Shadow Crag
The rocky, frozen crags of the northern mountains hold far more secrets than they yield answers. This vast, mountainous wasteland was once home to the Kuzaarik Federation, a joining of nine city-states, each the epitome of their stoic founders and the Gosk that they venerated.
The Kuzaarik had inhabited the mountains before any other race began recording time. Their vast mountain halls, unending labyrinthine mines, and towering stone spires bore testament to their mastery of this uninhabitable space. Where ice and stone once reigned supreme, the Kuzaarik tamed it with tenacity, creativity, and craftsmanship.
Two of the Kuzaarik city-states have been lost to time, and none can tell whatever erased these once-grand fortress cities from the Kuzaarik record. Only surmising, rumors, and evil omens now accompany any search for their occupants and history. The other seven, each magnifying one of the Gosk, remained in the Federation until the Cold Times, the Khahoda Ubeyehzh.
Without any warning from Faelon itself or from the geomancers that controlled and directed the thermal vents that powered the Kuzaarik’s way of life, the vents began to go cold. One by one, the cities of the Kuzaarik Federation gave up and immigrated to the nearest functioning city-state. Some left because their thermal vents died. Others failed because the cooling of the thermal vents pushed the Kuzaarik to desperation, which led to conflict with their neighbors. Woodspire was destroyed in this way.
Most of the immigrants found their way eventually to Vinyabah Gorahd, where the thermal vents still ran hot, and the city could absorb the vast amounts of refugees that made the dangerous treks from their failed cities. When the Census was taken, though, not a single refugee from Shadow Crag was found.
At first, the High King rejoiced that one of the other City States had survived the calamity. After speaking to survivors from Nine Falls, however, The High King began to fear for the excellent mining city.
The refugees from Nine Falls told of an uninhabited city full of corpses and horrors roaming the once vibrant rings of the underground city. The High King appointed notable Explorers to investigate. When they all failed to return, he sent specially commissioned freebands led by the best and brightest the military had to offer, and they didn’t return either.
It wasn’t until famed Mountaineer Oodrahz Mihlihr was sent that the High King got his first real glimpse into the fate of Shadow Crag. Oodrahz had correctly surmised that if he took the traditional way into the city via the stairs or lifts at the entrance to the main shaft, he would meet the same fate as those that came before him.
Oodrahz had crept into the city via an old ventilation shaft from one of the earlier mine shafts, back when the town had only one ring and was still relatively shallow. This shaft had led into one of the long-abandoned mining tunnels that took him straight into the first ring of the city. There he witnessed the devastation of the city’s people first-hand. He was also smart enough to leave before whatever terror had befallen them overtook him.
When Oodrahz reported back to the High King, he declared ShadowCrag off-limits to the remnants of the Kuzaarik people. It, along with the other abandoned cities, would remain abandoned and off-limits except by special decree of the High King or the Council.
Shortly after this, the Long Way was instituted, and the Kuzaarik people began the long process of trying to survive as a people so they could once again populate the northern mountains. Shadow Crag became a ghost story, a taboo conversation, and a whisper on the freezing mountain winds.
Shadow Crag was initially conceived as a mine. As the mine deepened, the city of Shadow Crag, or Koletehn Utahska, was built into the sides of the mine shaft as it sunk into the rocky earth.
Koletehn Utahska was built in the Blestethubl Kalbdyra, southwest of Gosk Tahktrin, on the southern sides of the mountains. The Caldera, several runs across, has always been well known for its thermal activity. It smokes day and night, and lava bubbles to the surface in some places. Hot springs dot the ragged landscape, and more importantly to the founders of Shadow Crag, there are abundant mineral and metal deposits.
From the surface, there was no sign of the city until giant statues of the Gosk were erected in a circle around the mine’s main shaft. The Statues, each twenty steps high, represent each Gosk and look down into the city itself. At the bottom of the town, near the flowing lava of the thermal vent that powered Koletehn Utahska, mirrored statues were erected, looking up into the open sky at the top of the shaft.
Massive stairs descended into the city for those traveling on foot. At the same time, lifts powered by the brilliant engineering of the Kuzaarik lifted goods up and down into the city’s maw. The lifts were designed similarly to those gifted to the Varkraalan of Grechmarl when they established their city in the Dorsang Danar.
The city deepened as the mine did. The first ring, built near the town’s surface, became home to the government of Shadow Crag and its first citizens. Beautiful terraces were built around the mine shaft, with the buildings themselves set back into the rock. The splendor of Kuzaarik stonemasonry was displayed for all to see and dazzled even more because it was set not above the ground but below it.
The second ring, slightly wider than the first, contained the city’s main residential areas, with row after row of apartments built into the rock. Here the Kuzaarik worker found a home and could easily catch one of the massive lifts that took them to their appropriate level for work.
The third ring boasted one of the most unique markets in all of Faelon and attracted visitors from all the other Turpat of the Kuzaarik Federation. Here lay the riches of Shadow Crag, the product of endless labor and the triumph of Kuzaarik craftsmanship.
The markets of Shadow Crag boasted all of the precious metals that the mines had given up to their Kuzaarik masters, as well as the precious gems and other minerals that the vast network of tunnels, caves, and pits had produced. Kuzaarik crafters then took these goods and created beautiful works of art: jewelry, weapons, armor, and magical items of all shapes and descriptions. These sold in the markets that overlooked the pit inside Shadow Crag.
Because they were so far underground, the market was lit with blazing braziers of wonderfully ornate design. Many were formed as giant arms holding massive flaming torches as large as buildings. It was always daytime in the markets of Shadow Crag, and the deeper you went beyond the third ring, there was no distinction between day and night.
The fourth ring, far more expansive than the third, was given over to the massive foundries and workshops where the raw metals exhumed from the earth could be purified, formed, and fashioned in any way the Kuzaarik wished. Molten magma from deeper within the world was funneled through special shafts to power the vast furnaces needed to melt and purify the metals that the Kuzaarik mined day and night in the tunnels of Shadow Crag.
The lowest level of the city, the fifth ring, had its foundation in the very thermal vents that powered the city and its furnaces. Below the fourth ring, massive columns of earth were left to prop up the city as the rest was systematically cleared in the mining process. Any necessary buildings at this depth were tunneled into the columns so the mining could extend in every direction without hindrance.
Here, at its deepest level, stood the Gosk statues looking into the sky, and at their center was a temple to Gelzhyp, the Monolith, who is considered in Kuzaarik lore to be the founder and creator of their race.
Gelzhyp was the patron Gosk of Shadow Crag, and nowhere did the constant toil and labor that exemplifies Gelzhyp hold true than in Shadow Crag. While most of the races, even the Kuzaarik, governed their lives by the light of the sun and the moon, the people of Shadow Crag, especially the Chasm as the lower levels were called, had forgotten their natural rhythms and had worked day and night without cease to accomplish their incredible feats.
From the Chasm, the city’s geomancers, lords of fire and earth, plied their magics to keep the great mining machines, furnaces of the smelteries, and the town itself working and warm. Priests made offerings daily to Gelzhyp and invoked its favor on the city and its workers over the roaring din of thousands of picks and hammers.
Then, something happened. There has been no record of what transpired in the depths of Shadow Crag nor of the days afterward that proved so disastrous to the city and its denizens.
These records exist somewhere in the city, as the Kuzaarik are nothing if not meticulous about keeping records. However, to the public knowledge, Kuzaarik had yet to step inside Shadow Crag. If any history of those fateful last days had fallen into the hands of the surviving Kuzaarik culture, no officials were willing to admit it.
So what did happen at Shadow Crag? What shut off the city from their kin and led to its destruction?
The answer to that question is complicated and tragic. In the end, the undoing of Shadow Crag was the fault of its people, who used magic with wild abandon in the depths of the earth to their own peril.
Despite the care taken to counteract the high use of magic in the Chasm, the fabric of the world inevitably becomes somewhat undone, and the walls between Faelon and Karelon become perilously thin. The choice quickly became whether to live with the thinning barriers between the two worlds or slow down the machine that Shadow Crag had become.
In Karelon, Venkhai Nusva’eth stood ready. Long had he watched this tear in the fabric of reality, hoping that the greed of the Kuzaarik drove them to dissipate the wall further. At this rate, he would have to do nothing but bide his time. There would be no work necessary to bridge the two realities; their magic drove them on a collision course.
Nusva’eth had established a legion of shock teams, each headed by a trusted Azalakar and helped by a Mokruhl. The Azalakar would charge through the tears in the fabric, leading a team of horrifying and bloodthirsty demons to deal with any resistance quickly. Zakerlash and Karbazaal would lead the strike. Ventarx would pour through the gates, harassing their victims and slowing any response. The Mokruhl would puncture reality if need be, then widen the gates to bring even more demons into the world.
When the day came, the catastrophe happened wholly and swiftly. In the end, Nusva’eth needed only to apply a little pressure to the thin veil between his realm and Shadow Crag, and reality simply burst.
Gates opened in the Chasm first, where reality was the thinnest from the magics being constantly used. The miners, priests, and geomancers had no warning and were overwhelmed before they knew what was happening. Almost simultaneously, gates opened on every ring, with gibbering demons pouring through, hissing their oaths in Uku’isk, and killing all before them.
The slaughter went on for days. Resistance was offered where it could be, but the surprising nature of the attack and the sheer weight of it limited the Kuzaarik response. The famed military of Shadow Crag, trained to fight creatures in the dark tunnels of Shadow Crag’s mines, offered pockets of resistance for nearly a week but were destroyed with the rest of their kin.
Very few, if any, survived the onslaught of the demons. Those who did must have perished on the journey to wherever they had traveled, for none brought word of Shadow Crag’s demise to Vinyabah Gohrahd, except the refugees from Nine Falls who had sought shelter there. Shadow Crag simply went quiet.
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