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On the Origins of Slaan
Location: Para-Elemental Smoke / Core Smoke / Slaan
By the Anatomist Thelon Arad
Poets and the like are fond of saying the origins of a city are “shrouded in mystery” or “spawned of mad god’s dreams.” Such talk is obscuring and frankly irritating. Thankfully, in Slaan’s case we’ve most recently been able to shed some light on its mysterious origins. Slaan is formed of elemental Mineral shaped into the form of a cerith shell, specifically a mollusc of the genus rhinoclavis. Initial theories considered that a mass of Mineral this large must simply have been an extremely rare pocket that was shaped by the hands of powerful magic and labour. We now know that this is not the case. Analysis of its structure has indicated with certainty that Slaan is not in fact a Mineral pocket, but a tremendous chunk of Mineral itself that was deliberately carved, prior to its transportation to Smoke. The power necessary to transport a mass of this size across so many planes, especially considering Mineral is separated from Smoke by the entirety of the Radiance, is staggering, and a feat that cannot be achieved by any known means. Furthermore, I suspect the city must have been transported directly, as there is no evidence of any passage through intervening planes.
Legends of Slaan have tended to focus on the mind flayers, correctly known as illithids, as the city’s creators. This stems from similarities in shape between the city and illithid spelljamming vessels. In this case, however, all evidence indicates that this is indeed the correct hypothesis. The current theory has evolved in the following fashion, based primarily on ancient historical records obtained from the Dragon Clans of Mineral and the vestiges of ullitharid Qualith writing that yet remain on Slaan’s soot baked outer shell.
Slaan was originally created during the height of the ancient Illithid Empire [see the Illithiad for details] at least 25,000 years in the past. At some point during that empire, a massive attack was staged by the illithids on the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Mineral. While that attack was beaten back by the psionically resistant tsnng, the Dragon Clans, and the formation of an alliance of Mineral Quasi-Elementals, the illithids nevertheless in the process established many fortresses in Mineral during the war. It is believed that Slaan was designed as the capstone of this fortress network, and it was intended to be fully mobile and able to auger through the plane. However, the city was never completed. Evidence now indicates that the incredibly powerful psionic engines intended for the city’s motion were burnt to a cinder in the desperate transition of the city away from Mineral in the face of wrathful tsnng. Indeed several places on the exterior walls of Slaan show the characteristic damage pattern caused by tsnng mineral blast spells! It also seems that, regardless of where the illithids intended to take their city, the Para-Elemental Plane of Smoke was not their intended destination, since the glass walls are rendered rather pointless on the plane.
It seems evident that some of the illithids, at least, survived the transition, and secured the city against the hazards of Smoke by creating the city’s membranous gates. What happened later is less well understood. There are no records whatsoever of lizardfolk arriving in Slaan, though it seems they were the first to reach this place. No evidence can be found that the lizardfolk took the city by force, and the complete and total lack of all illithid artifacts in the city when they arrived indicates that the place was likely alread abandoned. It is quite possible that the illithid survivors were forced out of their city by the efreet or djinn, who were not at war at that time, and never received the chance to take the city back before their own empire crumbled. Relative dating indicates that the Illithid Empire collapsed within several centuries of the failed attack on Mineral. However, this theory runs counter to the Genieban. If the genies took the city from the illithids, why did they not hold it? It would seem an almost ideal fortress in the para-elemental plane.
My personal conclusion is that genies did not drive the illithids from Slaan, but that instead they were forcibly removed from the city by another force—after all it is inconceivable that the illithids would abandon the city unforced while the Empire lasted. There are two decent candidates for the removing force. The first is the Dragon Gods. The draconic pantheon, much stronger in those days, may have acted to secure Slaan for their races, especially the burning desert lizards, which have a tendency to worship them. The dragons of Mineral could also have pushed for such an action. Unfortunately, the only way to have these questions answered would be to ask the draconic powers, and they are notoriously difficult to contact, and cryptic in the extreme. The second likely option is that the city was cleared by the rilmani, who did not wish to allow Smoke to become corrupted by the presence of the foul illithids. The rilmani seem to have an arrangement with Slaan’s rulers, and the neutral lizard peoples seem just the kind of settlers the rilmani would have supported in Slaan. Unfortunately, those abiorachs I have been able to approach with this question will not answer one way or the other. They may in fact be too young to actually know the answer, and it will be necessary to attempt to secure the data from higher-ranking rilmani (which seems unlikely to occur at the current time).
Source: Inner Planes [2e] p13 (brief mention), expanded upon by Mechalich, edited by Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: ‡ The expanded details for this location are homebrew and were rescued from the dead-booked Planewalker.com site.