Gosha's Garden
Gosha's Garden is a Loreseeker settlement in the Black Mountains due northeast of the Titan Gosha's remains. With an estimated population of about 180 as of 3800 Aj., Gosha's Garden is one of the largest settlements in the Wend Desert. Located in the valley separating the northern and southern ranges of the Black Mountains, Gosha's Garden is the only point of access into the Tarlands from southern and western Kento. As a party to the Loreseekers League, Gosha's Garden is a self-governing settlement.
The freshwater springs of the Fell River originate just south of Gosha's Garden and have ensured the settlement with high food and water security. Despite this relative abundance, the settlement's geographic position high in a mountain valley between two desolate regions has long insulated protected it from any serious incursions against its autonomy. The settlement has ample access to mineral resources which fuel a highly productive smelting and smithy local industry. While it is agriculturally and metallurgically productive, Gosha's Garden primarily serves as a hub for prospectors seeking to explore and scavenge the Tarlands to its east. Gosha's Garden is consequentially one of the largest supplies of scavenged lore and technology to the rest of Kento.
The site of Gosha's Garden has been inhabited since the later part of the Skeleton War. Legend posits that the Titan Gosha amassed a following of other skeletons who recognized the impact of the war upon the biologicals their own kind had sworn to protect, and so Gosha led their followers in gathering as many humans, arimen, and sunomen as possible and bringing them to safety in the fertile, temperate valley. Gosha is said to have given their own body and energy such that the saved peoples could build a new unified civilization in the Garden. Over time, however, the tensions between the radically different social groups they had saved led to the fracturing of this survivor state and the resettlement of Kento by its descendants.
Gosha's Garden remained totally abandoned from the early 32nd century onwards and was slowly lost to common knowledge. The contemporary settlement was founded in the 37th century following the reappearance of the skeletons and the establishment of the Loreseekers League. The site had been avoided by the lowland sunomen, who believed that the gargantuan remains of Gosha made the valley tantamount to a god's gravesite and that any who dared to try and settle there would fall victim to the dead-god's curse. Over time, superstitions surrounding the valley wore away and Gosha's Garden developed into one of the most prosperous and technologically advanced towns in Kento.
History
Original settlement
Gosha's Garden is mentioned in the mythologies of the many different cultures of humans and sunomen as the sanctuary of biological sentients during the later stages of the Skeleton War. In all of these myths, which have no verifiable historic record, the Titan Gosha is said to have amassed a following of skeletons dedicated to the cause of protecting the biological races from destruction at the hands of the other, war-crazed skeletons. Various representations of the legend have Gosha collecting and protecting specimens of the biological races by placing them within their chassis. Gosha's Garden was selected by the Titan possibly for its natural desirability; the location is high in a mountain valley with its own source of fresh water and located between two historically arid and inhospitable regions.
The period of the original settlement of Gosha's Garden lasted from sometime in the 31st century to the early 32nd century. It is unknown exactly when within this period that Gosha perished. The common reason given in legend for their passing is the provision of the biological races with the abundance of resources that physically made up their body, such as copper and steel, which could be used to build a wide variety of technical devices. In the legends of the eastern Sunomen, the group which remain in closest proximity to Gosha's Garden, it is said that Gosha ended their life due to the immense melancholy of watching their own kind destroy civilization and threaten the existence of biological life on a planetary scale.
By the early 32nd century, conditions in Gosha's Garden deteriorated as the individual groups which made up its population began fracturing from one another. The arimen were the first to depart; the First Queen reportedly detested the gradual degradation of her hormonal influence over other arimen, who had begun to socially mix with the humans and sunomen of the settlement. Although there was a brief stability following the departure of the arimen, they would be later followed by the sunomen under Reva, who found their human counterparts meek and unworthy of protection. Following the departure of the sunomen, wastelander raids against Gosha's Garden would lead to the total abandonment of the settlement by the mid 32nd century.