The Great Sinkhole Incident

The Great Sinkhole Incident refers to the sudden disappearance of the Lower Oros District exactly 312 years ago. To the public, it was officially recorded as a "Natural Aetheric Fault." In reality, it was the greatest engineering disaster in the history of the Aethervale, caused by a collision of greed, bad math, and subterranean expansion.

The Event

On the night of the "Twin Moon Transit," a three-block area of the bustling industrial city of Oros simply ceased to exist. In less than ten minutes, over four thousand citizens and a dozen major factories were swallowed by a yawning chasm that opened beneath the cobblestones. The screams were said to be heard as far away as the High-Swells.

The Secret Cause

Investigation records, suppressed for centuries by the Steam-Wrights Consortium, reveal that the collapse was caused by "The Grand Cross-Over." The Dwarven engineers of Oros had been digging deeper to tap into a high-pressure Aether-vein, while simultaneously, the Kobold Great-Network was expanding upward to scavenge the city's metal scrap.

Neither side realized they were digging into the same structural "keystone" layer. The kobolds had removed the support pillars, and the dwarves had introduced high-pressure steam that caused the remaining rock to liquefy.

The Cover-Up

When the truth was discovered, the Consortium realized that admitting fault would bankrupt the city and trigger a genocidal war against the kobold warrens. Instead, they hired a group of "Cleanup Mercenaries" (the precursors to the Crimson Company) to descend into the hole and "sanitize" the site. Any survivors found in the depths were paid for their silence or disappeared. The hole was then filled with industrial slag and sealed with "Aether-Concrete."

The Ghostly Legacy

Today, the site of the incident is a park in the rebuilt Oros, but locals claim that on quiet nights, one can still hear the rhythmic ticking of kobold picks and the sound of steam whistles coming from deep beneath the grass. Some scavengers still try to find "The Lost District," hoping to recover the massive vaults of gold and Aether-crystals that went down with the city.