“The Gorge? No, I won’t take ye to the Gorge, and you’d best change your mind about going there if ye know what’s best fer ye. There’s abominations down there, nasty things that are horrible, misshapen, hideous… no one goes down there. And you shouldn’t either.”|Muioqa Desert Guide
History
But we must also be wary. There are strange markings on the wall, scratches with what appears to dried blood in the crevices. Large, dark birds that seem to soar from the depths. There is something that feels deeply inhospitable here, and I can’t say what. We must take care and not be foolhardy,”
The Gorge sits upon the Rinzeremel/Muioqa fault line and is the aftermath of a massive rupture in the surface that now extends down hundreds of feet.
– Emerine Solina, in her book “Mysteries of the Muioqa Desert”
Before The Cataclysm, this region was already seismically active. The blast force and the shock waves that accompanied it triggered already existing forces, causing the land to heave and split.
The fissure also seems to be continuing to grow, adding about an arm’s length at each end every year. It continues to be seismically active.
In 964 ATG, the adventurer and cartographer Emerine Solina traveled to the Gorge to do mapping and other documentation. The hope was that through exploration, more could be learned about the structure of the Arnathian world.
When Solina returned, she swore to return to the Gorge to continue her exploration. Unfortunately, Solina was tragically killed in a freak accident in suspicious circumstances.
Ecosystem
Geography
The Forbidden Gorge is located on the northern side of of the Rinzeremel Mountains, near the eastern end of the range. It sits between the mountains and the massive crater-like depression caused by The Cataclysm[/history].
The Gorge is a geological feature created not by common forces but by the shock waves that were sent out by the blast of the Cataclysm. These waves buckled and warped the ground and the underlying formations, eventually causing massive cracks in the surface that, in some cases, drop hundreds of feet with sheer rock walls.
Because of the way it formed, the edge at the top of the gorge is sharp and jagged. The winds of the Cataclysm scoured the surface free of any topsoil, so all that remains is hard rock. This rock has cracks that run perpendicular to the Gorge, and some have widened enough to allow access to the lower levels. At the bottom, it is believed there may be an underground river and perhaps an active lava flow.
Supporting the possibility of thermal activity deep in the gorge is the powerful scent of sulfur that drifts up into the higher sections of the gorge. The source is unknown, but it is reminiscent of “mud pools” found elsewhere on Arnathia, areas where water and soil have combined over a source of heat, creating bubbling pools of hot mud.
Localized Phenomena
While most stories about the Gorge were created to scare away people from adventuring, one type of story endures and has had some evidence to back it.
As the story goes, many individuals who were mining and working in the canyons of the Rinzeremel Mountains to the south were hit by the massive winds and radiation created by The Cataclysm. They should have died. But many did not. These individuals were scarred, hobbled, disfigured. In the ensuing 30-Year Winter[/history], they would not have survived on the surface. But below, in the gorge, where geothermal activity was constant, they would be able to survive more easily. It is believed these survivors carved dwellings into the rock faces of the Gorge’s walls.
After years of only having each other to survive and procreate, the mutations from the blast began showing up more frequently in the offspring of the survivors. These descendants are considered Abominations.