The spring is located on a decently sized island almost 100 miles across at its longest, with a few smaller islands nearby. All the islands are dry, desolate desert, with ancient ruins crumbling and half-buried in sand. The broken buildings and structures continue straight into the water and down to the ocean floor. There is no fresh water on the surface aside from what is left of the sacred spring.

Lumerians had a non-theistic religion based in worshiping four concepts at the heart of their alchemy, which the Ardents still follow. The four basic tenets are:

• Sohl (the sun) - Life giving force. Everything flows from the sun. In their alchemy, Sohl represents the element of fire. Homonym with the word “soul”: every living being has sohl inside of them.
• H'sants (sand) - Concept of the universe and that while each individual grain of sand is minuscule, they all contribute to Great Desert, thus every thing has a place in the world no matter how insignificant it seems. Sand is thought of as the crystallized tears of the sun that fall to earth as sunlight, explained in a way similar to how seawater dried in the sun makes salt crystals. Alchemically, sand represents the element of earth. H'sants also refers to the belief that our bodies come from the earth.
• Ap Madhir (the moon) - The alchemical symbol for water. Nurtures life given from the sun. Can be translated literally as water(ap) mother(madhir). Life cannot continue to exist without water, whose mother is the moon.
• Anemos (flow) - Anemos is that which connects all things. The Flow carries life from the sun to the earth to living beings; there is the flow of water which carries life, the flow of sand and wind, and the flow of time. Alchemically, anemos refers to air.

The Alchemy Well was an alchemical device which converted sunlight into magical energy. It was primarily made up of a citadel tower with prisms that focused the rays of the sun onto a magic globe situated underground, which then powered wards throughout the city through alchemical relations with the sun. Subterranean channels running deep under the area of the ancient city distributed the magical power. From a distance, it would have appeared as though there was a ray of sunlight rising upwards into the sky.

This system was called the Leypkwesdis Vaeld, or simply the Alchemy Well in the common tongue, as the native name is most often found unpronounceable to visitors. The name derives from the words leyp - (literally "life", also meaning to stick or glue together), kwesdis (literally “piece”, referring to the four alchemical elements believed to together create life), and væld ("well" or "source"). It's main parts were as such:

• Sohl's Gate - prisms/lenses that focused sunlight into the mechanism beneath the pool
• Ap Madir's Eye: the oasis pool and the globe underneath it, which gathered the energy from Sohl's Gate
• Anemos’ Flow - a constantly moving stream of magically animated air that carried the cooling water up from its subterranean source to Ap Madir's Eye
• H'sants'Pulse - a series of channels built into the walls of the Subterranean Labyrinth which serve as a timing mechanism for the Alchemy Well, based on the rate of falling sand, much like an hourglass

Each of these parts was complex in their inner workings and involved the use of many enchanted artifacts and magic runes that required maintenance by the Ardents. Many of these artifacts and other various components of the Well were made of precious stones and rare metals, and it was these components that were stolen, leading to the civilization’s collapse.

The indigenous people of the former civilization, and descendants of the guardian faction who still guard the holy ground with religious fervor, becoming the only part of the ancient culture that survived.

• Members of this guardian group are called Ardents. Not all are active guardians. Retired Ardents are responsible for the tasks and chores of day to day life, while young Ardents who haven’t yet come of age and bonded with their familiars also help around the residence.
• Uphold the tasks of maintaining the city’s alchemical channels and protecting the grounds as best they can to prepare for the return of the city’s people. However, there are not enough of them to maintain very much of the city, so the majority of it has fallen into ruin
• Have a closely-knit, monastic, communal culture. Surviving in such a harsh environment is only possible with each other’s help and living in harmony with the area’s scarce natural resources.