Shiesia, also known as the Moving City, is small city in Fusalis that moves periodically across the continent. The buildings and structures of the city are built by and upon a special form of enchanted ice that can be mobilized by the various sorcerers living within the city. The city is diversely populated, but dwarves, tieflings and dragonborns compose a majority of the citizenry. Shiesia functions as a sanctuary for the lost and disposed, traveling throughout the nations of Fusalis and Frostwilds as a beacon of hope in the bitter cold.
History
Shiesia was originally founded in the middle centuries of the Broken Age by a group of tiefling fugitives jumping through the planes that happened upon the ancient dragon Ferazir deep in the caves of the Bitterfrost Peaks. The arrival of the tieflings amused the once sleeping dragon, as they revered him like a god. Ferazir assisted the tieflings in growing their numbers, and thusly granted them access to powerful ice magic through their blood. The village was formed in reverence of the dragon, even after he returned to his slumber, maintaining the central idea that the people of the village were never to leave the caves again.
The village formed into an isolated patriarchal hunter-gatherer society that highly prized the ability of magic; those gifted with the blood of the dragon found themselves in powerful positions in the village, regardless of their aptitude in leadership. With the village dominated by men, women were expected to be homemakers, and were forbidden from learning magic outrightly, though many practiced in secret. Men were the only ones permitted to leave the boundaries of the caves to go on hunting missions, while non-sorcerers and the women stayed inside to tend to farms.
In the 940s IaC, the tiefling sorcerer Journey escaped from the village, and became exposed to the rest of the world. She returned to the village in 951, when the village became occupied by the Dracohest, a cult obsessed with the progenitor god Xac'huranac. The Dracohest wished to drill down into the earth to get to Ferazir, believing the dragon possessed a component necessary to bring Xac'huranac into the Material Plane. Journey, alongside the Peas, helped to free the village, but later angered Ferazir himself, forcing the entire village to evacuate the mountain as the dragon brought it down in an avalanche.
After evacuating, Shiesia became a nomadic village led by the tiefling Unknown, who formed the village into a more inclusive and accepting society, aided by some former members of the Dracohest that defected from their faith after finding love in the tribe. In Iron 953, tensions in the village boiled as some of the former leadership attempted to lead a coup against the new village chiefs, but these rebellions were eventually quashed by the efforts of the warlock Ark, after she made direct contact with Xac'huranac in exchange for power. She was later defeated by the efforts of Karcius and a tiefling from Gessaria known as Vacklash, who reinstated Afuphis as the leader of the village. During this time, the village survived by hunting beasts in the wilds, trading their furs and crafts in border settlements. Over time, the village began to grow as travelers and the homeless were accepted into their community.
Following the Siege of Sanar in the Great Throne War in 962, the sorcerer Journey would later return to the village to help them grow, working with her brother Valx to draft plans for a mobile town carried by separating pieces of permafrost ice. The plans were partially completed then, only fully becoming realized in 963 following the defeat of the central Dracohest. The city was planned as having 9 distinct districts built atop magically manipulable blocks of ice, but as of Iron 985, the number of pieces has increased to 29, with plans for more. The magic of the ice itself was engineered by Journey's unique understanding of dragon crystal magic, which is studied at a college located within the city's 3rd block.