The Crevice of Seething

Description

The Crevice of Seething is a narrow valley near the center of the Wastelands that was the site of a battle during The Seventh Thalassan Crusade. The area is considered to be the east and west faces of its two flanking mountains, and it runs about 8 km wide and 40 km long. The central region is just over a kilometer and a half wide, with cliff walls rising 150-200 meters on either side. Additional cliffs are present up the slopes of the two bordering mountains, at distances of 50-300 meters out and 75-175 meters high. A small river runs through the middle of the valley. close to the geographical center of the valley is a massive crater lake with a number of unique distinguishing features that are visible from quite far away.

Background

Huge Dwarven and Thalassan forces met in combat here early in the war. The forces were evenly matched, but the Dwarves' strategic position beneath and above the steep cliffs on either side gave them a strategic advantage that they used to great effect. As the Elven construct army retreated, a holdout contingent detonated an explosive Magical WMD. The blast immediately wiped out all life in the valley, including nearly the entire Dwarven army, with the exception of a few reserves who were watching from afar and a lucky contingent of crossbowdwarves. The defeated Elven army was then able to regroup and advance on their target, the Mountainhome of Ghôlan Dûr.
The valley was quickly abandoned and marked as dangerous , as remnants of Active Magicite with unpredictable effects were detected to be highly concentrated in the canyon-like valley.
Over the next decade, even as the conflict raged on, the valley became the subject of disturbing rumors. Plant and animal life was coming back at a rapid rate, completely unprecedented in any fallout area. However, something was incredibly wrong with everything that emerged— every living thing observed in the valley was a bizarre chimera of some kind or other. An expedition to the valley was mounted in 827 PE to attempt to record the defects in the area's wildlife and determine their cause and nature. What they found shocked them beyond belief.

827 PE Expedition Account

The Dwarven expedition that would give the Crevice of Seething its name entered the valley on 5/21 827 PE. Their plan was to spend a week in the valley and conduct detailed magical analysis on the fallout. Seven dwarves were sent out on the mission, only five made it to the valley, each a casualty of the intense Active Magicite related hazards along the way. After several weeks trudging across barren moonscapes of glassed ground, around plains of fire that consumed nothing, and through necrotic regions where undead animals swarmed living prey like flies, the valley's riotous colors and dense vegetation were a strange and wonderful joy to behold.
Initial tests were inconclusive as to the nature of the chimeric effects seen in the plants on the outer edge of the fallout zone. Similarly, tests performed on the Active Magicite showed a confusing and nonsensical mélange of magical types. The group's Wizard, an enchanter specializing in MWMD design, speculated that a loophole or edgecase had been left unaddressed in the Elven weapon, causing a recursion effect and introducing magical effects completely unrelated to the weapon's intended fallout effect. The group decided that they would have to venture further in, getting more radically samples for examination. Unfortunately, the next day would be their last in the valley.
As the group began moving inward, they began to notice incredibly bizarre lifeforms in complete ubiquity. It seemed that nearly every living thing was unique, the concept of a "species" did not exist in the valley. Every tree was a combination of different trees. One branch could yield acorns, another apples, a third walnuts, a fourth seed pods. Neither did the concept of reproduction function as normal. One type of life form would germinate from the reproductive organs of a completely different one, such as a tree that was reported to drop watermelon-sized fruit that split open to reveal grotesquely deformed and/or heavily chimerized Goblin children. Many had leaves that varied greatly in color, touching every combination on the spectrum, but overall most predominant were pastel pinks, yellows, and blues.
Animals were no different. A deer was observed that had four legs from entirely different animals- one tiger leg, one stork leg, one rabbit leg, and one leg unlike anything that had ever been seen before with iridescent scales and about twelve joints terminating in three squidlike tentacles. Large, abatross-esque birds were observed snatching prey off the ground in flight with extendable, vinelike tendrils. Colonies of ants whose bodies had up to a dozen segments spelled out messages in Dwarven runic and Elvish script on skin-covered tree trunks, then ensnared and within seconds completely consumed the flesh of a party member who stooped to examine their writing.
. The chimerisms got more and more extreme as the party of Dwarves neared the crater lake created by the explosion at the center of the valley. The walls of the cliffs near the center of the valley were covered in a strange green-blue and red-orange weblike substance that manifested human faces at its junctures and insect legs across its lengths. The human faces would imitate wildlife noises in order to lure in and swallow wildlife passing by. The stretchy tendrils would move themselves back and forth in an attempt to snare anything that landed on the cliff and pass it into the faces' mouths.
The crater lake itself was covered in glittering, phosphorescent algae that would quickly cover anything that entered the lake in acidic slime, liquefying its corpse into steaming brown sludge that would flow down into the water. In the middle of the lake, a gigantic white coral-like structure had created a small island which sloped gently up to a 75 meter tall, 20 meter wide central column holding up a 250 meter tall white sphere. The party was able to cross to the central island, using magic to create a force bridge over the lake.
Inside an approximately 30 meter wide hole on the bottom, a squamous mass "like a ball of mating snakes" was visible moving inside the sphere, making a sound that the party described as reminiscent of a swarm of flies or locusts. A whispering voice was barely audible above the din, spouting Dwarven sentences that were mostly nonsensical but repeatedly mentioned the "blessings of Nienne". Upon hearing these words for the fifth time, the group's cleric disrobed, tore his own eyes out, ran halfway across the force-bridge, and threw himself in the lake— whereupon a massive four fingered hand rose from the water, extended a soaplike bubble around the raving Dwarf, and lowered him and itself below the surface.
The group left immediately, followed hungrily by a pack of wolves whose fur was stringy hyphae that sloughed off choking clouds of fungal spores as they walked. When the group crossed back over the threshold of the fallout's effect, the wolves began to wither visibly as if starving and dehydrated, and the ones that didn't turn tail back down into the valley simply desiccated and decayed where they stood. Of the seven dwarves that left Thorangar Utkarnat, only two returned. No further scientific expeditions were planned.

Travel Advisory

Despite its bizarre fallout effect, the Crevice of Seething is still considered part of the safest route north to south through the wastelands, as most of the surrounding area is constantly on fire, frozen solid, or otherwise hostile to all life. Sticking to the sides of the valley gives the best chance for passage through without grave incident. Passage through the Crevice of Seething should be made as quickly as possible and without stopping, preferably along the cliffs along the east or west. relative safety is assured upon crossing out of the valley as nothing from within the valley has ever been observed to survive outside a 20 km radius of the crater lake.

Natural growth shrubs in the Crevice of Seething

Alternative Name(s)

Chimera Valley, Nienne's Folly

Type

Valley

Location under

The Wastelands

Contested By

• Kolthis
• Thalassa
• The Empire of Verdon
• The Mountainhomes

Inhabiting Species

• Cassiter