When the Urist Commission turned their attention to the plot known as Bay 8, they had learned their fair share of the dangers luring just around the corner. No cats were allowed, the nobles were banned, they made sure a group of human mind doctors - they kept insisting to be called psychologists - were included, in short, they saw to it that all the former failures were not allowed in this settlement, hoping atleast this Bay would not fall.
But fall it did.
The Bay of 8 was a lush one, a forest full of benign wildlife, the waters of the bay bountiful and the mountain rich with minerals and gems. The settlers themselves were a roughly even mix, the first coalition among all the races in the new world. The elves felled the trees, the humans put up buildings of wood, the goblins and the kobolds hunted the wildlife of the earth and the water, respectively, and the dwarves struck an entrance into the mountain and searched for the treasures it promised and before long, even magma was found inside of it, much to the joy of the dwarves. The settlement quickly expanded, growing ever larger and larger, more and more prosperous. At its highest point, the settlement contained two massive, white spires made from stone, a bustling town nestled in the shadow of the mountain and the forest and numerous farms of crops and animals supplying more than enough food for the people of the Bay of 8, a bastion of civilization in the middle of the new world.
How, then, did this mighty settlement crumple to dust, you might ask.
The answer to this is very simple and would provide another thing for the Urist Commission to learn
Among the dwarves, an unusually bright young dwarven architect called Udil Tombfloor had a vision. A vision of grand construction to make sure that the people of the future would forever remember the first people of the Bay of 8, combining temple, military, residency and protection for the masses, it would stand taller and wider than even that of the human town itself. He quickly swayed the dwarves to his side, along with the goblins, the kobolds and the elves, though the last one did require a fair bit of convincing. Even the humans were eventually swayed to his vision. They immediately started work on his idea, building it into the mountain itself, the two towers being toppled to make room for the construction. For months and months, the people would work, all sensibility and attention to personal needs gone, solely obsessed with the thought of finishing the building.
They died in droves.
By the time the construction was almost done, only Udil Tombfloor and three of his closest friends were left alive. They were reed thin, in extremely poor health and at death's doorstep. They cared not about any of that, instead defiantly denying death out of fervour for the the construction Udil had first seen. Around them, the rotting remains of the settlement lay strewn, ravens eating the flesh of the fallen, the eyeballs being fiercely fought for.
Udil never saw the end of his construction. His lifeless body was later found by traders mere inches away from that last block in need of placing, his cold, dead hands clutching a limestone block. Surprisingly, the clerk in charge of overseeing the settlement, a mr. Kogan Atticflanked, had turned out to be an exceedingly avid historian, writing down all that had happened in the settlement right up until the start of Tombfloor construction.
The journals Kogan Atticflanked are currently on display in the Urist Museum.
The historian in charge of discerning what happened in the Bay of 8 asked for his identity to stay hidden.
