Rym's smaller moon, Zunat, was home to the old gods and their faithful followers in the time before the Twilight War. It was a lush and beautiful world, filled with all manner of mythical beasts and great ambient magics - a meeting place of great, ageless beings, spirits, elementals, and others beyond description. So bright was its surface, however, that no mortal could stand upon Zunat without being blinded by the hot blue-white glare of the star, Kij. Covered in alternating bands of blue-green vegetation and golden-hued desert, Zunat was also the testing ground for the builders of Rym, the mortal world. Elemental forces were orchestrated by relics of unimaginable power, the great Nimbus Wheels, each controlled by one of the four elemental goddesses. These relics were used in the construction of Rym and all life upon it, during the Age of Tranquility. Zunat also served as a nexus point between the four elemental realms, allowing the gods to meet on a common ground. This meeting place was the fabled city of Argopolis.

It is said that Zunat was once covered in glittering cities connected by delicate bridges, spanning hundreds of miles across shifting dunes of gleaming silicate and glowing pools of primordial energy. The composition of the shallower atmosphere allowed a great deal more light through to the surface, and any mortal standing on Zunat would be blinded the moment they opened their eyes (almost everything is reflective). From here, the gods looked down upon Rym, and upon their evolving children. Zunat was a place of such splendors that it could light up Rym's sky and turn night into day. The greatest of these cities, and the only one not yet swallowed by the desert, is the fabled Argopolis, which spanned fifty miles across and housed the souls of Rym's most faithful. Now, it is nothing more than a wind-blown ruin.

        The Twilight War changed the face of Zunat with thermonuclear fire. Fusion bombs and Machine soldiers crossed the leagues of void that no mortal army could, and rained earth-shattering destruction down upon Argopolis. The gods fought back with meteors, with deadly tides, with all their power and all their faithful followers, but they were no match for their science-wielding children. It was a siege between worlds, the climax of which saw Nigh, the City Mind's mechanical avatar, and Halus, eldest of the gods fighting in the space between Rym and Zunat. The battle lasted for three days, during which the great guns were silent. Creator and Believer watched in awe from their burning cities as the night sky glowed with the fury of the battling titans. At last, it was Nigh who emerged victorious, proceeding to the City Mind's main target, the very gates of heaven. Three immense bombs fell upon the city of Argopolis, obliterating it almost entirely.

        Now, thousands of years later, nothing remains but a golden ruin half-swallowed by the glittering desert. Some believe that the surface is actually covered in gold, and several amusing expeditions have been launched in an attempt to reach Zunat. Only the Decider knows that said 'gold' is nothing more than radioactive micah, though she has reinforced the delusion by offering anyone who manages to establish a mine on Zunat the sum of one million Tamaran royals.

The Golden Desert: As Tropos is covered with tractless expanses of blue water, Zunat's surface is covered in an ever-present skin of shifting sands. Uncontrolled winds howl over the desolate landscape, kicking up twisters and changing the landscape on an hourly basis. The desert is so named for its golden hue, believed by some to be the remains of the vast golden cities which were once home to the gods and their followers. This beauty is deceptive, however - the desert is quite deadly for a number of reasons. The intense heat, light, and utter lack of water make conditions unbearable for living things, and the background radiation left over from the ancient war remains, slowly poisoning anyone who walks its shifting dunes. In some places, jagged black stone projects through the smoothe undulations, but these solid landmarks are few and far between, and mostly wind-erroded.

The Shattered Spans: Surrounding the outer city, now buried in sand, was a vast, ring-like bridge that interconnected a series of small, raised outer cities (see below). Though it appears narrow on the map, this bridge was the equivalent of a superhighway, large enough for eighty men to walk abreast, suspended by glorious magitechtural some two hundred feet off the desert below. This was one of the structures copied by the Creator Empire and implemented throughout southern Slank, though these ruins are in even poorer shape. Many areas of the great ring still stand, but huge gaps exist, where the shock of Nigh's attack did the most damage. The majority of the ring is simply walking space, though there are areas littered with awesome, fallen statuary and toppled columns, withered parks, and the mummified remains of those who died defending the great city. Nothing decays on Zunat. The easiest way to enter the city is by way of the spans, as they are no longer guarded by divine beasts.

Span Platforms: Spaced evenly throughout the span ring are four mushroom-like platforms, each four miles across, with a single tapering support that disappears into the dunes below. The platforms are no doubt held in place by some ancient magic, coupled with the support of the ring itself, and some have started to lean precariously over the centuries. There were once five, though one has since fully collapsed to the desert below, taking its entire city with it. Each, in fact, was a small city in an of itself, which the gods created for their followers in order to keep the more fragile beings out of the main city hub. This had more to do with protecting them from the dangerous divine energies and artifacts within Argopolis than any sort of deific elistism, though not everyone saw it that way, especially the Creators. The four remaining cities, now empty husks, were once known as Ehutat (Air), Intropsis (Water), Pangernon (Earth), and Halheops (Fire). Each is styled along elemental themes, and throughout each lie the remains of Machine and cleric alike, preserved by the perfect dryness.

The Outer Wall: This wall, which is two miles high, can be quite a problem for anyone wanting to enter the city from the desert below. It wasn't built so much to protect the city as to allow its artisans an incredible amount of space with which to work. The wall itself is covered in faded carvings of such splendor that looking upon it is said to bring about a dream-like state of unreality. Carved from the pure white stone are billions of reliefs, ranging from humble hieroglyphics to vast depictions of gods and elemental forces. From the bottom up, the wall displays the evolution of artistic styles over countless centuries, now ravaged by the blackened pock-marks of war. The wall has fallen in places, letting in the sand and forming huge graveyards of relief fragments.

The Skygate: Nyx was Kij's twin sister and certainly her darker half. She was the goddess of night, a great black and violet drake with wings that seemed to fill with stars when unfurled. Her nebulous black eyes, her shadowy, half-seen form, and her cool, whispery voice made her somewhat intimidating, even to her own kin, and she lived away from Argopolis, in her own grand palace on the ever-dark side of Zunat. Nyx was known for her devious cunning, her trickery, and highly-secretive nature. She was capable of assuming any form, and would walk among mortal dreams at night, spreading pleasure or fear as her mood saw fit, and even winning followers away from her other sisters through trickery and seduction.

Blast Craters: These are the result of Nigh's direct assault on the moon's surface, three immense craters visible from the surface of Rym. They are often referred to collectively as the Chain of Madness, caused by weapons of untold power, eons ago. Each averages ten miles across, and half a mile deep, surrounded by an outer ring of sundered stone. In addition to ripping the ancient city wide open, the nightmare weapons destroyed most of Zunat's atmosphere, and all of its water. The radiation is strongest around the craters, making them especially dangerous obstacles to anyone trying to enter (or leave) the ruined city.

GOLDEN DESERT
The brilliant light that reflects off the desert silicates blinds anyone without some sort of eye protection. It makes the entire landscape painful to look at, let alone navigate. Bakcground radiation slowly sickens any living thing that the desert doesn't outright swallow up. To make matters worse, blinding cyclones weave their way across the desert on a constant basis, threatening even the largest and sturdiest of travellers.

CHAIN OF MADNESS
The blast craters are even more dangerous than the desert, as the residue of Nigh's weapons is strongest here. This life-warping energy is of great interest to the Spiral Order. The bottom of the craters are lined with a glistening white mineral - all that's left of the moon's water, which was rather scarce to begin with. Moaning wraiths gather here at night, as if to weep over the ancient past, their shapes and voices now completely incomprehensible.

ARGOPOLIS
The ruins of the divine city are eerily silent and still, as if the shrieking desert beyond did not exist. The giant-sized temples and towers are structurally dangerous, and prone to crumbling or shearing off unexpectedly in places. Signs of battle are everywhere in this sort of terrain, with mummified remains and broken Machines all over the place. Travel is difficult due the the immense scale of things; only a small percentage of the city is 'mortal-sized'.

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        If the City Mind were indeed a god, Nigh would be its dread avatar. The unmanned mechanical nightmare was the chief instrument of the gods' demise, the iron hand of a ancient thinking machine that undid the very world. It was Nigh who struck down the archdeity, Halus, in a cataclysmic battle fought between Rym and its smaller moon, Zunat. Nigh was forged of the Creators' most destructive technologies, and functions to this day, constantly scanning the surface of the planet from the upper atmosphere. It searches for prey, hunting for the energy signitures caused by great sources magical power, such as gods, avatars, and unconcealed artifacts. 'Nigh', in the Creator tongue, means 'End of Tomorrow'.

        Nigh's construction spanned generations, and consumed more resources than all other Creator construction put together. The City Mind laid out its plans, and the Creators built to their artificial god's exact specifications. Each wing was over a hundred yards in length, covered in ornately ingraved plates of the black metal, adamas. It was to be propelled by six colossal antihydrogen engines, capable of both atmospheric and orbital flight at mind-boggling velocity. Many who helped to construct its horrific weapons were said to have later killed themselves, or gone mad, and even the Creator High Command was concerned about the destructiveness of the applied technologies. Some spoke openly against the project, and were put to death. Others resigned their positions and were exiled in humiliation. Its construction caused a rift between the once harminious Creators; those who shared the City Mind's fanatical hatred, and those who felt that things had gone to far, and that all of Rym would pay the price for their childish war.

        The second party was right. It soon became clear that the City Mind was willing to sacrifice anything and everything to win the war against the gods. Nigh's weapons rained death upon the burning face of Rym, anihilating godly beasts and Creators alike. It was unstopable. Millions fled the cities as the Machines took full control, enslaving those left behind. In the final days, as Nigh rocketed towards Zunat to engage the gods directly, and poisonous fire wound across the dying world, amid mass suicides and madness, the last remaining members of the Creator High Command attempted to sabotage their artificial god. They failed, but their efforts were not wholly in vain. For a few seconds, power was lost. Nigh's mind went dead, and every monitor was white with static. In that instant, the youngest of the goddesses, Kij, escaped.

        Nigh still searches for Kij, its ancient UPM parameters unfulfilled. It has mistaken many hapless targets for the goddess over the centuries, including a small number of extremely powerful sorcerors, two ancient dragons, and the Spiral collector, Arborat. Ordinarily, any concentration of extremely powerful magic will attract the attention of the ancient war machine, and result in the anihilation of the target and surrounding countryside in a column of blinding white light.

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