Ardatazand

As a hermit crab takes up residence in another creature's old shell, so the ascetic monks inhabit the desolate halls of Ardatazand, wedged high in the mountains where the holy river gushes forth, the offspring of ineffable glaciers. 

The monks know nothing of its former glory, but they dutifully fly bright pennants from its crumbling ramparts, and the tones of their great bronze bell echo drily off the mountain walls. 

The fabled city on the northern frontier of the ancient kingdom of Smaragdistan is now a far cry from the legends you hear when you pass among the peoples of Kapautakand, its southern counterpart. 

Long before he sees its gray stone walls, the rider from the south will catch the sun glinting off the high silver spires of Ardatazand. These are the towers where the wise (and the wealthy) ascend to die, that their souls may be born on the winds high into the sacred mountaintops.

Some of the towers house great silver pipes – flutes, powered by the rising mountain winds which are funneled in at the bottom. Other towers hide magnificent silver bells, gently rung by these same winds.

Blessed are they (it is said) who give their last breath as the pipes and the bells raise a mighty crescendo to the spirits of the silver-blue glaciers.

In Ardatazand it is forbidden to sing aught but the sargam. Thus the musicians of Ardatazand have become masters of wind instruments - ney, surney, and narmeney.

Ardatazand invites many questions, yet reveals the answers to few.