Adventures in Comalan: The Solan Lighthouse.

The eastern Restan city of Solan, located somewhere near the country's southern coast, has long been known as a place of secrets. People silently walk past each other on the streets, visitors pass through unremarked, and no one enters a building uninvited. Those unfortunate few who disregard these unwritten, unspoken rules frequently run into something they wish they hadn't, like a hastily buried corpse, human traffickers, or unethical scholars-- magical and scientific alike. The most famous of these hidden secrets are the catacombs carved from the mountain beneath Solan's iconic lighthouse. Originally built to aid templar ships passing by on their northward journeys, ownership of this historic landmark has changed hands several times as a new local governor takes office in the city. In the final century of the second age, however, is when the sinister rumors that have made the place the legend it is today began.

It all began in the year 2E241, with the fall of the Scarlet Starlings. Following the events of the Second Wave of Death, the newly recognized Champion of Salica began a three-year crusade to eradicate the guild of assassins. With templars at her side, she stormed the Governor Estate that had once been her home and turned over the belongings of her former stepmother, Dinorah Winstrom. Among her personal files, Mia found a letter to a long-deceased associate of the starlings, which mentioned an unknown place referred to only as the vault of shadows. From studying the buildings under the governor's control and thinking of places she remembered Lady Winstrom visiting, the champion had deduced that she would find this vault underneath the lighthouse.

In the opening month of winter that year, Mia and the templars stripped the lighthouse bare until they found the secret staircase leading into a maze of interconnecting tunnels below. The catacombs were filled with countless deadly traps and false paths, seemingly designed to keep the explorers lost and terrified for their own lives. If the maze had worked as it should, they might have fled the very next time they happened across the staircase that would take them back in the direction from which they came. But Mia was stubborn and hungered desperately for revenge against the very organization that was responsible for these deadly tunnels. Her obsession overpowered her fear and she searched every inch of this underground stronghold. When she finally found the remaining Starlings in hiding, she initiated a purge of their hideout in order to rid Comalan of their particular evil.

With the Scarlet Starlings eradicated, the lighthouse became a favored haunt of daring urban explorers for the next few decades. While many sought the accolades of surviving a tour of the catacombs, nearly as many would continue falling victim to previously uncovered traps until Mia, then the governor of Solan, ordered the lighthouse sealed. That might have been the end of the legend, but there were practitioners of forbidden magic who sought refuge in a forbidden safe, away from prying eyes. It was first occupied by a small coven of dark mages who had escaped the Purge of Shaville. These mages managed to revive their demon "breeding" operation for some time before being driven out by the Royal Army under Karen Blackstone's Geosian Regime. 

This left the lighthouse abandoned for quite some time until the new queen's son Michael-- recently appointed Solan's new governor-- appropriated the catacombs as the headquarters for his rebellion against Geos. It was there where he coordinated the efforts of the resistance on behalf of the Fadalians until a very public incident forced him to reveal himself as a leader of his own mother's opposition and flee Solan. Many spellwarriors would spend the rest of their years under the Geosian regime, and during the subsequent Archknight Rebellion, combing these catacombs once more for secrets left behind by Michael Blackstone's resistance.

The lighthouse would once again be occupied in the Third Age, by an entity known to most as Erdas, the God of Suffering. It was there where he kept countless prisoners, including the Avatars of Life, Death, and Time and the innocent people that Erdas used to manipulate the Avatars in games against each other. It was believed at first that he was doing this simply for his own sadistic amusement, but he was actually using them to combine the power of the three demigods in order to create new members of the kilgor-- a nearly extinct race which is comprised mostly of the Fadalians themselves. While these three Avatars were manipulated into creating a new god through suffering, Gyanda Maloran, the third Archknight, was held prisoner here to be tortured with the many mistakes of his past.

The Archknight would find himself returning to this lighthouse months later, when-- with Erdas and his prisoners gone-- blood mages began to take up residence in the catacombs. It was only after taking over the coven, a feat famously* described in his memoirs, that the lighthouse was abandoned for the final time, leaving it in its current state. With Resta in a state of uncertainty as the world's eyes center on the Starlight Crusade, explorers have once again found an opening to explore these catacombs again. Doing so continues to yield lost secrets left behind by each of the lighthouse's past inhabitants, which makes this an attractive for brave adventurers who are most interested in the turbulent history of this mysterious city.

* This represents a passage in TMR, which is an actual book in canon. But said passage hasn't been written yet as of the most recent update-- and probably won't for a long time, anyway.