but rather that something had burrowed or drilled into where the southern lip of the crater is and then detonated. The temperature in the ruins, while never warm, was extremely inconsistent, with some freezing sections and others that were more comfortably chilly.


 * Level B-1: Held a large hall, "Component Keeping and Dry Storage" and "Records 104".
 * Level B-2: Held the "Elemental Energy Funneling" room.
 * Level B-3: Held the "Repair Terminal" and "Maintenance" Chamber.
 * Repair Terminal: The Repair Terminal is a cylindrical chamber with something that looks like rebar sticking out of the back wall. The center of the room has a ten foot wide brass dome that is slightly off-kilter. The interior is cushioned and full of metal implements. This chamber is used to repair aeormatons.
 * B-9: Held the "T-Dock Project", the "Rejuvenation Chamber" and "Immensus Gate".
 * T-Dock Project: The "T-Dock Project" entrance is sealed with a teal-colored crystal that can be opened with a bracelet. The chamber is lead-lined, and has a complex runic circle on a raised platform in the center. The runes combined elements of transmutation and dunamancy, specifically the areas of those schools pertaining to the alteration of time. The notes inside this chamber included references to a "Primal Artifact" with drawings of the Luxon beacon, indicating that the Aeorians learned from the beacon how to travel backwards in one's own timeline, leaving an anchoring echo behind. The Temporal Dock allowed them to spend only a few seconds in transit, but Athodan and Ayoshadaf, the researchers, mentioned their concern about the physical toll this travel took. They also found that subjects who spent longer than they had planned for in the past were unable to return, as those anchoring echoes did not last long back in their timeline. On their return trip to Aeor, Caleb and Essek revisited the T-Dock chamber. While they were both tempted by the opportunity to change their pasts, they ultimately decided against it. Caleb destroyed the interior of the chamber, to Essek's approval.
 * Rejuvenation Chamber: The Rejuvenation Chamber is a large room with two empty platforms at the center-back encased in cylindrical glass labeled "Terminal RE 01" and "Terminal RE 02". One is heavily cracked. There is a purple crystal at the base of each. An amethyst bracelet opens the terminals. When Fjord stood in the terminal, activating it, the Mighty Nein observed the chamber glow with a vivid purple light and could see Fjord's skeletal form inside of him. The Rejuvenation Terminal granted the effect of a long rest, which Caleb and Essek determined was due to a highly localized manipulation of time.
 * Immensus Gate: The Immensus Gate is one of Aeor's larger planar transportation devices, and is capable of creating a portal into other Planes of Existence, including the Elemental Plane of Water and the Astral Plane.

Ars Ward
Little is known about the Ars Ward, but based on its etymology it may have been a center for the arts within the city.

Crash sites
When the city was brought down during the Calamity, the bulk of it crashed onto the island of Foren in Eiselcross. Large and small sections of it broke off during its descent and are scattered in various locations across the island. Some of the crash sites have been mapped, identified, and to greater or lesser extents, explored.


 * A2: The A2 crash site was at the bottom of a deep pit. The buried ruins in one direction held a street with a stasis bubble in which were frozen three of the ancient inhabitants of the city. The other tunnel led to a biological research facility containing several Aeorian hunters in stasis and at least one creature which had broken loose. Beyond that was a massive arboretum of warped and corrupted trees leading to a room containing a threshold crest.
 * A5: At the A5 crash site was a room in which was embedded a particularly large (one-and-a-half to two feet wide) threshold crest, which are used for teleporting entire cities between planes.
 * Salsvault: A crash site located on a region of glacial ice called Thin Sheets, Salsvault was a laboratory where magical diseases such as Frigid Woe were developed for the purpose of divine warfare.

Society
Among the other flying cities of the age, Aeor had a reputation for being warmongering. The Care and Culling, a political assassination plot in which Aeorian politicians sent sleeper agent aeormatons to their rivals as gifts, may have led to this reputation. Following this plot, most other societies in the Age of Arcanum were reluctant to accept Aeorian tech.

Demographics
Most of the populace in Aeor consisted of humans and elves. The people in Aeor created living constructs called aeormatons as companions. Aeormatons were considered full citizens of the city.

Notable people

 * Athodan: Information was found in the records room in the Genesis Ward. Athodan made the inspired find of "The Relic", and worked in rejuvenation. Athodan's weaving of necromantic glyph work revealed unique arcane properties, and The Magistri were said to be pleased.
 * Ayoshadaf: An archmage who worked with Athodan studying the "Primal Artifact", channeling the seemingly limitless and largely untapped resource of temporal transmutation. They discovered one could temporarily shunt to a point in one's own history (leaving an anchoring echo behind) and that it might even be possible to go beyond one's own timeline.
 * Bolo Maximus: An allegedly aspiring reporter who moved to Avalir before it fell. Loquatius Seelie brought her as a date to the party at Palazzo Por'co.
 * Brashaar: An architect and prominent mage, one of many who doomed the people of Aeor by filling their minds with grandiose thoughts, drawing the ire of the gods. She was found by the Mighty Nein in a stasis bubble on the dais of the political discourse amphitheater, surrounded by long-dead and mummified residents of the city.
 * Devexian: An aeormaton that was restored to working order with the help of the Mighty Nein.
 * Ferol Sal: A necromancer and head researcher at the disease lab known as Salsvault, where he helped develop the manufactured disease Frigid Woe.

History
During the Age of Arcanum, the massive flying city-state of Aeor was a place of invention and magic, ruled by its mages, and considered one of the most powerful of the pre-Calamity arcane societies. Held aloft by brumestone, the bluish stone used in sky ships with the property of being easily enchanted to lift, Aeor's people had grown powerful enough to create weapons capable of killing the gods. According to Loras, an apprentice of Eldamir the Wise, Aeor was preparing an attack on one of the smaller flying cities, Lathras.

However, the city also suffered from tumult within, even as its success and growing abilities drew the ire of the gods. During the Calamity, a consortium of both the Prime Deities and Betrayer Gods called a truce long enough to crash the city onto the island of Foren in Eiselcross. It was believed that there were no survivors from the fall of Aeor.

Post-Divergence ruins
Aeor was long believed to have been obliterated and its location forgotten. However, artifacts and relics from Aeor began to be discovered and started making their way into the Empire around 828 or 829 PD. Dwendalian, Uthodurnian, Xhorhasian, and mercenary expeditions began searching the hazardous terrain of its crash site for more. Kryn Dynasty and Empire outposts are currently excavating what remnants they are able to access of the fallen city.

Caleb recalled that the material used to power both the golems and the collar that he recovered from the Heirloom Sphere does not exist naturally, but that some of the Age of Arcanum's upper echelon of mages utilized the material in a matter similar to an arcane battery. Some elements of it had been traded, usually scavenged from the northern ruins of Aeor.

Lady Vess DeRogna then offered the Mighty Nein unspecified work "in the north" to be done sometime after the peace talks concluded. When the party inquired at her residence, she asked for their assistance with an expedition to Foren to investigate Aeorian ruins for artifacts. They traveled with her there, where she was killed by Lucien and the party discovered the link between the Somnovem of the Cognouza Ward of Aeor and mysterious living city in the Astral Sea which they saw in Vokodo's dying vision.

The Mighty Nein ventured across Eiselcross in pursuit of Lucien, first coming across the A5 and then A2 crash sites. They traveled alongside the Tombtakers for a time, and learned of a secret entrance to the main crash site crater. After splitting with the Tombtakers and regrouping with other allies, the Nein ventured into the main ruin itself. The secret entrance led the party to the Praesidis Ward, and they continued travelling to the Genesis Ward. In their trip through the ruins, the Mighty Nein found evidence that the Aeorians had discovered a Luxon beacon, and had made developments in the arcane field of dunamancy. The party then made use of the Immensus Gate to travel to the Astral Sea, where they found and defeated Cognouza.

Some months after the defeat of Cognouza, Caleb Widogast and Essek Thelyss returned to Aeor to further study the ruins and report their findings to the Cobalt Soul. During this trip they destroyed materials and research enabling time travel in the T-Dock chamber of the Genesis Ward.

Flora

 * Brown mold

Fauna

 * Aeorian hunters
 * Aeorian absorber
 * Aeorian nullifier
 * Aeorian reverser
 * Frost Salamanders
 * Canoloth
 * Otyugh

Trivia

 * The names of the four wards identified to date appear to have Latin roots:
 * Cognouza: cognoscere (to learn, to know, or knowledge)
 * Praesidis: praesidi (guard, help, protection)
 * Ars: ars (science, skill/craft/art)
 * Genesis: genesis (generation, birth, creation)
 * Elements of the structural architecture of Gelidon's lair in Mythburrow have similar elements to Aeor.
 * The wild magic that afflicts all of Eiselcross is strongest within the ruins of Aeor itself.