Semibastion isn't a name whispered in grand histories, nor etched into the facades of imposing fortresses. It’s a resonance, an echo of a place – a settlement swallowed not by conquest or natural disaster, but by something far stranger. Located within the perpetually shadowed valley known as the Whisperwind Gorge, Semibastion was once a thriving hub of trade and craftsmanship, famed for its intricate clockwork automatons and strangely luminous gemstones. But one day, it simply… vanished. Not destroyed, not abandoned, but utterly erased from the world’s memory.
The stories that remain are fragmented, unreliable, clinging to the edges of folklore and the rambling recollections of travelers who claim to have glimpsed its ghostly outline on nights when the wind howls with an unnatural intensity. They speak of a pervasive sense of wrongness, a feeling of being watched by something ancient and profoundly unsettling.
Legend claims Semibastion was founded not by humans alone. The earliest records – painstakingly pieced together from recovered fragments of automaton logs and the cryptic writings of a solitary scholar named Silas Blackwood – suggest that the initial settlers were drawn to the valley by an anomaly: a localized distortion in time, or perhaps space itself. This “convergence,” as Blackwood termed it, attracted individuals with unusual talents – master clockmakers, gem cutters, and even a few… scholars who specialized in forgotten languages and esoteric geometries.
The convergence was centered around a natural formation within the gorge: a cavern known as the Chronarium. Within this chamber, strange energies pulsed, affecting the very fabric of reality. Blackwood believed that the Chronarium served as a bridge to other points in time – though whether he ever truly understood its purpose remains an open question.
The precise details of Semibastion’s disappearance are shrouded in mystery. The last documented entry in Blackwood's journal speaks of a growing “static” within the Chronarium, accompanied by unsettling visual distortions and increasingly erratic behavior among the automatons. Then, silence. Complete and utter.
Accounts vary wildly. Some claim a catastrophic temporal shift swallowed the entire settlement, flinging its inhabitants into different eras. Others suggest a parasitic entity emerged from the Chronarium, consuming reality itself. Blackwood’s most unsettling theory posits that Semibastion didn't vanish; it simply ceased to exist within the timeline, becoming a phantom echo destined to remain untouched by the flow of time.
What is known with certainty is that all traces of Semibastion – its buildings, its people, its automatons – were utterly erased. No ruins remained, no artifacts survived, and no one ever spoke of it again. It was as if it had never been.
Despite the complete lack of evidence, stories about Semibastion persist, carried on the wind through generations of travelers who venture into the Whisperwind Gorge. These legends often center around three recurring motifs: The Clockwork Raven, the Luminous Shards, and the feeling of being watched.
Some believe that returning to the Whisperwind Gorge is a futile endeavor, a descent into madness fueled by the lingering echoes of Semibastion. Others maintain that the settlement still exists – not as it was, but as a fractured, unstable pocket dimension, waiting for someone foolish enough to enter.