Bailbor, The Gnomish Empire
"Bailbor was where Elves came to study, Dwôrves came to argue, and Humans came to learn how to listen."
Founded in the shadow of Devindra's Reach and expanded across the mountains over five centuries, Bailbor was the crown of gnomish civilization — a city of towering arcane spires, clockwork districts, layered transit systems, and knowledge institutions that drew scholars from every nation on Adamah. At its peak, Bailbor was the single largest center of technological and magical research in the world. Gnomish engineers sent the first satellite into orbit from its launch platforms in 1957 CE. Gnomish astronauts walked on the Moon in 1963 CE. Gnomish geneticists cracked the structure of biological inheritance.
All of it ended in eleven seconds.
During the Sundering War, a 50-megaton nuclear strike leveled Bailbor completely. The detonation point — Devindra's Eye, as the Kazgrinok call it — is still too hot for sustained surface exposure. The valley where the city stood is now Devindra's Desolation: a radiation-soaked wasteland of toxic swamps, collapsed arcane infrastructure, and a geological wound called the Devindra Rift that still vents thermal energy from the point of impact.
Who fired the strike and why remains contested. The UAF's official position acknowledges the strike as a war crime. The Kazgrinok — gnomish descendants who survived in underground sanctuaries beneath the valley floor — have their own answer. They haven't shared it.
Bailbor's legacy survives in fragments. Glimmertongue, its ancient language, lives on in ceremonial use and in the structural bones of Gearscript. Pre-Sundering gnomish technology surfaces regularly in the Desolation's swamp ruins, dug out by Ashwalker scavengers and sold to UAF brokers through intermediaries. The Vault of Glimmertongue — a sealed archive that survived the blast in an airtight sub-basement — is believed to contain the largest remaining collection of Bailbor's knowledge. The Kazgrinok know its location. They have not opened it. They have not said why.