At the crossroads of commerce of the old kingdoms, a city that has worn many badges of purpose throughout its existence, one grief-laden mark on Ryokara’s history remains indelibly immanent.
As the plague of unrest and disquietude percolated over many centuries of the Second Kingdom’s mid-years, Ryokara became a pivotal location for those who would invoke the call to adventure. Some were driven towards the west by the allure of its infinite potential, and others were driven away from their homes to it, forced to place their hopes on a new world. Whatever their reasons, almost all of them reconciled in one shared experience: parting the familiar safeguard of their empire and passing through what would come to be known as the Gate of Saeha.
The judgments made on the fates of many who partook in this mass exodus are known in specifics only to the divine themselves, but the voices of the lost, the whispers of their journeys, should not so easily be quelled by mere ignorance.
Those who dared to brave the perils of the uncharted world but could never return to recount their tales, their valor should not so easily fade into oblivion without a trace.
The trailblazers, whose flames were quenched too early to scorch the grounds they walked, smothered and erased by the relentless sands, their memory should not so easily be eroded.
It wasn’t long before the Vault of Whispers was needed.
Carving into the mountainous rocks at the heart of the city, the Vault of Whispers is a network of intricate, labyrinthine halls that snake throughout its natural stone. Along these many walls, the names of those countless evanesced are engraved in stone, forever remembering them and ensuring their legacy is not neglected.
Pre-dating the Adventurers Guild, a dedicated commission was formed to shoulder the solemn responsibility of cataloging these proto-adventurers, and it became tradition for any leaving the city in this pursuit to sign their names on a form that would be left behind with them. If they failed to return in three years, were not reported alive on the other side of the desert, or otherwise left no trace of their ongoing existence since stepping past the gate and into the harsh unknown, their name would join the Vault of Whispers, presumed deceased. Chiseled into the walls, with the same eloquence of the signatures they left behind, their essence is remarked through name. For the untold others whose lost presences went unbeknownst, a grand epitaph at the center of each floor remembers them too.
For any who heed the call of adventure today, the Vault of Whispers is an incumbent place of pilgrimage. It is on the foundations built from the absent bodies of these revered that they tread upon. And even after a century of unprecedented triumphs and conquests, the halls of the Vault of Whispers continue to etch new names into their timeless stone, a reminder of the enduring uncertainty that lies beyond Saeha’s Gate.
