Known History: Ruined Acrabatta:
The kobolds of Ruined Acrabatta have two histories. A written history, which goes a mere twenty years back, and the oral one, preserved by Varan, which goes sixty years back (He is eighty years old, but does not remember much before this, for Gnomes grow slowly and rarely remember anything of use before they are twenty to thirty).
The kobolds of Acrabatta were part of the normal population at the time. Acrabatta was largely human, but was a large and diverse city. Goblins, gnomes, orc, dwarves, merfolk, and even a smattering of young elves called the city their home. It was, however, increasingly unpleasant. Disappearances, riots in the street, pogroms and race riots. The mayor went mad, one day, and erupted into a Siege Rephaim that killed fifteen guards and a wizard before the Merfolk pulled it into the river and drowned it. The captain of the guard went mad and ate her own children before throwing herself off of the tallest tower in the city. Many nights, most of the cities lamps would go unlit, and no-one could remember who was supposed to be in charge of lighting them, until one day no-one was willing to volunteer and the nights were plunged into darkness. People would volunteer for the Legion, to go fight the Rephaim to the south or participate in suicidal voyages across Lake Isonzo to try and find other civilizations beyond it, simply because it meant that they would not die at home.
This state of affairs lasted for ten years, until something happened that Varan has no memories of. There is a year-long blank in his memory, at the start of which he lived in Acrabatta, and at the end of which he fled the city alongside his parents and the remaining kobold population as it burned, necks of some colossal monster writhing in the air.
At the time, this was the state of the region:
To the south was Aravet, the jungle of the elves. It had been overrun by Rephaim some time prior, and occasionally elvish refugees would join them as they fled. Beyond it were the Grey Moors, home of the Rephaim. East of Aravet were the Azamot Barrowlands, which held the great goblin cities of Joppa and Hebron, and the great halfling city-necropolis at Alexandrion. East of Acrabatta was Lydda, a great goblin city and the destination of the refugees at the time. East of Lydda was Chesed, the city you now know as Foothold, which was known to be unsafe and to be avoided at all costs. South of Chesed were the Greenhaven Hills, which housed the halfling fortress-city of Emmaus, and south of Emmaus was Azamot. Emmaus, Alexandrion, Hebron, and Lydda were at the time at war with the Rephaim, but Joppa did not commit its armies until later, for it did not think they would come south to Azamot. North of the Isonzo plains was the Tripartite, a gnoll queendom who kept the peace in the Vordt Steppe, and Chokmah, an Orcish kingdom and the great shield against the threat of Northern Rephaim.
The refugees escaped Rephaim outriders and took refuge in Lydda. Things were good for a time, however after some eight years the city was sacked by the Rephaim and they were forced to flee to Emmaus. Three years later, Joppa fell to a surprise attack, weeks after they entered the war, and Alexandrion was put to the torch, its fleeing citizens slaughtered as they attempted to escape their burning city. The Tripartite sent an army to assist, and though it died their sacrifice helped push the Rephaim into the Isonzo Plains, and thirty one years ago they were destroyed in the Battle of Rehoboam Hill. The battle was enormously brutal, however, and a conflux of necromantic energy turned it into a pit of undead that is dangerous to this day.
The bulk of the Rephaim armies moved north after that, fighting the Tripartite and Chokmah, and with pressure lower in the South the gnomes and kobolds decided to attempt to resettle Acrabatta. The trip across the plains was hazardous, menaced by Rephaim outriders and feral fauna, but it was successful. The group reached Acrabatta and began to resettle the Docks, with the hopes of eventually establishing proper trade with the Barrowlands and Greenhaven hills.
This, however, was not to be. Over the next fifteen years the Rephaim were pushed back into the plains and over the Isonzo by the Orcs and Gnolls, and promptly went to war with the halflings and goblinoids again. Contact was lost with the Barrowlands, and Rephaim raiders crossed into Acrabatta at one point, destroying much of what the kobolds had rebuilt. Some help came from the Orcs and Gnolls, but between attacks on anyone outside of Acrabatta by Rephaim and attacks from Merrow and Crab People on the river and inside of the city itself, the situation was incredibly precarious. A break came fifteen years ago, when without warning the Rephaim began to move north.
It was around then that the kuo-toa were discovered. The mad fishpeople were being hunted by nastier creatures in the Isonzo Lake, and were in danger of being driven entirely extinct. The kobolds and what few gnomes remained took them in, sheltering them in particularly defensible parts of the docks.
From here, the situation worsened. Attacks by Crab People and an infestation of dangerous fauna made it difficult for the kobolds to traverse their own city. A dragonborn wizard, who had turned one of the False Hydra's heads into a wizard tower, disappeared into the tower under mysterious circumstances, and a preliminary scouting party claimed that the tower was now infested by monsters, and was not safe to enter. The high priest of Marfur died, and then a plague swept through the few gnomes who still lived, killing all save Varan. Refugees began to pour into the city, orcs, tieflings, and dragonborn from the Ash Hills and halflings and goblinoids from Azamot and the Greenhaven Hills. Evidently Hebron had been sacked by Rephaim, and Emmaus had been overrun by a bugbear bandit-queen. The army sent to subdue the bandits went rogue, and instead took over a section of the Isonzo Plains under the guise of creating a new city-state. And, make everything worse, Rephaim raiders were beginning to come south again from the Ash Hills and Vordt Steppe.
At current time Ruined Acrabatta is trying to resettle and take care of its influx of refugees, clearing dangerous fauna out of Acrabatta as a whole, and attempting to ensure that they will not all die the moment the Rephaim come their way.
