Acrolan

Acrolan

(City)

Titles

City of Broken Glass

Nation

Azlant and Ethereal Plane

Demographics

Wraiths

Ruler

Ascended Adepts

Source: Tower of the Drowned Dead, pg(s). 63

Acrolan, the City of Broken Glass is the first and greatest of the Seven Secret Cities built by the ancient Azlanti as homes to people who mastered psychic magic. Although allegedly destroyed by Earthfall, the ruins seen today belong merely to a glass replica of the real Acrolan, which is actually whole and hidden in the Ethereal Plane.

Geography

Acrolan's glass replica is located in a jagged stone valley hidden in a semicircular volcanic cliff, on a mountain-turned-island in the ruins of Azlant. Its numerous towers were built from massive panes of fluted colored glass. Despite having been devastated and abandoned for ten millennia, the ruins retain their hint of wealth and majesty, and are filled with statues and mosaics dedicated to the builders and students.

Explorers who pass the tests in a temple in the replica city gain entry to the true Acrolan. The real city, hidden in the Ethereal Plane, has been kept intact in full splendour since the Age of Legend, although Earthfall broke its alignment with its Material Plane replica: today, it lies 400 feet above the ruins.

History

More than fifteen millennia ago, the first Ascended Adepts gathered to share knowledge, instruct students, and begin to safeguard the intangible wealth of humanity from disasters. On the site of this meeting, the Ascended Adepts' students built Acrolan's glass replica to honour their teachers and to be a place where they could strive to transcend their physical bodies and join their tutors in the Ethereal Plane.

Acrolan's ruined replica was discovered by Durvin Gest, a co-founder of the Pathfinder Society, during his first visit to Azlant, after learning of its location from the House of Aeons. His vivid stories of treasures and guardians have drawn many adventurers from the Inner Sea region.

Inhabitants

The Ascended Adepts still dwell within the real Acrolan, but the trauma wrought by Earthfall's devastation, which killed their students and erased their great works, turned them into wraiths. The replica city's restless dead stalk visitors and seek to draw them into the glass so that they might spend eternity learning to serve the Ascended Adepts.