Return of Mysterious Places From the Fringe

Howdy Greyhawkers, it's a good day to revisit one of my favorite article segments that I haven't done in a few years, Mysterious Places From the Fringe. It's just a spin on the mysterious places articles from Living Greyhawk back in the day, except I make them up off the cuff based on no canon or anything, just my own encyclopedic knowledge of the Flanaess map. What DM doesn't need a new location for adventurers to visit? The World of Greyhawk is full of them after all! Check out my previous articles and then continue on to this year's batch. Enjoy.

Dagon's Mouth: There is many unknown dangers posed to sailors and pirates on the seas south of the Flanaess' safe shores. Intrepid vessels seeking riches hid within the vast Vohoun Ocean avoid a certain uncharted region called Dagon's Mouth. All that is known of this demon haunted zone is told by survivors who have returned on rafts made of wrecks of their ship. It is said that Dagon the primordial demon prince of the darkest depths literally lairs here, rising up to claim any craft daring enough to tread across these stormy waters. Other maddened sailors tell of sighting a string of small islets where everything is wrong to the senses even the color of the sky. They are sure death prevails here as staying on land any length of time causes one to waste away despite the evidence of ruins not far from the cursed shores.

The Red Colossus: North of the Mounds of Dawn in a spur of the Yatil Mountains is a place that few go besides humanoids and venerable clans of deep gnomes. Hid within the craggy peaks is a gigantic time-lost statue half buried in the side of a mountain. It is carved in the likeness of a strange humanoid giant facing north, with its legs and one arm half in the rock and another arm raised to the sky. The statue is a curiosity because it is made of a reddish rock not part of this region, but similar in hue to the clay formations seen in Exag to the south. The age of the colossus is not certain save that not even the local giant population claim to know who made it. The red statue radiates overwhelming transmutation magic however and some daring Underdark denizens have tried tunneling below and within to learn more of the colossus. Though no credible riches have been discovered here, wild claims are made that the colossus has weird magical effects such as resurrecting the dead, granting wishes and even visions granted for those who scale to the top of its out-stretched palm.

Beltar's Well:  The Spine Ridge between the Vast Swamp and the Tilvanot Peninsula, is said to have abundant untapped mineral wealth, if one can get past the dangers of humanoids and monsters. Somewhere in the trackless hills of this region is a place called Beltar's Well or depending on the translation it can be attributed to nonhuman gods such as Baphomet, Laogzed, Yurtrus or Vaprak. Whatever the case, the well is a shaft in the heart of a rocky formation where reputedly, monsters occasionally emerge from the Underdark or perhaps a gate to another plane, then venture out into the world beyond. Fortunately the well is not that wide, though monsters have clawed and gnawed at its interior over the centuries. These rents have created ample handholds for any lesser beings who try to climb down the Well in the opposite direction. Many humanoids are dared to do this as a rite of bravery or adulthood, while less hardy species believe there is unclaimed riches ready to be pulled forth if they can only find the muscle to go down and find out.

01000100: Locked deep in the Land of Black Ice is a dark hillock covered by eons of glacial growth. This hill is nearly impossible to locate, only once spotted and noted in the journals of a sage who tried (and failed) to follow in the footsteps of Henriki Ardand and find the fabled Rainbow Vale. The hill only known as 01000100 is named so due to a series of deeply etched lines carved upon an ebony stone archway built into the hillside (01000100 01000001 01001110 01000111 01000101 01010010). It took the sage's entire expedition many hard hours to chip the black ice away as it seemed to regrow as fast as it could be cleared, yet the nature of the numbers and a hidden entrance was eventually exposed. The sage's journal abruptly ends after the initial foray inside the hill. Evidently those explorers that survived abandoned the search for the Vale and had no recollection of what happened, returning with no evidence except the sage's journal and if rumors are true, a shard of some silvery metal puncturing the leather cover. Today, hill 01000100 is surely buried again in black ice waiting for another hapless band of adventurers to try and discover its mysteries.