The Sinking of Lumeria

On fourth night of the Usurpation, Dragon blooded operatives broke into the private sanctum of Illuminating Dawn of Wisdom, Solar Prince of the city-state Lumeria. There they found him in the process of summoning Feron, the Vortex to Elsewhere, Seventh Soul of Oramus. As the tornado of black energy took shape, the Dragon blooded struck, determined to kill the Solar before he could complete the ritual. Aided by an incognito Sidereal agent, the host of Terrestrials did indeed hack Dawn of Wisdom apart before he could complete the ritual binding...but he had said enough.

Bound to the city rather than the Solar and completely without orders, the Vortex to Elsewhere unleashed its power. Uncontrolled and undirected, the entire city shook and trembled as the Vortex worked its will. Entire districts were lost to Elsewhere, and the rest of the city plunged downwards into a sudden, yawning abyss.

Millions died instantly as the removed dirt and stone returned, burying the city from the deepest cave to the highest spire. Millions more died as the Yellow River rushed in, sweeping through those sections that lacked the hermetic seals and domes of the rest of the city. Entire Sectors failed and were crushed, their domes never designed to accommodate such weight.

At the heart of Sector 01, the so called Void Matrix, Feron looked down upon the trapped Dragon blooded and the Sidereal...and smiled. The Prince of Tornadoes rent their souls from their bodies with a thought and bound them as ghosts, condemning them to serve along side the Solar they had slain in both spirit and flesh. All throughout the city, the sudden, tortured deaths of eleven million people plunged vast parts of the city into a shadowland, leaving two million more trapped in the suddenly dark, isolated corridors and apartment towers that now sprawled a thousand feet below the surface of the earth and the Yellow River.

In the darkness, the people quietly waited for rescue. Lacking the ambition or drive to do anything for themselves, they went about their lives to the best of their abilities. Storekeepers sat in empty shops. Tour guides gave tours to hallucinations. Cooks prepared meals for clients who never came. Everyone (without money) ate the nutrient slurry piped throughout the city...or starved if the pipes were severed. In the deepening silence, humanity gradually began to fade away. No help from the Solar Deliberative would be coming. No Sidereals realized the city even still existed, as it had been moved beyond the bounds of Fate.

For two hundred years the city was silent, and in the perpetual shadows of the sunken city, four generations of mind slaved workers, artisans, and aristocracy gradually began to change.