In the western hills, below the growing height of the volcano Tupol, ancient quarries etch the slopes and lay bare the stone beneath. Near their bases, where erosion paints runnels through the scarce remaining dirt and channels the upslope waterfalls into a well-fed river, tunnels gape like burst cysts in the quarries’ walls. These tunnels eat into the hillsides, following the thick sheet of soft, mottled blue-green glass which miners first sought ever deeper under the old, cold lava flows which buried it.

The trees which grow on the abandoned mines’ tailings twist in odd shapes, their forms uncannily human. The forests below, fed by the river which leaches those tailings, echo those uncanny forms over and over again. The forests are well-known for being haunted.

The glass those long-dead miners sought still lingers in the hills, precious and coveted by archaeologists, alchemists, and artificers. It shivers in the cold, and shimmers with a light from within that waxes with the dying of the moon. In the deepest dark of the new moon, the glass is even said to whisper, growing louder and louder as it Continue reading →

North of the mountains of The Spire lies what was once the heart of an empire. That stretch of fertile rolling plains is now untrammeled, abandoned. The capital city which once dominated that horizon, gone.

A vast temple complex stood at the core of that capital, dedicated to the god of agreements and law, ruler of his pantheon. From there the priests of the empire oversaw the rise and spread of a power few have since matched. Certainly no realm which now rules lands once claimed by the empire can rival its ancient might.

Now that city lies buried, stricken at its height. The central temple is the only building which still emerges fully intact from the land around it, crowning the city’s tallest hill, uncomfortably preserved against the passage of time.

The fall of a god is unkind, never gentle.

Now, few ever visit the city’s stricken corpse. Fewer still dare to enter the holy grounds of the fallen god of order. The skies above wreathe themselves every day with the same storm, an eerie and unrelenting echo of the city’s swift and brutal end. It rolls north from the mountains, the gloom-black cloud front grinding across the sky like a sarcophagus’ closing lid. By the height of midday, the ruined city’s only light flickers from cloud to cloud in dazzling arcs. The blasts, when they come, fall in endless succession; they smite the city’s ruins again, every day, exactly as they did the day the city’s god was deposed and swept, fragmentary, into the abyss.

At midnight, the storm dissolves once again.

This endless cycle has played out for centuries. It has pulverized the ancient empire’s remains. Those who dwell in the lands nearby know not to travel near that god-cursed ground.

But others—the faithful, the learned, the foolish—seek to know what has preserved the fallen god’s sacred place in the center of such destruction. Their stories are inconsistent.

Those few who arrive untouched at the center of the storm, those few who see the fallen god’s holy house, cannot agree. Some find the pediment as it was, the order of the world from top to bottom in gleaming bas relief, the god front and center and larger than life. This temple still stands, but its doors are shut with verdigris and time. Others claim that the temple still stands, yes, but has been replaced by something wrong; the god of that temple screams from his carved likeness, the rain falling from his open mouth as blood. That temple, to that overthrown god, echoes from within with sounds unsought: the voices of those you thought safely dead, the secrets you wished kept, that which will undo you. Its doors stand wide open.

Some claim that those gray-green doors sealed by ages long past have opened at their touch. Few believe them. No one claims they’ve entered the open temple, but a lie of omission is still a lie.

The adventurous speak of other temples taking pride of place in that storm-wracked necropolis, others found instead of the two most well-known. They have told tales of wooden statues brought to life, of warm and welcome darkness with a heartbeat inside, of torchlight and the endless sounds of drums. They have spread rumors of passages into the several hells ruled by the shattered lord, of ways into the precarious past before the fall, of awe-inspiring visions of the broken god’s injustices and of his all-encompassing rule.

But it is the crazed who speak the truth as to why any still venture into that land of lightning and destruction: they would have a glimpse of that old god… and seize a shard of his power for themselves.

Twin buttes rise above sparsely forested foothills, close together and nearly parallel. Unlike other buttes, they broaden towards their rough tops, nearly touching. They’re known as the Titan’s Feet—their eerie resemblance of ankles and calves is made worse by the way their foothills only stretch in one direction, sloping down to end in smaller hills known by locals as The Toes. Though the resemblance isn’t perfect, no one denies it exists.

The mining town of Paradise lies nestled in the high saddle between the buttes. Everyone living there is connected with the many mines which dot the buttes, either as a miner themselves or as someone who supports the miners. Ruled by a junta of powerful locals, Paradise is beset on all sides. It has only remained under local control for so long because of the town’s natural fortifications, and through careful manipulation of its neighbors.

The products of the buttes’ mines are wildly precious and widely sought after. Reputed to have magical, mystical, and alchemical properties, the long veins of precious gems and rare metals command attention from all over. Unfortunately, that includes the attention of various warlords and pretenders to the throne. Originally a crown holding, Paradise’s independence has been tested constantly ever since the realm encompassing it fell apart in political crises and succession wars. Many say possession of Paradise is proof of legitimacy; certainly, controlling access to its resources and drawing from its wealth could sway the tides of war.

In better times, both learned folk and occult practitioners devoted their lives to studying the Titan’s Feet and their origins. The Feet rise out of a broad plain, some days’ ride from the nearest large rock formations. They are entirely distinct from the local bedrock. And though some have tried to explain the Feet as a natural phenomenon, most explanations simply cover speculation with a thin sheen of intellectual authority. Many scholars have acknowledged that they are better off collecting local folklore.

Some stories tell of a blessed woman who swore an oath to hold her ground in the face of a god’s wrath, a woman who grew in stature to match her obduracy, yet was petrified by the upset deity for having defied them. Other stories say that the Feet were built by unknown ancients, a beautiful statue of marvelous height now mostly-missing. Yet others claim that the Feet grow taller every year, bit by bit, and that one day they will finish growing the rest of their body.

Some miners who’ve spent too long underground in the Feet swear that they hear a heartbeat. Others tell of how the stone flexes around them at times, nearly like living flesh, or of how the buttes’ stone tries to close itself as flesh would a wound. These stories are shared around Paradise but often derided; few tell them while sober, or admit to believing them even when drunk. Regardless, everyone agrees that the Feet aren’t truly safe. Though they’re fabulously rich in gems and ores rarely found elsewhere (let alone in conjunction), they also contain strange things that scuttle in the darkness or which have made their own small tunnels. Much like the encroaching warlords, reports of these strange things in the mines have grown worse since the fall of the Crown.

Some people think that the problems are related.