Mount Arak

• Miles of winding passageways carve through the mountain’s core, ancient and weathered, linking scattered surface caves to immense subterranean halls.
• These tunnels are a tangled maze of natural caverns and forgotten mine shafts, rumored to have once been shaped and expanded by unknown hands.
• The air here is cold and damp, thick with the echoes of dripping water and the occasional distant roar of underground beasts.

Travelers who stumble into the tunnels speak of strange whispers in the dark, shifting shadows, and unsettling feelings of being watched.

The mountain is home to a reclusive subterranean people known as the Arakans, who harbor deep resentment toward Tepest’s surface dwellers. They view the surface folk as reckless, superstitious, and dangerous, believing ancient slights justify their isolation and hostility.

• The Arakans live in the vast caverns, forming tight-knit clans with their own customs, laws, and fierce territorial pride.
• Skilled hunters and warriors, they have adapted to the dark tunnels and caverns, using the natural labyrinth as both home and fortress.
• They seldom venture to the surface, but when they do, it is often with suspicion or hostility, sometimes skirmishing with surface dwellers who stray too near.

• It is whispered that the deepest chambers beneath Mount Arak hide ancient relics or powers—remnants from before Tepest’s dark curses or the hags’ influence.
• Some say the Arakans guard secrets that could alter the balance of power in Tepest, but none from the surface have ever been trusted enough to learn them.
• Strange creatures, twisted by the mountain’s dark magics, roam the tunnels—sometimes attacking intruders, other times serving as guardians to hidden passages.