Charn has fallen

This depicts the city of Charn after its apocalypse.

Charn is a fictional city appearing in the 1955 book The Magician's Nephew in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Charn was the birthplace of Empress Jadis, who later became the evil White Witch who conquered Narnia. The city was described as totally deserted, lifeless and crumbling, under a dying red sun. Charn had been destroyed by the Empress Jadis through an evil magic spell. According to Jadis, Charn was once the greatest city of her world, "the wonder of all worlds". It was ruled by a line of magically-adept emperors and empresses, of whom Jadis was the last.

The story of Charn was a sad, dystopian one. It was a realm which was once benevolent but degenerated into a cruel, tyrannical empire. The early Emperors and Empresses of Charn were kind and decent but as the centuries passed their lineage evolved into one of malevolence, corruption and evil, seeing their subjects as property to be killed if they deemed it necessary. Evidently the rulers' hunger for power became insatiable and they ventured out and conquered several other nations, Jadis gloated that "many great kings" attempted to stand against Charn but were defeated and their names were lost to history. Slavery was once common in Charn, as was human sacrifice.

The last ruler of this empire was Jadis. In the ruling family of Charn there was knowledge of an evil spell - the Deplorable Word, which would destroy all life except the one who spoke it. Although her ancestors had bound themselves and their descendants with oaths never even to seek knowledge of this spell, Jadis had sought it out and learned the word, saying she paid "a terrible price" for it.

The reason for that was that Jadis and her sister fought a war for the throne. After a three-day battle in the city, the sister won and came to take Jadis as a prisoner. Facing defeat, Jadis spoke the Deplorable Word rather giving in. This annihilated all living things under the Sun apart from herself. After this, she put herself into an enchanted sleep. During her enchanted slumber the once-magnificent city crumbled into ruin. And it was in this wasteland city, Jadis was discovered by the hero and heroine of The Magician's Nephew - Digory and Polly.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
In the books the city was completely lifeless, but I added weed because my first try looked completely unrealistic. Like a place not lived in. But with some growth between ruined pavings changed the dynamics and made it appear more 'real'.

I've always been inspired by dystopian stories, with more or less total annihilation and thus the Charn sequens is one of the most interesting parts in the Narnia Chronicles. This precursing world is a world gone wrong and it is thus a kind of anithesis to Narnia itself. The likeness in names between the two worlds also hint at a bound - a kind of multiversal sequence of worlds coming into being, developing and growing and eventually declining and falling. And Narnia was the next in line, which eventually failed too, even if it didn't go as brutally as Charn.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

3D items from DAZ, Renderosity, Share CG, Runtime DNA