Maxaen

Maxaen was Founded in the Year of the Sun 1226, as a fortress guarding the mouth of the LightningStroke River. Although the city is primarily military, it has grown with record speed, three times requiring expansion of the walls. Primarily a human city, there are now permanent communities of dwarven and gnomish stonemasons who do nothing but build walls and defenses.

Maxaen was a city constantly in a state of readiness for war. As the front line in the conflict with the orcs and other monster races, the city was strongly controlled by the military, largely composed of members of the Church. Thus, in Maxaen, Field Marshal Wounded Bear's word was law.

Once the most secure and defensible city in the land, Maxaen's walls were breached for the first time - from the inside. After a disagreement with Wounded Bear regarding the treatment of the orcish refugees in the aftermath of Cometfall, Dame Aelen Wyer blew out a 200-foot section of the walls and ascended as the Avatar of Nevari.

As the dust settled, so did peace, and not so much as a fistfight has broken the city's serenity in the days since.

What was once a refugee tent city outside the walls has since become a permanent part of the city; many of the refugees live in the same spot as they or their parents did, now in a permanent building. Counter-intuitively, it's one of the nicest places in the Southlands.

After the signing of the Treaty of St. Kerwyn, Maxaen has been recognized as a sovereign city-state, under the leadership of Dame Wyer. At her demand, Wounded Bear was recalled from Maxaen and reassigned to an internal post in the Spire.