Zirima

Zirima is a merchant camp in the southern reaches of Shurima, a waypoint along the trade and antiquities routes that run through the desert. Though modest, it sits close enough to the region's ancient ruins that treasure hunters and caravaneers pass through it regularly. It was on a dig near Zirima that Kassadin found a treasure of his own. Once a lowly offcast who walked the Great Sai beside merchant caravans and later served as their guide, he had spent years exploring Shurima's old ruins and making his employers exceedingly wealthy. Near Zirima, that work gave way to something else when he fell in love with a woman from one of the desert tribes. With his wife and newborn daughter he settled in a small village in the rocky canyons to the south, though his trade still carried him far afield, from the markets of Bel'zhun to distant Piltover. Zirima also became bound to the end of that life. When disaster claimed his village and left only shifting sand and rubble, Kassadin's fellow caravaneers found him a broken and empty man and dragged him back to Zirima, where he would go no further. There he lingered for years, reduced to little more than a vagrant, trying to drown his grief, until word reached the town of the Prophet and the horrors said to dwell beneath the earth. Those whispers stirred his knowledge of old Icathia and the Void, and it was from this refuge that he resolved to arm himself against the abyss and avenge his family. The camp has seen the passage of war as well as sorrow. Renekton is remembered among those who traveled to Zirima during his campaigns. The settlement remains active.