Taphezel

Built by the Nawirrûs Covenant, the fortifications of Taphezel once controlled the river Murk. A Covenant bastion of the Creation War (1486 DE - 8777 DE), Taphezel's towering flood gates, dams and canals were used in the war against the primordials, inundating the countryside and supporting the Covenant cordon around the Regadnîn battlefields. After the war, Taphezel was left to nearly a thousand Aarakocra, ex-Covenant soldiers and their flock. Favoring the towering trees and floating islands of Skyhook, most left, leaving Taphezel to the old, invalids and cripples of the war. Most still able to procreate, they continued on, turning the sprawling bastion into a trading post that steadily grew in size and population.

Taphezel's population peaked in the Horgon Era at nearly a half-million strong. A wealthy, fat state, they were then, and many times after, the envy of the tribal Aarakocra states of Skyhook.

Burdened by shiny trappings, the Taphezel have forgotten the way of the raptors, gluttons from being served, they will fall in days.

- Sergin, Chieftain of the Wingspear

The Wingspear and six other tribes of Skyhook took Taphezel in the first of the Raptor Wars. For the Aarakocra, these conflicts are a time of pruning and re-balancing, pillage and plunder, and rebuilding of tribes that have lost their way.

The waterworks of Taphezel are a sight to behold with waterfalls plunging two hundred feet from dam walls said to have been built from the bodies of earth elementals slain in the wastes of Regadnîn.