The remote military outpost known as Kian, deep in the snowy North, made a good pirate hangout, since few souls ever ventured that way, but it was also too far from any other settlements to be an effective base to stage raids from, and the pirates didn’t particularly enjoy the cold. Eventually, they loaded up their planes with everything of military value and moved on, leaving the place to crust over with ice and snow.
After many years old Kian was rediscovered by a band of refugees from ruined Tura, technologically savvy but newly homeless, who had wandered the world for some time before hearing of the outpost and deciding that their future lay there. It was a long and arduous journey across the Burren and they lost many on the way, but for them the outpost was the Promised Land. Stripped of its weaponry, the base nevertheless retained lot of equipment of technological value that the pirates had simply ignored. Kian’s new settlers plumbed the place for its secrets and through careful stewardship managed to turn the frozen outpost into a veritable fortress of science and knowledge.