Blackshield. The Old City, the Mother City, most serene and venerable. Long has she stood.

She has many epithets, but the most fitting is certainly 'the old.' Decrepit in her old age, yet eager to tell stories of her long-gone glory days to anyone who has the patience to listen. The city with one foot in the grave already.

Blackshield was once called the mother of cities, and not without reason; she spawned many prosperous colonies wherever her children sailed.
Among those daughter cities is Darkstar, the troublesome child she would always regret birthing.

Blackshield was a fierce mother, and she kept her offspring in line with harsh discipline. She always took care to make sure her children remained children, and did not grow up to rival her.
She flourished and made sure that her daughters didn't.

There's only one way, then, for such a family drama to end; for the daughters to live, the mother must die.

And so, led by the upstart runt Darkstar, the daughters of Blackshield turned on her. In a frenzy of violence, the wall was breached and the ruling lords and ladies of the city were thrown in the sea with stones tied to their necks. It's said their bones still wash up on the shores here, occasionally.
Morbid, but such is the business of liberation.

The daughters took back what their mother had taken from them, and went their separate ways as free cities. But along with their shackles, their family ties were broken. They were free, but disunited.
And as the lights dwindled, they soon devoured each other in their fight for survival. Of all the daughters of Blackshield, only Darkstar survives to this day.

Though her back was broken all those years ago, Blackshield still stands. But the years have not been kind to her. She may have outlived her rebellious daughters, but she is a shadow, dead in spirit. The rabble that inhabit the city care not for its past or its future. They can only go about their meager lives, and cower before the coming dark.
Blackshield is dying a slow death.
She sits on the shore, eyeing with bitter envy the lights of Darkstar in the far distance. The hated mother, and the unloved daughter.

There's a cautionary tale in there somewhere.

...
Better not walk the streets alone, or you might end up a cautionary tale yourself. The lighthouse is darkened and few houses are lit anymore. Plenty of places to disappear.