Stromboli
Stromboli was an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea on the planet Earth (known to the elves as Mar). Historically defined by its towering, active supervolcano, it served as a secretive excavation site for the dark mage Cariel (operating under the personas Segena and Magona). It is most famous for being the site of the catastrophic eruption that resulted in the heroic sacrifice of the human mage Phoenix.
Geography and Environment
Before its complete destruction, Stromboli was almost entirely made up of an active volcano, rearing out of the Tyrrhenian Sea "like the fist of a god". The mountain constantly belched smoke and flame into the sky, though the human laborers working there viewed it merely as an "old woman, always muttering complaints".
On the edge of the island, closer to the sea, Cariel's workers constructed a massive, three-hundred-foot-deep pit dug straight into the island's rock and sediment. The vast dig site was surrounded on three sides by heavy wooden scaffolding and illuminated by strings of golden work lights, allowing crews to excavate around the clock.
Following the events of The Stone Flame, the supervolcano collapsed entirely into itself, and the island of Stromboli was completely subsumed by the sea.
Key Events
Cariel's Secret Excavation
Operating as the Remnant god Magona and the leader Segena, Cariel heavily funded a secret dig operation on Stromboli overseen by the humans Bagkag and Kenjeb. Cariel knew that millennia ago, Orym (as Aten) had left an access point deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea. She intended to tunnel down to the hidden underwater city of Atlantis to find the Prison Tree holding Telperion, one of the Twins, so she could release them.
However, her excavation efforts were taking too long. Just as another of her splinters arrived to warn her that Guruthos (the Fall) was still five years away, Cariel grew impatient. Abandoning the physical dig, she captured a group of mages and forced them into a soulcircle. She used their combined power to plunge a massive exploratory gate directly into the earth to search for Atlantis. This invasive magic perturbed the delicate balance of the magma chamber below, triggering an imminent supervolcano eruption. After attempting to weaponize the erupting volcano against the elves and facing a fierce counterattack from Arra and the coalition, Cariel realized she was defeated for the moment. True to her splinter's timeline, she retreated through a gate, warning the survivors that they had exactly five years until her return.
The Supervolcano Eruption
During the climactic confrontation on the island, the earth began to violently shake. Magona's continuous use of a massive gatesending portal perturbed the delicate balance of the magma chamber below, triggering an imminent supervolcano eruption. Realizing the blast would obliterate the atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth, Magona malevolently attempted to gate the erupting volcano directly to the Muir Woods to annihilate the elven village of Sylrantheas.
The Sacrifice of Phoenix
To prevent the destruction of the world, the human forcefinder Phoenix generated an impossibly large forcefield that completely encapsulated the exploding mountain, holding the immense pressure of the earth at bay. Pushing her magic far beyond her physical limits, Phoenix drew upon her deepest emotions to alter the shield—first turning it to fire, then to ice.
In a final, desperate act, Phoenix dropped the shield and infused the force particles directly into the volcano's magma core. Amplifying her power to unprecedented levels, she successfully merged the volcano's energy back into the earth, rendering the magma chamber inert. However, channeling this much energy caused her to become soulburned. A spear of white energy shot from her chest, and she died instantly. Without the pressure of the magma to support it, the mountain collapsed into itself, and Stromboli sank beneath the waves.
The Discovery of Atlantis
Years later, the Ilyrion Space Agency detected a massive, pure waveform of darkprime magic emanating from Earth. Orym and an expedition team traveled to the Mediterranean to investigate. Realizing that the signal's origin was what Cariel had been desperately searching for five years prior, Orym confirmed that she had simply been digging in the wrong place. Deep underwater, the expedition discovered a massive cave containing the lost, ancient city of Atlantis. Hidden deep within this subterranean city, heavily guarded by ancient traps set by Orym millennia ago, lay the true source of the magical signal: Telperion, one of the Twins, trapped in the form of a glowing tree.