Rising from the Ghoulish Boglands beneath vast Mount Umbra, the Black Mountains take their name from the Quantum Shadow that slicks their western face in an impenetrable, dark film. The range carries a silent dread—a pressure in the chest that grows with altitude, as if the stone itself were holding its breath.
Along the jagged ridges, shadows misbehave. Sun-cast silhouettes bend, lengthen, and split, moving out of step with their owners until they seem to stalk beside you. Echoes warp the same way: a boot-scrape returns as a hiss, a call as a low, many-throated murmur. Most travelers report the steady sense of being watched or followed, though no watcher is ever found.
Navigation is treacherous. Trails follow clean, sensible lines—until they don’t. The Quantum Shadow is known to swallow trailheads, glazing cairns and waymarks overnight. Hikers who enter at a marked post sometimes return to blank rock and black slime where the post should be, their maps suddenly wrong. Those who persist carry mirrored compasses and tie guide-lines to hammered pitons, knowing the mountain will try to twist their path as surely as it contorts light and sound.
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The Black Mountains
Elf J Trul
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Rising from the Ghoulish Boglands beneath vast Mount Umbra, the Black Mountains take their name from the Quantum Shadow that slicks their western face in an impenetrable, dark film. The range carries a silent dread—a pressure in the chest that grows with altitude, as if the stone itself were holding its breath.
Along the jagged ridges, shadows misbehave. Sun-cast silhouettes bend, lengthen, and split, moving out of step with their owners until they seem to stalk beside you. Echoes warp the same way: a boot-scrape returns as a hiss, a call as a low, many-throated murmur. Most travelers report the steady sense of being watched or followed, though no watcher is ever found.
Navigation is treacherous. Trails follow clean, sensible lines—until they don’t. The Quantum Shadow is known to swallow trailheads, glazing cairns and waymarks overnight. Hikers who enter at a marked post sometimes return to blank rock and black slime where the post should be, their maps suddenly wrong. Those who persist carry mirrored compasses and tie guide-lines to hammered pitons, knowing the mountain will try to twist their path as surely as it contorts light and sound.
