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Aghor Thal
Realm: Irontooth Mountains
Population: None
Military: None
Economy: None
Language: None
Among the dwarves of the Irontooth Mountains, "Aghor Thal" is a name rarely spoken, and then only in whispers of fear or regret.
Centuries past, Aghor Thal was a small but valuable outpost in the northern reaches of the Irontooths. The dwarves who mined its depths came out with glittering gems and rare metals found nowhere else in Meditra, including several minerals that could be created only by strong magical radiations. These prizes drew the dwarves to keep digging, even as they encountered strange and increasingly deadly hazards in the depths.
As they cut deeper into the heart of the mountains, peculiar things began to happen. Poisonous vapors hissed up from the earth; cavern ceilings collapsed without warning; sturdy equipment shattered in ordinary use. The miners spoke of hallucinations and strange dreams, and then did not speak at all, as a dark cloud of suspicion descended upon their minds. Petty jealousies flared up between the ordinarily stolid dwarves, and violence became commonplace as the sparks of picks on stone. Clan loyalties frayed and snapped like old rope, and then no one heard anything more from Aghor Thal.
After months of complete silence, a delegation of dwarves from Durabar headed north to see what had become of their kin. They arrived to find the mines of Aghor Thal silent and empty. Of the missing dwarves there was no trace, but for a hollow hammering that echoed up from the depths.
Fearing the worst, the Durabar delegation sent some of its number back to their home city to report on what they had found. The remainder went into the chasms of Aghor Thal. At every turn in the tunnels, they sent a pair of dwarves back, not knowing when some horror from the mountain might befall the rest of the expedition.
Only those dwarves who turned back before entering the dead city ever returned to Durabar. They spoke of a darkness that descended upon them in their dreams, and of phantasms that flickered at the corner of the eye; they said there was a constant hammering that reverbrated through the tunnels like the beat of an enormous heart, and whispers of ghostly workers' chants. The last of the Durabar dwarves said that they had seen footprints in the dust of the old tunnels: the prints of sturdy nailed boots, plainly dwarf-made, but with gaps and holes where the outlines of bony toes and feet could be glimpsed.
The Durabar dwarves who went past Aghor Thal's great carved gates never came back, and what became of them remains unknown. After a year they were given up for dead, and a second delegation came to seal the gates of the tainted mines. In clan lore "Aghor Thal" became a cursed name.
It is said that in later years human explorers, greedier and more foolish than the dwarves, broke the seals on Aghor Thal's gates and ventured into the mountain. What became of them, too, is unknown; but it is expected that the answer is nothing good.
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