Blackbark: A history of a once glorious city

We’ve mentioned Blackbark a few times already so we decided it’s time to write about this once glorious city. It will not be a playable area (the player won’t be able to travel there within the game), but as the center of power for over a millennium, it will doubtless crop up in many conversations and books.

This is where we already mentioned Blackbark

The darkened ruins of Blackbark still lie uninhabited in the old heartlands as the war is still an open wound for the older generations, but once it was a beacon of knowledge and the heart of civilisation.

Blackbarks name is unlike most other cities in the Kingdom. While most toponyms of the kingdom use names for groups of animals (Pride for the city of the lions, Scurries for the squirrel town, Clowder for the lynx regional capital, et cetera), Blackbark stems its name from the wood that was used to build most of the inner city, the bark of a dark oak that grows in that region.

The capital was at the centre of the continent, almost equidistant to the major cities of each of the feline families. It was fortified around a moat diverted from the flow of the river Andum, and had five large gates, each from its own district. The newest and largest was the south-east gate, built by King Michaël, as part of the pilgrimage to the Ark Island. The rest were built to connect the capital to various regional capitals such as Pride in the south, Clowder in the north, Streaks in the west and Leap in the east.

The crown jewel of Blackbark, however, was the immense library in Maxim’s Keep at the center of town. While most of Blackbark burned down, a string of lucky coincidences helped save the contents of its library and most of the books have survived to this day in the Royal Library in Pride.

While the city has been abandoned for over three decades, its secrets and treasures still invite scholars into its halls, in search of hidden fortunes.

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