Devil's Millhopper

Even the devils need their bread.

-- Tornish Farmer

Of the many sinkholes scattered throughout the Sunnyland-Aster, the Devil's Millhopper is by far the most infamous. Though the place is named for the sinkhole, it is actually a collection of four geological features all resembling enormous agricultural implements for grain harvesting.

The Millhopper Devils

The settlers of Sunnyland-Aster called themselves Tornishmen and were followers of Eahloy. Noting the semblance of the four landmarks to implements of a grain mill, they claimed the surrounding land in the belief that the landmarks signaled fertile soil. The named their town Pottsmier.
A few weeks later, when the sinkhole they had mistaken for a spring began to drain, the settlers blamed the devils of the underworld for their misfortune. They realized the monuments to be the ruins of a devil's mill which pounded flour to be baked into bread in hellish furnaces beneath the world.

Depiction of the Millhopper devils

From then on, a number of stories and rumors began to circulate. Animals and other beasts drinking from the sinkhole were hurriedly killed and thrown into the water for belief that they were the devils' servants come to spy on the town. The sink came to bear a rotting odor from the corpses and the wells the Tornishmen had dug a ways out sickened folk--another of the devils' plagues, they presumed.
Around 300, some began to worship the place out of fear and made offerings of their own bread and grain. When the town authorities discovered this, they had the cultists exiled. But so many were forced to leave that Pottsmier fell into ruin and was abandoned in the year 322.

The Truth behind the Monuments

Show spoiler

The people of Pottsmier were not far off the mark for their stories of otherworldly beings. The sinkhole was visited by a small group of Padnamanor from the mist world of Nipholiles in the year 442 Anterior. They were lost in this world and seeking a way home. Their leader, named Deddaman, was a skilled telekineticist and lifted several stones from the exposed rock, attempting to shape them into a portal back to Nipholile. But portal-making was forbidden for the dangers it posed to Nipholiles and several of her followers rebelled. A bloody mutiny left the party disunified and the followers went their separate ways. Thus the unfinished stone structures and their remnants of struggle came to lie.

The Four Monuments

The Threshing Table

A huge slab of stone about 9 by 19 feet lain almost level with the ground. Dark scratches and chips near the center suggest the site was used for bonfires or testing projectiles or, as the local's imagine it, marks from threshing long stalks of dark barley. It was the last of the features to be discovered having been buried beneath vines and low shrubs.

The Millhopper

The sinkhole at the center of the other monuments. It stretches over 1000 feet at the widest point and reaches a depth of 600 feet. After heavy rains, water fills up to about 100 feet from the bottom. Nearby the sinkhole are several bones of otherworldly creatures with squared skulls and backward facing limbs, strangely having persisted after hundreds of years.

The Gristmill, or the Millstone

A roughly circular stone set upright. It is 5 feet thick and about 43 feet in diameter and is tall enough to be seen through the trees in winter. The Millstone was the monument which first attracted settlers to the region.

The Silo

A set of three stone slabs arranged in a triangular prisim. They stand at 20 feet and are only 5 feet wide and several inches thick.

Type

Rock Formation