Black Mouth

Entrances to the Underdark

Written by Mlawt

"Why have you come? This is no place for followers and I don't wish for companions. This is a graveyard; the headstones number countless as the pebbles on the hill. Here is the peace of others, eventually mine own. Yours as well, if you remain. If you have come for death, this one is not quick or pleasant. There are no heroes out here. No knights. No codes. No songs or bards. No one to miss you. Go back home. Go die on some other hill. This one is mine."
-Sir Gwalaen 'The Wall', 1055 RK

Geography

A never-ending maze of tunnels. Consuming darkness piercing the skin of the earth. Undulating ever downward. These are the Black Mouths, perfectly circular voids that open across the crust of the Northrun. What once we theorized to be weak ground, sinkholes breaking under the strain of excess rains, is now understood to be a threat. For centuries what has lived underneath the surface has lain dormant. At least to those who live above. Underneath the KRVE exists a wasteland abyss of bleak isolation. The Black Mouths are only surface entrances, few of which dot the face of the valley and only in the Northeast. Further down one finds tunnels that interconnect like a spiderweb, hither and thither between up and down with no concept of the ground above or below. Even so, with all this endlessness, there is more. Tunnels that dig deeper and deeper, stranger and alien constructions dwelling beneath.
If there is anything notable, it is that the Black Mouths shift over the centuries. They return, even if closed, in new and varied locations. Each void opened within distances of prior bleak-doors.

Fauna & Flora

From what surrounds the Black Mouth, much remains the same. Very little changes the area around it, save the gaping hole itself. However, what is revealed within is often worse than what is without. As known save the Blooded have written histories of these geological events, there is little known, but what has been garnered is worse than what is encountered above. Ventures deep into the void, an undulating, unforgiving mass of earth that recedes down into the earth for miles before any kind of identifiable landmarks. What lives beneath the crust of the earth, is simple worms, burrowing creatures, ants, and common animals. Further exploration reveals nothing but unending darkness, oppressive and unrelenting. At some points, the black itself is considered its own living being.
Should one venture far enough, nearly days travel downward or more, then darkness gives way to luminescence, but not from the sun. Caverns of blue, green, and red stars shifting and squirming through the ceilings and walls and floors, each larger than the last. Gardens of neon-colored, glowing mushrooms and webbed ferns that stretch across gaping chasms, each with leaves tipped with tongues and teeth. From the world above there are familiar shapes and sounds, but corrupted into undulating forms -- a face here attached to thin, spindly limbs betraying an alien mouth gaping, waiting behind the facade; the soft song of a woman attributed to the satisfied humming of a monstrous beast, slurping and smacking, gorging multiple mouths on slickened meals, scores of teeth flashing in the glow.
Survival is rare.

Natural Resources

The Black Mouths are so foreign, none is known. There are things that reside in the Dark, but few would call them safe or natural.

Alternative Name(s)

The Deep Wastes

Type

Void