City of doom-weavers and dust.
This ancient stone city was the site of a recent multi-state military intervention to exterminate a dangerous cult. The coalition forces were nearly destroyed, but the doom-summoning was foiled at the last minute by – you guessed it – a plucky band of adventurers.
They run the place now. The rule of the adventurers – now the Heroes' Hexumvirate - has ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity for the city-state. And if rumors of what they're building underneath the city hold any truth, their machinations will usher in an age of… .... ...checks notes… Total Negation of All Existence.
Oh. That’s only if they've made any miscalculations in the design of their Impossibility Engine. So, no worries then?
Archaeologists, Lore spinners, Chronomancers, and other scholars of history have long told of Hazardaster's prehistoric importance as a place of power and destiny. Hazardaster's recent history as an Oracle site, Fulcrum of Time, Temple of Fates, Doom-Weaver Headquarters, and now Impossibility Engine is just the continuation of a trend that appears to extend back before the existence of humanity, or perhaps even sentience. Or maybe it's more than just chronological history. In Hazardaster, archaeologists found it was unproductive to ask “what era is this relic from” when the real question is “what reality is this from?”
Loremasters have a theory; a story they weave. The forces that shape reality – the gods behind the gods – can erase existence, past present and future, to bring about something new. No sign of what once was remains – except here, in Hazardaster. Like a blind spot in a retina or grip holes on a bowling ball, the Hazardaster Mesa is a designed, necessary imperfection on the world – a sort of handle for all the forces that invisibly reshape reality on a global or universal scale. The location holds no magical power per se, but the nature of reality is just subtly different here – it has better memory, better awareness. When Dwarven geomancy is performed anywhere on the planet, minor earthquakes shake the mesa below the city – despite being seismically silent even along the very magical fault lines.
Loremasters speak of other times that weren't even part of the world's history, but the world's PREVIOUS histories. Entirely different realities which were overwritten, in sequence, to make way for our own.
Once written off as wild speculation, these outlandish theories were recently given ominous weight when the caverns below Hazardaster were rediscovered. Oddities and Impossibilities of every variety protrude into the hollow mesa at strange angles, some without any appearance of age. Enormous metal skeletons, hovering orbs, transparent vines, and all manner of petrified creatures are among the curiosities that human language can describe. The entire place is haunted by the ghosts of the unreal – and not just in a poetic sense.
Perhaps our flavor of reality is just as ephemeral as those that came before. If so, what little we can leave behind as evidence for the next realities will be found here, beneath the ancient-in-every-way city of Hazardaster.
The mesa caverns are off-limits now, by order of the Heroes' Hexumvirate. Curious noises emanate from them, of course. The assembly of the Impossibility Engine, yes – that's an open secret – but stranger noises as well.