Zuretta

Zuretta is an isolated desert settlement in the north of Shurima, a frontier city set apart from the empire's heartland and reachable only through remote, rocky passes to its south. It remains an active settlement, and its name has been carried across two very different ages of Shuriman history. In the age of the god-warriors, the title "of Zuretta" belonged to Naganeka, one of the Sunborn raised up by the sun-disc. Serpentine in form, she coiled beneath a long scaled robe and a hooded cowl, her many hypnotic eyes rimmed with ash and her scaled lips overhung by long ebony fangs. So withdrawn was she that none had heard her sibilant whispers in over five hundred years, and her venom-blinded life-bearers stood ready to convey her words when she chose not to speak. At the conclave of the Ascended recounted in Twilight of the Gods, she slid forward to taste the death of the fallen Xuuyan, remarking that Rhaast would be disappointed to have been denied the kill he had sworn to make. In the later era of the mortal empire, Zuretta was saved by Renekton. Outnumbered ten to one, he and a small contingent faced an invading force in the rocky southern passes to buy time for the city to be evacuated, in a battle none expected him to survive. He held out long enough for a relief force led by his brother Nasus to arrive, and the invaders were routed. For saving the isolated city, Renekton was made a captain by the emperor himself and named Gatekeeper of Shurima, a triumph that helped his reputation come to rival even the god-warriors of the Ascended Host.