An enormous portal of unknown origin opens deep beneath the plains of central Addar north of the Malphigian Sea, instantly consuming billons of tons of rock and leaving in its place a roughly spherical cavern nearly a mile in diameter. Automatons set to work reinforcing the chamber and erecting a technologically advanced city.
The event causes a reverberation in the region dismissed as a minor earthquake, but otherwise goes mostly undetected. Lanst and Ervuol both pick up on the spike of unusual energies but fail to localize the source; each suspects the other of conducting hidden projects or tests.
