Stairway to the Clouds

These hills were once the wooded homeland of orks in the days when waterfalls flowed like rain through the clouds from atop the lonesome peak. The wellspring has long been barren of water, the forests harvested and consumed by the industrious Polis of Mount Erray along the Porter's Road that rests like a scar of red clay across the highland moors.
Deeper: The red earth of the porters road winds into wooded hillsides dotted with wildflower meadows, shielded from silt storms by northern mountains. Locals tell that long ago, when the wellspring waters flowed, the hills were covered in giant rain forests where the Orks hunted under the towering canopy. Some of their quarry still inhabit the hills, buried in mud burrows under the red clay, awaiting rain.
Off the porters road, a trail leads up through thicketed meadows, up rocky slopes that narrow to a ridge. Here, the low clouds hover over the trail, making the path slippery with moisture. In places, stones have been set for sure footing and stairs are carved in towering granite block, in some places so steep, they are more ladder than stair. The final stair coils around the peak and ends at a ledge over looking the Ashwind Mountains and the carved entrance to the Wellspring shrine known as the Hollow Court.
His Grace Matthox the Temperate makes the pilgrimage each year before the Feast of Vacant Throne to receive petitions of vows, to anoint new clergymen, and to endow sainthood to those who have exemplified the virtue of temperance. The records are kept by deacons on a single enormous vellum scroll called the Wicker Roll, where psalms, names, deeds and decrees are recorded on new sheets, appended to the Wicker Roll with the scriveners tools for posterity.