Xolan

Xolan is an old city set along the Sai Kahleek in the south of Shurima, built at the foot of a colossal cliff statue of the Ascended Xolaani, a God-Warrior from Shurima's ancient past. The ground around it was once fertile enough to raise crops and graze animals, and a wide channel that now lies choked with stone and sand once ran through the town with flowing water. Over the centuries much of it decayed, and a small community of stonemasons endures among its remains, remote enough to stay untroubled by predators or bandits. The city's purpose is the restoration of Xolaani's likeness. Her figure, roughly three hundred yards from its carven feet to a shorn neck, was cut into a towering wall of ochre stone but had been worn almost to nothing by neglect, with an ancient wound slashed clean through the face and a long-ago rockfall smashing portions of the sculpted robes. The mason Mennas came from Kenethet as apprentice to Arch-Mason Nouria to join the effort, though the masons cannot agree on the god-warrior's true face. In their tellings, Xolaani could heal the fallen and even return the dead to life through her mastery of blood, until the most vicious of the Darkin struck her down and laid her low for centuries. The town itself is small, perhaps two hundred souls clustered around a murky lake and patches of greenery, their finely crafted dwellings reflecting the character of the artisans within. Food is scarce and depends on trade caravans, but the elder stonemasons hold that Xolaani herself watches over them so that they might restore her to glory. Elsewhere in Shurima, Xolan survives as a legend, a paradise across the Sai Kahleek said to hold libraries, gardens, and endless water where all are safe. Taliyah led a band of refugees displaced by the Void toward it in search of that sanctuary, over the warnings of Kai'Sa, who knew the Sai Kahleek as the nest of the xer'sai, the children of Rek'Sai. Kai'Sa had been tracking a collapsed Void passage that ran directly beneath the route to Xolan and feared the Void had already claimed the city, yet she and Taliyah resolved to reach it together.