Neruzavin

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Neruzavin

(City)

Region

Parchlands

Adjective

Neruzavin

Ruler

Xhamen-Dor

Source: What Grows Within, pg(s). 5, 12–55

Estimated region of the Parchlands where Neruzavin might be located.

Neruzavin, Ninshaburian for "Cradle of Heaven", is a long-forgotten site in Casmaron's Parchlands that had once been settled by Hastur-worshiping flying polyps during the Age of Serpents and attracted a fragment of the Great Old One Xhamen-Dor.

Geography

Neruzavin is located about 230 miles into the Parchlands from its northwestern edge. Prior to the arrival of the flying polyps, it was a large, bare outcropping of basalt. Its founders carved and shaped the stone into twisted towers averaging 400 feet in height, narrow and nonsensically arranged streets, arches, and plazas of alien architecture, all largely nonfunctional and mocking decorations for its three Star Stelae that employ irregular geometry and either seemingly lack entrances or are solid stone.

Wind that passes through the city and its tunnels from below it generates an eerie, dissonant whistling, and the unnatural shapes of its structures disturb animals, distort senses, and make the city unnaturally cold despite the sweltering Parchlands surrounding it—nearly to freezing at night.

The water of the crater lake at its center is cold, brilliantly blue, and seemingly lacks any life and never evaporates.

History

Formation and arrival of Xhamen-Dor

Many millennia ago during the Age of Serpents, a storm of Hastur-worshipping flying polyps landed on Golarion, hoping to infest it with the Great Old One Xhamen-Dor. They established two nameless cities here: one at the current site of Thrushmoor in Ustalav, and the other at the site in Casmaron later named Neruzavin by explorers from Ninshabur. The former was destroyed in a massive war between the polyps and serpentfolk that destroyed both armies, leaving only the Star Stelae as a reminder of their conflict. The latter was struck by a comet bearing a piece of Xhamen-Dor that was guided to it by the Star Stelae during Earthfall.

The comet struck the city's center, and its crater soon became a lake in which Xhamen-Dor slept for thousands of years. Several of the basalt towers around the site collapsed onto each other into a chaotic haven called the Snarl.

Rediscovery and obscuration

An expedition of scholars from Ninshabur led by Upianshe tasked with mapping the Parchlands eventually discovered the site. Upianshe named the abandoned city Neruzavin.

The expedition quickly encountered a transmissible disease of seedborne consumption in the form of nightmares and infectious knowledge about Xhamen-Dor. The consumption claimed all in the expedition but Upianshe and seeded them into becoming spore-possessed servants who lured a growing number of others to the site. Her former colleagues tore Upianshe's body apart, and she rose as a ghost regretful for not acting sooner to identify the source of her expedition's madness.

Ninshabur responded by sending its greatest heroes to defeat the burgeoning cult, then erased all records of Neruzavin to fully inoculate the nation from Xhamen-Dor's curse. The destruction of Ninshabur by Tarrasque unintentionally contributed to the effort to destroy all records of the site. This isolation sent Xhamen-Dor into a millenia-long state of dormancy.

This page contains spoilers for the following products: major plot elements of the Strange Aeons Adventure Path, especially In Search of Sanity and The Thrushmoor Terror.
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Pursuit

In 4687 AR, Ulver Zandalus—once a student of the Sincomakti School of Sciences and protegé of Doctor Henri Meritmane—began decades of treatment from doctor Eliege Losandro at the Briarstone Asylum after suffering nightmares following a trip to Qadira with Meritmane. During this time, Zandalus created illustrations of a dead city containing Star Stelae identical to those in Thrushmoor.

A gallery show featuring the works of the asylum's patients drew the attention of Thrushmoor's Count Haserton Lowls IV, who recognized the Star Stelae among images consistent with descriptions of the Dreamlands and Carcosa. He began visiting Lowls, followed him into Dreamlands, and made contact with a figure calling himself the Mad Poet, who identified the city from Zandalus' drawings as Neruzavin and suggested its location could be found in the Necronomicon.

Lowls then spent his fortune researching and pursuing the lost city, to such a point that a bookseller in Thornstep sued Lowls for nonpayment of a related tome. As of 4716 AR, he planned an expedition to the lost city that would embark from Katheer.

This page contains spoilers for the following products: major plot elements of the Strange Aeons Adventure Path, especially The Whisper Out of Time and several encounters in What Grows Within.
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Inhabitants

Most of Neruzavin's inhabitants are mortals possessed by Xhamen-Dor through the seedborne consumption, now known as the seeded. Only mindless, powerful, dreamless, and uncharismatic creatures, such as the common giant arthropods known as thunder bugs, evade possession. The city is also permeated with a network of nearly imperceptible fungal growths and rootstalks that wrap around the city's structures.

Several flights of rift drakes also scavenge the city, as does a hungry fog, undead swarms of queleas, fungal juggernaut constructs, and an aerial servant named Sifressal. As of 4716 AR, the otyugh trader Hoshbagh, moon giant astronomer Olkoshim, and a band of lunar nagas also inhabited Neruzavin.

Millennia ago a band of yithians fought off the flying polyps who founded Neruzavin and sealed them in Neruzavin's undercity. Some of the yithians then placed their own bodies in stasis in the city and reached out with their minds to possess people in Golarion while unknowingly losing their bodies in Neruzavin to the seedborne corruption. As of 4716 AR some of the flying polyps had begun to escape their confines after thousands of years of seismic damage and the weakening of their remaining yithian captors.

References

Paizo published an article about Thrushmoor in The Thrushmoor Terror, and the town is also the adventure's setting.