Over a millenia in the past, Sel-Kai was the largest and most cosmopolitan of several unusual communities scattered amongst the planets of what would come to be known as Icespace.
The human city-state controlled a swath of small islands of the Turanis Archipelago on the planet Enari. Descendants of out- sphere spelljamming colonists who had built their lives on the relatively empty planet, the inhabitants of Sel-Kai were surprisingly welcoming when the elven-insectoid race known as the inethar first arrived on Enari in search of a homeworld. Even as the inethar grew to rule their adopted world, the inethar and Sel-Kai remained friendly. While unavoidable friction was caused when the human city's demands on its surrounding natural environment exceeded what the inethar wished to allow, the city-state understood the Council of Queens' concerns and made certain to assuage the inethar's fears. Meanwhile Sel-Kai continued to ignore most of the environmental strictures laid down by the inethar on Enari's few non-inethar communities.
Sel-Kai was able deal with the Council of Queens from a position of strength because the city-state had moved to become vital to the inethar soon after the elven-insectoid race's arrival. The inethar, saddled by an outcast mentality and an instinctive need to remain close to their hives, were uniquely unsuited for spelljamming commerce or diplomacy. Even those few inethar comfortable with travel and interaction with other races could not escape their innately disturbing elven-insectoid natures. Inethar were more likely to be feared than welcomed in most groundling ports.
The spelljamming merchants of Sel-Kai became the essential link between the inethar and the Known Spheres. Sel-Kai thus became the door through which trade and communication flowed to the inethar. In return, the grateful inethar backed Sel-Kai with the military and magical might of a planetary government. The inethar's quiet support and protection gave the merchants of Sel-Kai standing they had previously lacked throughout the Known Spheres.
Then came the Great Freeze. Sel-Kai and the inethar vanished from the fabric of events in the Known Spheres. Eight centuries later, when the ice was melted by the reigar Cruleon, observers expected only death and devastation to be revealed. But those observers underestimated the inethar and Sel-Kai. Both awoke from differing magical slumbers to make their mark on Icespace, and on the Known Spheres, once more.
Sel-Kai is believed to be the only non-inethar community on Enari to have survived the Great Freeze, due to the power of the artifact disk-city of Eidolon which floats over Sel-Kai and which houses Sel- Kai's nobility and wealthy merchants. Just before the Freeze overwhelmed the area, the sky city projected a stasis field over both the upper and lower cities which preserved both intact. When the ice was destroyed, Eidolon released the stasis, leaving all of Sel-Kai unharmed by the Great Freeze.
The majority humans of Sel-Kai hail from throughout the Known Spheres. Thus, the people of the city are generally open-minded, though many continue to live in cultural enclaves. Some of the enclaves are dominated by gangs and organized yakuza crime families, while others strive to maintain a link to the natural world, or to proselytize their groups' beliefs. Sel-Kai contains fragments of cultures long lost to the Known Spheres, as well as its own unique blend of spelljamming cosmopolitanism and groundling conservatism.
The city is open to almost any race, even those who are aggressive by nature. Only a handful of races are banned from the city. The inethar, because they were born out of the First Unhuman War, and in an attempt to build bridges to the Elven Imperial Fleet, have banned scro, kobolds, orcs, ogres, and all goblin-kin from Enari. To the extent that this ban can be enforced throughout the planet, the inethar attempt to do so. Out of respect for the inethar, the government of Sel-Kai maintains the ban as well, despite political and financial pressure by the scro. The inethar and Sel-Kai also forbid neogi and fiends (though this last restriction is obviously difficult to enforce).
Other races find that although they are not always welcome, they are tolerated so long as they abide by the laws of the city. Thus, one may find small groups of illithid, beholders, thri-kreen and hurwaeti, among other spelljammer races. Unique inhabitants include::
Both of these groups of grey elves command respect and even awe from the inhabitants of Sel-Kai because they are believed to have had a hand in the birth of the inethar race.
The Loari study technomagic while the Erlinni study life-shaping. During the First Unhuman War both the Loari and the Erlinni sects devoted their talents to the elven war effort. Unfortunately, both sects were excoriated by their fellows for pushing too far beyond acceptable limits in their pursuit of perfect war machines. As the elves discovered the full ramifications of the Loari and Erlinni's creations, both sects became resented and feared. The Loari and the Erlinni found themselves distanced from their fellow elves. Though the two sects had long been rivals, they banded together to find a place where they could pursue their arts. They are accepted by the inethar, for although the inethar do not particularly care for the Loari and the Erlinni's creeds, they do recognize that the plight of the two sects is similar to their own. The two elven sects are welcome on Enari, though like other outsiders, they do not dwell directly among the inethar themselves. Thus the Loari and the Erlinni inhabit Sel-Kai, studying their magic and perfecting their arts.
Hirazi:
A clan of winged avariel elves, these folk serve as messengers between the upper and lower cities of Sel-Kai and Eidolon. At any given time, perhaps 300 to 500 hirazi can be found within the city's confines.
Lugroki:
A race of primitive, cave-dwelling humanoids native to Enari, the lugroki were hunted nearly to extinction by the kreen and the yuan-ti. When the inethar took control of Enari, they declared a ban on the hunting of the native humanoids. Although the lugroki population never recovered, they had made a comeback from the edge of extinction, only to be nearly annihilated once again by the Great Freeze. The only survivors were a handful of lugroki who were preserved by the inethar and a few thousand adventurous individuals who were working in Sel-Kai as guards for spelljammers. Lugroki are valued as guards, for they are strong, tough, swift, courageous, and unfailing loyal. They are also, unfortunately, extraordinarily superstitious.
Thri-Kreen:
The thri-kreen maintain a small presence in Sel-Kai. Although they produce most goods they need, they have few wizards and therefore trade vast quantities of foodstuffs, raw materials, and the services of kreen mercenaries, for arcane items they do not themselves craft in sufficient number. Though, the kreen are not famed for their arcane magic, they are known to possess mighty divine magic and powers of the mind.
The kreen maintain an embassy in the floating city o Eidolon above Sel-Kai. This embassy speaks for the Kreen Collective to the Council of Queens, to the powers-that-be of Sel-Kai and to the other embassies that are established in Sel-Kai.
Dwarves:
Though they are not populous, a number of dwarves do live in Sel- Kai. Many of them are descended from the crew of a giant dwarven citadel that crash-landed near the floating city several hundred years ago. Although they have little political power in the city and do not interfere with the local politics and gangs, they are let be by those power groups and gangs, as the dwarves present a united face to the world and do not hesitate to defend each other from any non-dwarf. The price of harming even a single dwarf is the enmity of the entire dwarven community, and none desire such a potentially powerful enemy when it is far more profitable to trade with the dwarves than fight them.
The Hurwaeti:
The strange members of this amphibious race who dwell in Sel-Kai appear to retain somewhat more of their ancient culture and intellectual heritage than many of their wildspace cousins. The hurwaeti of Sel-Kai are a mystical lot, following spiritual leaders claiming to have frequent visions. They imbibe strange drugs from jungle plants to grant them sight into the future and into other planes of existence. While no one knows of any long term plans of this group, many do suspect that the hurwaeti maintain underwater temples to their gods in the swamp, where they pray for redemption and the restoration of their ancient empire. A small sect of the hurwaeti have determined that the only way to recover the old knowledge is to venture into wildspace and the regions beyond, and these young members of the race frequently hire on as spelljammers to merchants seeking additional pilots. Those hurwaeti who remain in the city live by selling their services as healers, mystics, and herbalists. The hurwaeti have a knowledge of the pharmacological properties of the plants in the fertile archipelago that even the inethar do not rival.
The Lizard Men:
The lizard men who dwell in Sel-Kai serve as mercenaries and merchants who form a vital intermediate trade link between the inethar and the worlds of the yuan-ti and saurials. These civilized lizard men are extremely canny. They drive hard bargains, and do not show the superstitious fears that many of their less advanced cousins suffer from.
Sel-Kai's primary claim to fame is its magnificent floating city, Eidolon, which hovers nearly a mile above the center of the lower city of Sel-Kai. The upper city measures just under a mile in diameter, and rests on a metallic disk shaped somewhat like a top. It measures only a hundred feet thick at the perimeter, but curves smoothly downward underneath the center of the city until it is nearly a quarter mile thick at the tip of its inverted "peak". Although many buildings have foundations and basements which extend as deep as fifty feet into the surface of the disk, none go deeper. Tunnels run at this depth beneath the surface of the city, allowing cargo to be shipped and stored in large warehouses that are unseen by most visitors to Eidolon. No tunnels extend further than sixty or seventy feet beneath the surface. Beyond that distance is a layer of impenetrable metal, and there are no known entryways into the core of the disk. Many suspect that the city platform is hollow, but none can prove this theory. The city spins slowly on an axis, rotating one complete cycle every day.
Numerous docks and piers are located at the perimeter of the city. The city stabilizes weather within the immediate region. Although storms frequently blow through Sel-Kai and Eidolon, they are never severe enough to endanger shipping docked at the floating city.
Only the most wealthy and powerful of the city's inhabitants and visiting luminaries can afford to dwell in the upper city. A shop, inn, tower, or townhouse in Eidolon is a sign of extreme wealth, and before the Great Freeze, many nobles from neighboring city-states maintained their own residences in Eidolon as marks of status. The floating city is well patrolled by the most skilled and loyal (or corrupt, depending on one's viewpoint) of the city guard. In addition, many merchant families and nobles maintain their own private household guards. These private guards significantly outnumber the city guard, and the guard rarely intervenes in internecine quarrels so long as they are not conducted openly in the streets.
The floating city is unique in the entire sphere and is thus the subject of many legends and tales, most conflicting with each other and almost certainly untrue. Many sages and historians have speculated on the origin of Eidolon. It is obviously a magical or technomagical construct. The more plausible rumors suggest that it is a relic of an ancient civilization, or perhaps a stranded ship. Other stories suggest Eidolon is a construct of the Arcane, or a reigar artwork. The Arcane refuse to speak about Eidolon, while the reigar claim that one of their number constructed it. This, of course, proves nothing. What is known, however, is that some natural or artificial sentience continues to operate floating the city, for when the Great Freeze swept the sphere, the floating city acted to protect itself and the city of Sel- Kai below it, placing the entire area in stasis. Rumors persist of the city's mysterious guardian, who in the past has preserved the city against imminent threat. Once, for example, the guardian is believed to have destroyed a marauding kraken which threatened the port of Sel Kai. On several occasions, he (or she, or it) is thought to have helped drive off fleets of spelljamming marauders.
The floating city was obviously constructed with an eye to symmetry. The city is laid out in seven concentric rings, with the prince's palace being the center ring. The two rings closest to the palace are pleasure gardens. The outer two rings comprise the docks, warehouses, and inns. And the remaining two in between contain townhouses, towers, and expensive shops. The city is further divided into four quarters by bisecting broad streets. The quarters are named after gemstones: emerald, sapphire, ruby, and diamond. They are easily recognized since their streets are paved with granite flagstones that are flecked with pieces of quartz of the appropriate color. By night the city is lit by lanterns with tinted glass, also of four different colors. The quarters do not correspond to any functional purpose. Nor are there any strict laws or building codes which ban a given type of building in an area, save that the height of any towers in the city cannot exceed the height of the four central towers that ring the palace. In general, however, land closer to the center of the city is more expensive, so the inner rings tend to include the most luxurious townhouses and most expensive shops.
Eidolon and Sel-Kai are ruled by a prince, Rylec Quaterris, who is known to be an elf but is thought to have githzerai blood in his veins.
Prince Quaterris has ruled for two hundred years, and has survived numerous plots to undermine or overthrow him. In truth, however, he does not exert direct power over the city, acting by subterfuge and misdirection. He maintains a well trained, secret security force to spy on the various groups within the city. He is even aware of who within this secret police force are traitors and double agents. Many merchant families whisper that the prince has extremely close contacts with the inethar, and that numerous skenethar agents serve as his personal agents.
The city is effectively ruled by several powerful organizations, many of which have close ties to power groups in the lower city. Major factions include the Conclave of Merchants, the Grand Conclave of Guildmasters, the Eridani Sky Ship Alliance, the Anadasi College of the Mind, the Coven of Seers, the Grey Ring, and the individual innumerable craft guilds. The Grand Conclave of Guildmasters, as representative of the guilds, maintains dominion over internal trade and regulates the markets of the upper and lower cities. The Conclave of Merchants concerns itself with trade between Sel-Kai and other ports.
The Eridani Sky Ship Alliance strictly regulates shipping practices, employs navigators, and controls the construction of sky and spelljammer ships. The College of the Mind's psions help the merchants keep track of and protect shipments along their extended routes, and regulates the prices for such services to prevent "excessive" competition. The Coven of Seers includes a few seers, but over the years has broadened itself to include sages and all manner of learned folk.
The Grey Ring is the most enigmatic of these groups, and only its elected speaker allows his identity to be public. The remainder of the group does not publicize its membership, and individuals do not speak of their affiliation with the Ring. The Grey Ring is strict, but they do not use deadly force to conceal their secrets. They are adventurers, selling their services to pilot and guard spelljamming ships. The Grey Ring is a generally benign organization, which primarily exists to protect the interests of adventurers, mercenaries and visitors to the city, groups who in the distant past were not recognized as having legitimate citizenship or otherwise viewed with suspicion. The Grey Ring is guided by five Grey Knights, who keep their identities strictly secret.
Finally, the many individual guildmembers, merchants, nobles, artisans and others in the city wield whatever disparate and uncertain power their individual wealth and/or influence allows.
While all of these organizations wield formal and informal power, much of the real power rests with the merchant families and crime lords who work through the formal governing bodies. Each family struggles to put its own noble cousins, nieces and nephews, and loyal friends into positions of influence. Only the Grey Ring remains immune to the influence of these families, though even this aloofness is often challenged. At the time of the Great Freeze, the mightiest merchant noble families included the Ullizi, Geriontyes, Taewoo, Vorhese, Beltieran, Maara-Tasaki, Al Masud, Baragoune, Pharnese, Elgata, Alaxtan, Jurgonne, Maledaar, Centarus, Hizaku, Tharal, Vladaam, and Dolnegan families. These houses span many racial and cultural divides.
Three are elven houses, one dwarven, one gnomish, three of Kara-Tur-like background, one claims royal blood of an ancient spelljamming empire of Ptah, while a century before the Freeze, one was a small tribe of desert caravan masters. Their interests span all possible commodities, and services, though they do not openly involve themselves in illegal affairs, preferring to leave such activities to allied crime lords in the city of Sel-Kai below.
If one can avoid the constant intrigues of the city, it has much to offer anyone with gold to fill their pockets. Every shop offers goods of at least average quality, and many of the goods can match the craftsmanship of any human artisan in the Known Spheres. Of course, one pays for this quality. All shops charge at least 30% in excess of average prices, with many charging double. A few of the most renowned shops and craftsmen charge even more. They are, however, every bit as good as they claim, and their work is guaranteed.
Finally, Eidolon is a city renowned for its culture and beauty as well as its fantastic wealth. It maintains several museums, public parks, galleries, and a great library which could likely match Candlekeep in at least a few subjects. Its bookbinders, scribes, painters, bards, and other artists are well treated; although they do not earn significant wages and rarely own a house of their own, they find employment easily enough. The merchant nobles are in constant need of sycophants to ply them with praise and entertain at their lavish parties. The upper city also has a number of grand temples. These temples are not visited frequently, however. The citizens of Eidolon do not feel the need to pray, since fortune has already smiled upon them. They do, however, offer frequent gifts to the gods just in case these divine entities should take notice of them.
Among the most powerful temples are those dedicated to Ptah, the Path and the Way, Marduk the Lord of Cities, the Celestial Bureaucracy, and Lothian Lawgiver-Daykeeper. A mortal paladin-priest of the now-dead goddess of wisdom and love Tomeri, Lothian attained godhood by sacrificing himself to slay the terrible lord of darkness Eslathagos Malkith in Enari's past. The non-humans all maintain small shrines and temples of their own, but do not proselytize or build large cathedrals.
Sel-Kai is much larger than Eidolon. It is a wide, populous city built on the hundred-mile-long Island of Shay, a flat, silt-mound at the mouth of a river delta which pours silt into the sea from inland rivers.
The city occasionally floods in late spring, but the weather stabilization powers of the city of Eidolon prevent the worst of these disasters. In the summer, the surrounding bogs and the heat make Sel-Kai a very unpleasant place. The swarms of mosquitoes and swamp insects which descend on the city are particularly unpleasant, driving all those who can afford the cost to the upper city for the duration. However, the heat never becomes perilous, and the city has never known a truly devastating plague (although fevers break out on a regular basis during the hottest months of the year). The city's sanitation laws are probably its the most strictly enforced. It is treason to drop refuse into or near a clean well or cistern, a crime punishable by death.
Over its long history, the citizens of Sel-Kai have been forced to build their homes and shops ever higher, adding new levels made of brick and stone every century or so as the older buildings sink into the mud and silt. Over time, the stone walls of old buildings have formed walls along the streets as they filled with sea and river water. These pathways are now canals which crisscross every section of the city. Moreover, the sunken buildings have passages which delve a hundred feet and more underground, forming a long forgotten network of tunnels, hidden passages, and sewers that not even the most diligent explorer could hope to map in a hundred lifetimes.
The city has no symmetry, no plan, and no diligent police force. It is in many ways the exact antithesis of the planned elegance of Eidolon floating magestically above Sel Kai's center. Sel-Kai's buildings are stone; only the wealthy can afford to build with large quantities of wood. The city's buildings' age shows in their crumbling facades and weathered window ledges. Nonetheless, there is a jaded elegance to the city which the pristine lines and carefully manicured parks of the floating city entirely lack. It is Sel-Kai's inhabitants which give the city an energy and a dynamism comparable to that of great groundling cities such as Waterdeep or the City of Greyhawk.
Prior to the Great Freeze, Sel-Kai was primarily a trading city. Fully half the population made their living from merchant activities - running inns, shops, shipping lines, messenger services, etc. The other half made their income by plying crafts and trades. While the many of the most skilled (and money-hungry) merchants moved to the upper city, a fair number of truly talented artisans and artists remained below, unable to stomach the pretentious nobility of Eidolon. After the unfreezing of Icespace, many of the shipping lines fond their businesses non-existent, and temporarily turned to scavenging the outlying areas of Sel-Kai and the ruins of other cities of the Turanis Archipelago for treasure to fund exploration and re-establishment of stable trade routes.
While the prince also maintains "order" in the lower city, he does not have sufficient guards to patrol the entire city. Thus, order is maintained by a combination of the city guard, armed mercenaries, citizen vigilante groups, and criminal gangs. So long as none of these groups get out of hand, they are left alone. Only a direct challenge to the prince draws a group of very heavily armed city guards to respond heavy-handedly to the situation.
The various streets and establishments of ill repute in the lower city frequently pay "protection" money to criminal gangs. These gangs battle over territory and the right to control the trade of illicit substances and services, such as narcotics, poisons, prostitution, stolen goods, banned magic, and other shady affairs. Some of the gangs are brutal and malicious; others have a semblance of honor and keep to their word, for the sake of credibility if not out of any sense of justice. Some of the gangs even have motivations which are unrelated to money or power for its own sake, such as proving martial supremacy, studying mystical beliefs, or protecting a given neighborhood.
The gangs rarely cooperate to wield power. Alliances form and dissolve as a matter of convenience, save for a few exceptional cases in which a pair of gangs has a long-standing feud for some ancient (often imagined) crime or sleight. Moreover, the gangs recognize the limits of their activities, and many maintain close ties to the merchant houses in the upper city to protect their interests. They all recognize that if the city authorities ever decided to crack down on them, they would not fare well. Both sides understand the violence that would result, and so both hold to their centuries-old tacit understanding of non-interference. Although there are at least thirty major gangs in the city, the following are among the most powerful and well known: The White Hand (extortion and narcotics, very brutal), the Blue Gulls (smuggling and fencing), the Medusae (racketeering and assassination), the Nightwings (information gathering and burglary), the Silver Wolves (prostitution, sponsors of female thieves and escorts), the Golden Hand (muggings, robbery and extortion), the Smoke Ring (mystics and adventurers, with ties to the Grey Ring), the Red Dragons (highly skilled warriors, mercenaries and assassins), and the Green Thorns (an elven nature cult).
Finally, Sel-Kai (and to a lesser extent Eidolon) is plagued by a number of secret societies which have embedded themselves into society. Some of these are cults which worship evil gods. Others once spied for enemy city-states, or off-world civilizations which may no longer exist. Some were simply pirates. Others are remnants of ancient groups seeking revenge for forgotten wrongs.
Several groups represent off-world interests. The most powerful of these is the insectare's Unseen Eye, which has access to significant resources. Not a few notables in Sel-Kai and Eidolon are dependant on the insectare's riches. A group known as the Kwai Shui was long ago part of an evil spelljamming organization which seeking domination of wildspace. Once rivaling the Unseen Eye in influence, the Kwai Shui are now a remnant, their off-world organization destroyed centuries ago by a combination of adventuring companies and competing evil organizations such as the Tenth Pit. However, the Kwai Shui's off-world fall has made their Sel-Kai branch even more desperate and dangerous than they previously were.
Native power groups include the Inverted Pyramid, a wizard's guild based in an invisible floating upside-down pyramid composed of the same mysterious material and suspended by the same mysterious magic as the floating city of Eidolon. The Pyramid is a neutral organization whose only goal is the advancement of magical knowledge and the protection of its members from outside interference. However, due to historical clashes with the Anadasi College of the Mind, the Coven of Seers, the Church of Lothian and the Grey Ring, the wizard's guild prefers to remain a secret organization whose influence is theoretically confined to the lower city. In truth, the Inverted Pyramid wields power in Eidolon as well, through wealthy wizard members or employees of the merchant families who make the floating city their home.
Another native wizard's group is the Secret College of Necromancy, whose members practice their disfavored branch of magic in the lower city. The existence of the Secret College is an open secret in Sel-Kai, and more than one merchant house of Eidolon employs College members in doings not meant for the light of day.
The least understood and perhaps most feared of the city's secret organizations are the Jarhek Nehreth, an ancient cult of shadow fiends. Summoned by a cabal of wizards many centuries ago, they gained the upper hand against their masters and stole much of their shadow magic. With this shadow magic, they enhanced their own powers, and now prowl the city undetected. Although they can move through shadows unseen, they prefer to possess useful humans and force them to do their bidding. The Nehreth are thought to be the controlling force behind several major criminal gangs. The Jarhek Nehreth do not venture to the floating city of Eidolon however, for they fear the city's mysterious guardian.
A fallen secret society was the Pactlords of the Quaan, a group of hate-filled half-breeds and aberrations outcast from their own societies. The Pactlords were based in the Quaan demiplane (see below) until its unmaking destroyed them. They were believed to have been led by a half-black dragon wizard-lich, an illithid sorcerer-lich, and a mummified beholder-mage, all answering to a black dragon quasi-deity. These leaders were bound to the Quaan demiplane as all the Pactlords and Pactslaves were, and died with its unmaking and recrafting.
Though the above information may make Sel-Kai appear an unpleasant place, it has its niceties. The prince maintains a semi-public library so that anyone can learn to read and write, and all have a chance to improve their station in life. The lower city library can even request books from the Eidolon library, so long as such books do not leave the library and are treated carefully. Often, the prince's personal agents prowl the libraries, museums, and other such places seeking those youths who would do something else with their lives than waste them in constant gang warfare. More than one recruit has found his or her way into the palace guard, the prince's fleets, or the city's secret police force in this way.
Beneath Sel-Kai lies a terrible secret. The spire upon which the hero-priest Danar Rotansin had built his tower, and within which he and his allies has imprisoned all the greatest evils of Enari, had inverted all those many years ago. Dragged under the earth by the weight of the evils it contained, the spire-prison had become the Banewarrens, with Danar Rotansin's hold at its very bottom, when reading the Book of Inverted Darkness had transformed the hero Danar Rotansin into the terrible Eslathagos Malkith, the Dread One.
The Banewarrens spire-prison was meant to cleanse Enari. The evils were not destroyed to release their incohate evil back into the world to reform into another evil form. Rather, they were imprisoned, their power drained into the very wards holding them contained. It was Rotansin's hope that eventually, the evils would be consumed by their prison in totality.
To keep the evils seperate, the Banewarrens were designed so that each outer vault would connect to an inner vault, which would in turn connect to the central Baneheart. No outer vault would connect to another, no inner vault would connect to aught but one outer vault and the Baneheart. Thus the banes would be most secure. Thus too would their dark magic, once drained from them, pool in the Baneheart to remain imprisoned in this most secure of prisons until is eventual dissolution into the Banewarren's wards.
But the dream of Enari without evil was only that, and Rotansin's corruption and the spire-prison's sinking into the earth were rude awakenings. The Dread One was eventually destroyed by his erstwhile allies. The prison Rotansin had created remained secure. But the evil pooling in the Baneheart continued to gather, where it became the Banemight.
After the thaw, the Pactlords of the Quaan sought to breach the Banewarrens to recover evil items imprisoned within and to master the Banemight. They penetrated the Banewarrens through one outer-most vault built linked to an outer vault, and not completed or fully warded before Rotansin's corruption. Their greed granted the dark spirit of Malkith an opportunity to attempt its own restoration. Malkith was destroyed again, and immediately thereafter the Pactlords of the Quaan were themselves destroyed (see Banewarrens' End and see below).
Numerous banes weakened by their long imprisonment were also destroyed during the incursion into the Banewarrens. Several, however, escaped into Sel-Kai. The warrens have since been re-sealed and are watched over by Rotansin's old allies Geristranomos the Builder (a humanoid mechanical construct created by Rotansin) and Saggarintys the Silver King (a silver dragon) who were both themselves rescued from the Banewarrens during the incursion.
Although most of the living inhabitants of the Turanis Archipelago were slain by the catastrophe, the remnants of their civilizations remain as testaments to the dead. Unlike what occurred throughout most of Icespace, the Great Freeze did not obliterate all it touched on the Turanis Archipelago, possibly due to the effect of the nearby Sel-Kai stasis field. Thus when the ice vanished, ruined settlements stood revealed. A few of these settlements are described briefly below.
Danarchis:
Once an island populated by wealthy merchants, this quaint community once boasted street after street of wealthy manses inhabited by pirates trying to prove they had given up their piratical ways. The pirates are gone now, but their wealth is not.
Keltane:
A series of large villages that grew rare fruits and cultivated miles of rich rice paddies, all the inhabitants of Keltane were slain by the Freeze, as were their crops. Little remains here of value, but many of the inhabitants of Sel-Kai had relatives that lived here, and have sought bodies to bury. Unfortunately, the flesh of Keltane's people did not survive the Freeze as well as their ruined structures.
Malqanar:
Also called the Bay of Songs, this was a series of small pastoral islands where dolphins and other cetacean mammals often frolicked. Few animals survived the Freeze, however, though fish may yet remain. The cetacean mammals are all slain, save for a few who were caught in the stasis field surrounding Sel-Kai.
Thanor:
Once the graveyard of Sel-Kai for those who could afford to be buried on land, the mausoleums and treasure houses of this place were well guarded by creatures and magical wards. During the Freeze, however, many of the defenses were disabled. Over the long years since ice entombed the tombs, many of the dead have awoken. Now that the ice is gone, they walk the land. Though Thanor was once a warm, pleasant place where families could bury and visit their dead in peace, after the thaw it remained just below freezing, and strange undead who drain the heat from living bodies are said to roam.
Hirazi Tor:
The cliff homes of the hirazi, where the winged elves almost certainly were frozen in the ice. The caves in the cliffs are high above the sea, and are rumored to be haunted. Thus, they remain largely unexplored.
The Dyari Reefs:
Located several miles offshore, the Dyari reefs once housed an unrivaled variety of fish and underwater flora and fauna. Most of the coral froze quickly enough that it survived, and continues to grow even after the unfreezing. Fish are seen darting through the coral again, as well. The Dyari reefs are said to open up into huge underwater caverns that are warmed by underground springs and lava tubes. It is conceivable that hidden somewhere beneath the reefs sea elves and other marine creatures may have somehow survived, but if so they have made no effort to reveal themselves to the world above.
The Quaan:
A demiplane of Enari created by the elven high mage Maeritha Moonrise during the struggle against Eslathagos Malkith. The demiplane hosts a Pact that binds the life-forces of those who swear to it into the substance of the demiplane. Forever after, those who swear to the Pact cannot harm any other who so swears - either by action or by clear inaction. Additionally, at the demiplane's center lays a fountain which can unerringly scry any who have sworn to the Pact. Magical rings of white bone can be created with ease in the Quaan by wizards or priests themselves sworn to the Pact. These rings bind to the Pact-sworn, grafting to the bones of their fingers, and removable only upon death or amputation of said finger. The rings protect their wearers from all divinations save those of the Quaan fountain. While the rings can be removed after death or cut off, the Pact itself endures, for it is a soul-bond.
The Pactlords of the Quaan used this demiplane for evil after the passing of those who had battled Eslathagos Malkith. Twisted by their dark souls, the Quaan became a foul, dark swamp. This changed in 1374 DR, when Maeritha Moonrise returned from Arvandor at the behest of the Knights of the Sword Coast, and with their aid unmade the Quaan, slaying the evil beings soul-bound to it, and then remade the core of the demiplane to grow cleanly again. To allow Maeritha's work, the Knights used the minor artifact greatsword Dragonhammer, fortified by the forges of Hephaestus, to slay the black dragon quasi-deity Father Claw, who nested in the heart of the Quaan like a cancer and commanded the power of the demi-plane. In slaying Father Claw during the Quaan's unmaking, Dragonhammer absorbed dangerous wild dweomers which it survived to become a major artifact.
Maeritha Moonrise sacrifice herself to become the core of the new Quaan, as the recrafting had to be immediate so that the sudden unmaking needed to slay the evil Quaan would not spin out of control and rupture Enari's planar fabric.
The new demiplane has not gone to waste, as it has been claimed
with Maeritha Moonrise's blessing by Sharangar Illithidsbane for her
illithid-battling allies. These have become the Pactsworn of the Quaan,
heirs to the heroes who battled Eslathagos Malkith.