Míochaine Cave

The cavern was fully formed when they found it long ago. Dark and seemingly endless, with stalactites gripping the damp ceiling and ice still on the cave floor even in the summer, the healers bring their ill and injured to this harsh landscape. Small cots rest in the grooves of the brutal landscape and lamps hang every few feet around the perimeter of round entrance of the cavern. There is no distraction here from beyond the cave mouth. No sound, no light, no movement except what goes on inside the maw. Along the stalactites lives a healing bacterium—a micro organism that does only what it was created to do, yet somehow breathes nutrients and traces of healthy bacteria to fight infections. It is simply a bacteria. But when the light from the lamps shines on it, the ceiling illuminates as if the cavern is speckled and veined with gold and silver.
The healers swipe loosely woven clothes of homespun fibers against the chocolate-looking rocks, absorbing the growth and the water droplets. They bandage and set and slice and clean. Then they leave the patient to solitude, to quietness, to nothing but the healing bacteria to finish in their recovery.
Some patients do not take to the treatment. Sometimes the solitude is too much for them. They struggle and they panic and sometimes they make their exit too early. Sometimes they are found dead outside the mouth of the cavern, spilled across the rocks like a limp wave that gave up and did not make it back to sea.
Their healing sometimes produces casualties. But it is the way they have healed for so long. It is the only way they know how. And after the miraculous recoveries they've seen occur in the Míochaine Cave, it's the only way they want to heal.
There are ten healers in all, a right, an order, who devout themselves to the cavern and the healing arts. They work under Cavern Speaker, who examines the cave for faults, for disease, for change; anything that could tamper with the healing process. The cavern was created by natural destruction, by lava racing from a now extinct volcano. The healers believe it to be extinct. The people of the area believe it to be extinct. But the Cavern Speaker isn't so sure. She isn't sure that the volcano simply isn't dormant, having recessed down, down, down, while new rings of mountains and volcanoes took up center stage from the soil.

Design

Rounded, large main chamber with tubes and tunnels at the back, moving deeper into the unknown.

Sensory & Appearance

Slightly damp, pitch-black. No sounds except for the occasional drip from the sharp, jutting stalactites of overhead and stalagmites from the floor. Unwelcoming landscape and an odd choice for medical healing. Rough walls. Sometimes slick with moisture, sometimes dry, crumbly rock at the touch.

Denizens

The healers, the main healer (Cavern Speaker), and patients. Beyond that is the town with people.

Contents & Furnishings

Medical cots, roughly made. Basic tables. Medical accoutrements of the more natural kind: simple cloth rags, sharp home made knives. Bowls of water.

Hazards & Traps

The entire cave system is hazardous and ultimately leads to the dormant volcano.

Type

Room, Natural, Cavern

Environmental Effects

Low temperature, almost chilly even at the hottest point of the season.