Ashfall

Ashfall is a kingdom in name only, and the name is kept ON PURPOSE: the burnt shell of the old capital, held by wall captains and scavenger guilds and the stubbornest population in the world, people who returned to the ash because leaving it felt like agreeing with the dragonkin. The treaty gave Vashen's crown a seat among the four out of respect and guilt in equal measure, and the seat has been filled by a succession of captains-regent who rule a city that is mostly memory and say so.

What Ashfall actually governs is the excavation of its own past: the greatest ruin-field in the world, worked in shifts, yielding the old kingdom's goods and the old kingdom's questions in equal tonnage. Below it all sits the sealed court of the Old King, the treaty's unfinished business, and every captain-regent has kept the same two standing orders about it: the seal is honoured, and the stair is guarded. Ashfall calls itself the Kingdom of What Remains, and means it both ways.