[Pre-Fall Record: The Sundering of the Twin Cities]
[In the age before the Fall, the city of Aethra was split between the uplands and the lowlands. The uplands held the mines. The lowlands held the ports. For centuries, they traded, cooperated, coexisted. But when the blight came, it did not discriminate. It killed the crops in the uplands and the fish in the lowlands. Both sides began to starve. The leaders of Aethra faced a choice: divert the remaining resources to one side or the other. They chose to split them equally. Both sides starved. Within a decade, the city was empty.]
[Alternative outcome: Later records from the city of Telmar show that the leaders chose to save the uplands, sacrificing the lowlands. The uplands survived. They rebuilt. They remembered. But the lowlands became a graveyard, and the survivors of Telmar carried the weight of that choice for generations.]
[There is no record of a city that saved both.]
