Start: Summer 2024

Finale: February 2025

Following the recovery of Gadenthor from the Githyanki marauders a few years back, the people of Harnash were working closely with the magical security intelligence Xeron to regain access and control over the many disparate and severed parts of the city. It was a long process, moving building by building, street by street.

Gradually, even as progress continued Xeron began reporting a loss of access to their systems, having it wrested away by some other force. Doors, ancient traps, even groups of security constructs were falling under the control of some other power or influence. There was no explanation, but it was clear that something insidious was afoot, and if it were to take over key systems like the ones controlling flight it would be disastrous.

The delving guilds of Harnash began a desperate search, to find the unknown needle in the ancient haystack of an answer to this mysterious corruption.

One thread was pursued by Delphium Ironfist, who worked on the theory that if you wanted to learn a city’s secrets, you should look to its criminals. She began exploring an ancient Gadenthor crime syndicate known as the Lords of the Edge, hiring Dawnlands assistance regularly.

With their help, she uncovered a highly organised crime network, complete with secret tunnels around the whole city, a black market operated via illusions, a thorough use of scroll golems and even, perhaps most insidiously, a cat cafe.

The Lords of the Edge knew many secrets, and as Xeron’s power continued to wane in Gadenthor, and the first critical systems began to fall under this mysterious corrupting force, Delphium’s team made a crucial discovery in the last journal of Edgelord Sasserlin:

For another Xeron was made, a failsafe in case it was ever corrupted or destroyed. Created in secret, Auxiliary Xeron was never activated, left totally dormant and hidden in every way from the true Xeron. A paranoid plan by a paranoid city.

A thousand years had passed and Gadenthor, Xeron and Auxeron had all been battered and degraded by the crash and by time. Auxeron has awoken, and seemed to be trying to defend Gadenthor from invasion, from a clearly corrupted Xeron answering to orcs and not the mages of Netheril. Additionally, Auxeron seemed focused on the most dangerous systems - if it could not reconquer the city, then perhaps it was better the city be destroyed utterly.

With hours before Auxeron gained enough control to bring the city crashing to the ground once more, Harnash and the Dawnlands struck back as one. Coordination was vital, as even destroying Auxeron completely had the potential to leave critical systems hanging without anyone in control - leaving further, even more paranoid failsafes to lock those systems or cause them to self-destruct. Gadenthor was not built with health and safety particularly in mind so much as control and domination.

One team was sent diving off the side of the city, gliding down to get swiftly to a critical Flight system at the city’s nadir. Another team used an arcane drill - a recovered project from the ruins of an ancient mage’s workshop - to tunnel directly through the city to spring up in the Security Construct control centre, to cut off that problem at the source. A third group travelled down to the ground entirely, to a broken off piece of the city, literally cut off, overgrown and deeply haunted, to try and restore a critical pathway for Xeron to retake control.

Finally a group of adventurers followed a recovered map from the Lords of the Edge to Auxeron’s Core, and faced the four towering minds of the backup system. Quite literally, each of the four minds which comprised Auxeron, rather than being magically amalgamated like Xeron, were instead housed and recreated in giant mechanical towers which shared control of a central terminus.

The end of the day was a smashing success. Auxeron was forced into submission, losing half of its members in the process. Flight and Security were brought smoothly back into Xeron’s control, and an entire chunk of the city was flown up and re-attached, bringing new systems online for the first time in a millennia.

The people celebrated the restoration of this eternal project of a city, while Xeron and Auxeron arranged a fraught, complex reunion.

As the sun set on this city reunited, a large drill finished burrowing out of the side of the city and plummeted into the earth below. Maybe one day someone would be able to catch up to it and actually turn it off…