The Aureate Ward was founded during an unknown era, at the very height of the Slave Trade. It served as the exclusive residential district for the powerful Merchant Princes and Gateway overseers. These individuals amassed immense wealth from the lucrative interdimensional commerce flowing through the Bukhara Spire Gateways.

When the Coian Civil War erupted and ravaged the lands, threatening even places like The Freehold of Bone, the residents of the Ward took drastic action. They enacted the Ordinance of Preservation, sealing their district away from the spreading chaos. Massive, magically reinforced Onyx Walls were erected, fortifying their sanctuary.

For centuries, the Aureate Ward functioned as a self-sustaining bubble of high society. Its opulent lifestyle was maintained by vast amounts of hoarded energy, continuously siphoned from the powerful Bukhara Spire Gateways. Life within these gilded walls was a continuous golden age of luxury and privilege.

However, this prosperity was shattered when the Dragonbone Vanguard, in a desperate attempt to stop a demonic incursion, destroyed the very gateways that powered the Ward. With their primary energy source gone, the protective wards that had shielded the district for so long failed. The many magical amenities that defined aristocratic life ceased functioning.

Despite this catastrophic loss, the ruling Council of Peers refused to acknowledge the new reality. Rather than adapt, they doubled down on bureaucracy and denial, clinging to obsolete procedures. They began to barricade internal streets, creating isolated zones to quarantine dissenters and lower-class servants.

This policy transformed the once-grand district into a gilded cage. Within these confined, opulent spaces, starving aristocrats continued to wear their moth-eaten finery, desperately pretending their golden age had not ended. Their delusion grew with each passing day.

Simultaneously, the lower classes residing in the adjacent Freehold, sensing the Ward's weakness, began to breach its outer perimeter. This external pressure was met with an internal crisis as the trapped servants within the Ward, driven by despair and hunger, initiated their own revolts.

The Aureate Ward now stands as a strange, stagnant war zone, with conflicts erupting amidst crumbling luxury. Besieged from without and revolting from within, the district remains trapped in its state of profound delusion.