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the all ran away.
Something must’ve filled them with a holy terror, because they
never even looked back.”

    Madra can’t see directly behind the
rapidly-progressing wagon. Far behind them, just before the horizon
line, one can almost make out a bunch of bloody bundles barely
visible within the tall grasses. Looking much more closely at these
bloody bundles, they’re people grasping their knees, eyes frozen
wide in terror, throats slit ear-to-ear.

Chapter 5: The Submount Steamtunnels

    They walk along the tracks leading into the
mountains. The tops of the mountains are dusted with thick snow,
and they can see storm clouds in the distance.

    “So we’re going through the
mountains?” Zanther asks.

    “I mean, why not? Someone built these tunnels
for a reason, right? And since nobody’s using them, we might as
well. We won’t have to worry about snowstorms and ravenous
mountaintop thunderbirds.”

    “Just seems kind of dark…and…gloomy.”

    In the distance, they can see the tracks meet
at the vanishing point, a tiny hole in the bottom of a huge
mountain, a tunnel. Novanostrum pulls out his longpipe and fills it
with a few shakes of glowing smokeweed. He lights it and blows a
few smoke rings.

    “You’re scared of a cave? We made it
through the Deathstretch, we’ll make it through this. I don’t know
about you, but I don’t feel fated to die here. Do you?”

    “Dying is for cowards and zealots.”

    Upon their arrival to the Universitorium,
Madra immediately goes to the first place she thinks she can find
Zanther and Novanostrum: the pub. She approaches a bald man holding
a big drink.

    “Did you see a wizard and a knifesman come
through here recently?”

    “Oh yeah. They were here until dawn this
morning. They were trying to get these girls to go with them to
Zweissergrund, but they wouldn’t have any part of it. I think they
already left town, though. The barkeep’s been looking for them all
day; seems one of them didn’t pay his tab.”

    Madra runs back to the place where she left
Sogbottom, but both he and his wagon are gone. The bald man emerges
from the pub and walks up to her.

    “Guess you’re on your way to Zweissergund,
huh?”

    “Yes.”

    “I grew up there. Name’s D’kassar,” he says,
shaking her hand, “until yesterday, I was teaching a class here,
but my entire department was sacked. Said they needed to expand the
Philosophy Department. So now I’m looking for a new gig. Need a
guide?”

    The mouth of the tunnel is rather
unceremonious. It consists only of a a stone archway and two metal
rails denoting the path inside.

    “In the old days,” Novanostrum says,
“Steam-powered locomotes, basically big boxes with wheels and
engines, would pull containers through here.”

    “Forgive my skepticism, but steam doesn’t strike me as a very useful power source.”

    “Well, it was revolutionary in its time, but
with advancements in magickal refinement, it came to be used less
and less.”

    “I can see why.”

    “However,” Novanostrum continued, “that was
not the reason these tunnels were abandoned.”

    “Yeah? So why’d they stop using these
tunnels?”

    “Things that went in had a nasty habit of not
coming out the other side.”

    Madra pawns off one of her more elaborate
pinky rings and they buy fur coats, powderblasts, and
mountain-climbing gear. She and her guide set off towards the
mountains carrying their new weapons and leather backsacks full of
bread, water, rope, and other random supplies.

    “What are the powderblasts for?” she asks
D’kassar.

    “All kinds of nastiness living up there in
the mountains. There’s supposedly a tunnel that goes under the
mountains, but you’d have to be insane to go that way.”

    Powderblasts
    Powderblasts are thick metal tubes filled
with steel balls and black powder, powered by a trigger and a
flint. They were developed in the Easternlands by obese Trinese
soldiers who didn’t want to walk all the way to their