Mention Ascore, and thirty years ago, people of the Northlands would likely still have thought of it as a patch of ruins bordering the Anauroch Desert.
Those with a little learning would tell you that a thousand years ago, it had been the site of the capital of the Dwarven Kingdom of Delzoun, neighboring Netheril. It had once been a city of watchtowers keeping watch over the orc tribes of the High Glacier, the vigilant eye guarding the Northlands.
But following the fall of the Netherese Empire and the unceasing southward incursions of the orcs, the three great medieval civilizations of the Northlands went out one by one like lamps. With their kingdom shattered and homes destroyed, the dwarves could do nothing but retreat to Citadel Adbar and Citadel Felbarr, protected by natural mountain barriers—the present-day borderlands of the Silvermoon Federation.
Yet if you asked people about it now, they would most likely show reverence before proudly telling you:
It was the pride of our Northlands, the backbone of the Northlands rebuilt beneath the will of Lord Levis, the Silver Dragon; the green canopy of Zelandia's northeastern shelterbelt; the bed of Chardalyn; and the powerful heart now connecting trade between the eastern and western ends of the entire Coriel Continent.
During those savage years, after Netheril, the Dwarven Kingdom of Delzoun, and the Elven Empire of Illefarn fell in succession, people had once believed that the flame of civilization in the Northlands, aside from Water-Drawing City barely clinging to life, was on the verge of extinction. Thus, even though trade routes remained, there were only two terrible options:
Either take the black road from Water-Drawing City along the Delimbiyr River, through Secomber, Loudwater, and Llorkh, over the Graypeak Mountains, across the Lonely Moor, through the yellow sands that filled the