In the early days of the colony, the largest, wealthiest and most important settlement was neither Kambyra Town ,the main port, nor Dylaro, the colonial capital: rather, that honour went to Vastroy, a burgeoning town on the river of the same name. This town existed in a state of quasi-independence from the colonial government, with its own charter from the Emperor. It grew steadily as the staging post for the colonial assault on the interior, as well as an important transit point for the trade goods that flowed in both directions. As the hinterland was gradually tamed, the town also grew increasingly wealthy. Despite much resentment from the colonial administration and the settlers, Vastroy soon had a lock hold on the economy, and its increasingly rich merchant class were the leaders of society on the island. But this wealth bred hubris, and it was this that ultimately led to Vastroy’s eclipse and eventual destruction.
A powerful committee of investors – merchants and nobles from both Vastroy and the Empire itself – decided to make the town’s ascendancy complete by building a new port on the Vastroy River, thus bypassing colonial customs in Kambyra Town, and effectively killing that infamous sink of vice and graft. Massive sums were raised and the work begun. It ran into difficulties almost immediately: the swampy lower reaches of the Vastroy River were ill-suited for any vessel with draught larger than a barge or small fishing boat, and a huge engineering work was begun, dredging the river and building a system of locks and new channels to enable ocean-going vessels to reach Vastroy.
The humanoids dwelling in the swamps had kept – for the most part – aloof from the colonists. The fens they occupied were dangerous and inimical to settlement, and they had been mostly left alone. But now, the colonists were invading the fens and destroying the habitat of millennia. The Lizardfolk who dwelt in the fens withdrew to the north and south, away from the river, but the Boggards, Fey and Goblins who made the fens their home were not so passive. They began to raid the work-camps, destroying supplies and slaughtering or driving off the workers. Delays led to rising costs, and Vastroy’s elite now had to contend with increasing debt, exacerbated by the need to hire mercenaries to defend the camps. The colonial government – and the Emperor – refused to commit troops to the endeavour, which had been revealed as an exercise in foolhardiness.
The mercenaries proved inept in defending the workers – but much better at slaying them when the inevitable revolt began in the camps. Desperate to complete the building of the port, the investors brought in a large force of slaves. These miserable individuals were set to work, and, although many fell to the depredations of the swamp-dwellers, the river’s new course gradually took shape. Just when Vastroy’s elite were breathing sighs of relief and celebrating – somewhat prematurely – their success, catastrophe struck. For time out of mind, a great creature had lain entrapped in the muddy bed of the lower river: a Thalassic Behemoth. Long ago bound by magic and buried by silt and muck, this monster was inadvertently freed by the dredging of the river. It immediately attacked the slaves, mercenaries and engineers, destroying the earthworks and slaughtering everything sent against it. It then moved upriver and laid waste to much of Vastroy itself. Only the courageous efforts of a group of adventurers saw it captured and trapped in a small demi-plane (the ‘key’ to this demi-plane is said to be held in Dylaro, the summer capital, but this is a rumour put about by the administration to help secure their rule. It is in fact lost somewhere in the ruins of Vastroy).
With their scheme - and most of their home – in ruins, the merchants and nobles of Vastroy fled the town, leaving it to die an unruly death (most of the investors lost everything, and most died as paupers in exile). Most of the commonalty also left, some going to Kambyra Town, where they established several criminal gangs that plague the town to this day. Others, more law-abiding in nature, founded the village of Little Vastroy to the north, settling for a quiet agricultural life a safe distance from the dangers of the fens.
Only a few fierce and hardy souls remained in Vastroy, and they were terribly vulnerable to the incessant raiding of Goblin and Boggard. Only the fact that these two humanoid races were just as vicious in their struggles with each other allowed the town to survive, though much diminished. Eventually, with the town the merest shadow of its former glory and hugely indebted, the Imperial Charter was revoked and the town reverted to the colonial government. New colonists were assisted by the administration on the condition that they settled in Vastroy and helped to rebuild it. Colonial troops were assigned to protect the town from the swamp-folk, and slowly Vastroy began to recover, although seventy years after the debacle of the Behemoth it had a population only one-tenth of that before the disaster.
Sadly, just as the town was re-emerging from its dark age, it became the last battleground of the Great Insurgency (when the Shokottu Elves made common cause with the Tavarawans in an attempt to drive out the colonists). Although most of the two-year conflict was fought far from Vastroy (and, indeed, the town did quite well as a staging post for colonial operations against the insurgents), the final stages saw the town destroyed once (and perhaps, for all), when, after a desperate effort by the Shokottu Elves to capture Kambyra Town (in order to prevent supplies and new troops from reaching the colonists) failed, the Elves retreated to Vastroy where, after slaughtering the population wholesale, they were besieged for almost six months. As their Tavarawan allies in the interior lost battle after battle, the Elves were completely cut off. After the Tavarawans laid down their arms (a ‘betrayal’ for which the Elves have never forgiven them), the full might of the colonial government was arrayed against the Shokottu. They fought bravely, but were defeated and destroyed almost to the last soldier.
Now the ruins are a forlorn and forsaken collection of foundations and rotting timbers, with Boggard and Goblin squabbling over possession, and, so it is said, the ghosts of the Shokottu Elves keening their ancient tragedy into the pitiless winds.
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