History
The Star Cairns were the brainchild of a court mage of the Great Kingdom, Murtaree, who was given a copy of Kevelli Mauk's Tome of the Scarlet Sign, written just prior to the Rain of Colorless Fire that eradicated the Suel Imperium, and which served as the manifesto for the Scarlet Brotherhood. Murtaree came across his copy of the book in 167 CY.
The book affected Murtaree immensely, and inspired him to attempt his own revenge on the Baklunish people, and he soon gathered other Suel who were of a similar disposition, and took them to the Abbor-Alz, where they built five underground bunkers across the landscape in an area that was rich in magical energy. There the mages conducted research and began the construction of a major magical weapon. Murtaree attempted, and failed to become a lich about this time and died in 174 CY.
The Cairns were devastated and abandoned in 198 CY, as a meteor strike summoned from the heavens by Lyzandred hit the Abbor-Alz, disrupting careful experiments in one cairn, ripping it from the Prime Material Plane (to return only sporadically). The surviving mages left the area, many leaving for the Great Kingdom.
Since then, the four remaining cairns have been employed by different groups of beings for different purposes. In particular, the Armor Research Cairn has been used in the past by the wealthy of Greyhawk and Hardby as a communal tomb, although the practice has by and large ceased.
The cairns are also the resting place of the components of an artifact known as the Doomheart, a weapon of great power that has the capability of casting a cone that disintegrates all in its path (and which was so dangerous to its wielder that the mages also crafted a massive juggernaut to carry the weapon).
Read more about this topic: Star Cairns
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)