Urzeris

Urzeris is a coastal city in the north of Shurima. It has been a Noxian possession for years, occupied but never fully subdued: its winding alleys and crowded streets still feel ancient and quietly resistant to the future, refusing to completely embrace its new identity under Noxus. The city became home to the family of General Du Couteau, a hero of Noxus' expansion into Shurima. He installed his wife Soreana and their daughter Cassiopeia close to the governor of Urzeris. Surrounded by strangers in an unfamiliar land, Cassiopeia stayed near her mother and learned politics, diplomacy, and subtle influence at her side. Within the family residence, Soreana collapsed after her hairbrush was laced with caustic venoms by an unknown hand, leaving her near death. Du Couteau removed all of the household staff, and Cassiopeia never left her mother's bedside through the long recovery. When the general was recalled to Noxus to prepare the invasion of Ionia, he took Katarina with him, but Cassiopeia remained behind in Urzeris. Free at last of her husband's watchful eye, Soreana confided that she belonged to the clandestine cabal known as the Black Rose, and from Urzeris she began its real work of spreading influence into Shurima. Cassiopeia was initiated into the order and used her family's resources to raid ancient desert ruins with the mercenary Sivir. It was here that word arrived from the capital that Jericho Swain had deposed Grand General Boram Darkwill, and that Du Couteau had chosen to honor the coup. After an ancient tomb guardian's fangs poisoned her in the deep desert, Cassiopeia was carried back to the city and locked herself in the disused crypt beneath the Urzeris residence, where she endured the agony of her transformation into a monstrous, serpentine creature. In the aftermath she kept to the rooftops of Urzeris, a predator concealed in the shadows above its taverns and markets.