The Crystal Cavern
- A cave in the Erbalta Plains, the Northwest Coast
Located in the Northern Provinces, the Chardonian Empire, Greater Chardon
The Crystal Cavern lies at the end of a dry, rocky canyon where a sluggish river threads between jagged cliffs. The cave mouth is hard to miss from the canyon floor. Inside, the first hall still bears the scars of an old skirmish: two waist-high rubble heaps and a collapsed eastern tunnel coated in lingering dust. Faded lantern hooks and soot marks show where the orcs once tried to keep the place lit.
A clear passage runs south into a broader chamber. Here, a carved stone chest sits flush with the floor, its heavy lid propped against the wall. The runes that once shrank intruders now glimmer only faintly, their magic spent. A permanent crack—the Crystal Rift—splits the stone nearby, its rim studded with multicoloured quartz that catches any stray light.
Seventy feet down that rift, a rough-hewn hallway ends in a broken pillar. The gargantuan rune-etched guardian that once rose from the pillar has vanished, leaving only gouged footprints and a toppled chunk of obsidian where its charge was kept.