The Demon Pit
This diamond mine, the only one of its scale in Pauza, crucial for the extraction of diamonds needed for potent spell components, is a gaping maw that devours light, hope, and lives with equal fervor. The mine extends deep below the nearby mountain's glacier, a labyrinthine network of tunnels and shafts where the warmth of the earth battles the biting ice above in eternal conflict.
Labor within the Demon Pit is the purview of the enslaved and the damned. Azers, their fiery essence bound in iron shackles, toil alongside Fetchlings, their shadowy forms flickering in dim torchlight. Ripped from their home planes, they work under the watchful eyes of Vritra's metalsmiths and Pyrebind's taskmasters, who enforce a brutal order with whip and spell. Atrum abjurers provide magical wards and bindings, ensuring the mine's dangerous inhabitants do not turn upon their captors. Mindless undead dredge through the rock alongside lesser demons, their numbers a ticking bomb of potential havoc, controlled only by the binding magics of Pyrebind diabolists and Thanat necromancers.
Conditions within the Pit are horrific. The heat from the nearby volcano clashes with the glacial cold, creating an environment of oppressive, muggy air that makes every breath a labor. The work is backbreaking and ceaseless, illuminated only by the flickering light of torches and the glow of molten rock. The sound of pickaxes against diamond-hard stone echoes like the mine's mournful dirge, punctuated by the occasional roar of a demon or the pained cry of a Fetchling too weak to continue. Safety is a notion as foreign as the surface to the mine's prisoners. Tunnels collapse without warning, burying alive those too slow to escape. Dark crevices release sudden bursts of frigid water or scalding steam, claiming limbs and lives with indiscriminate cruelty. Unbound undead move like ghosts through the gloom, their incoherent whispers the only warning of the hungry dangers lurking in the unlit depths.
Above, in the rarefied air of the mountain's embrace, the wealth of the Demon Pit is counted and hoarded by agents of Isarne and Vritra. By covenant between the sorcerers and the Orcs, only pristine diamonds, clear and cold, are transported down to Cruxis and beyond; lives broken and spirits crushed to be exchanged for wishes and resurrections. All metals and other gems are earmarked for Vritra's ancient patron and sent up to their hidden lair in the peaks.
