Zanarkand
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Zanarkand
Zanarkand is one of the cities in Final Fantasy X. It was a huge machina city created over one thousand years before the start of the game. The city was much bigger and more advanced than any of the other cities at the time, which eventually sparked rivalry from Bevelle. Although Zanarkand's technology was superior overall, they had very little military technology, instead relying on their summoners to protect them. Summoners were people who had learnt the art of summoning Aeons, divine creatures of extraordinary power. The main entertainment in Zanarkand is blitzball. Thousands of people flock to the stadium to see blitzball games which are common occurrences in Zanarkand.
At the beginning of the game, Zanarkand is devastated by an aquatic behemoth known as Sin. Tidus, a star blitzball player, managed to avoid being killed by the initial assault, but is subsequently sucked into the beast. He awakes in the land of Spira, a world where Zanarkand was destroyed one thousand years previously by Sin, and whose ruins now stand as a holy place. Based on this evidence, Tidus comes to the conclusion that Sin's vortex has hurled him a millennium into the future.
The ruins of Zanarkand are a vital location in Spira, for it is the final destination on a pilgrimage that summoners can take in order to defeat the ever-present Sin. Once a summoner overcomes the Cloister Of Trials within the ruins, he/she can obtain the Final Aeon, a creature with enough power to rid Spira of Sin, if only for a short while.
The name Zanarkand may derive from the city of Samarkand, "an archetype of romantic exoticism".
The Bevelle/Zanarkand War
One thousand years before the start of the game, Bevelle wanted to have control of Zanarkand's advanced machina. The Bevellian government declared war on Zanarkand, and the two cities' forces met on the Calm Lands, a grassy plain below Mt Gagazet. The result was that Zanarkand lost and Bevelle prepared for an invasion.
They invaded the city, and Zanarkand's summoners were no match for Bevelle's machina. The leader of Zanarkand, Yu Yevon, refused to surrender, so he ordered those who had escaped destruction at the hands of Bevelle to give up their lives and become Fayth. He took the life-force from these people and formed it into an living armor called Sin, which he used to decimate Bevelle's army. Unfortunately, he destroyed Zanarkand in the process.
As Yu Yevon could not bear to lose his city, he ordered the Fayth to summon a dream of it: a Zanarkand which would never sleep, and would be preserved in its prime forever. It was this Zanarkand that Tidus grew up in. He is not thrown one thousand years into the future as he believed: he is projected from the ethereal otherworld of Dream Zanarkand to the real world of Spira.
Time of Final Fantasy X-2
At the time of Final Fantasy X-2, the ruins of Zanarkand had become a tourist attraction.