Amethyst Labyrinth

Layer upon layer of magical enchantments, illusions, snares, and traps have transformed the outskirts of the ancestral home of the Amethyst Geon into a deadly maze for the uninitiated. Its narrow passageways bristle with amethyst crystals—some real, some illusory—that seem to grow and shrink with no apparent pattern. Entire sections of the Labyrinth can move, shift, and rotate, seemingly at random, ensuring that the Labyrinth's configuration is always changing and never fully mappable. What seems to be a hallway one moment becomes a dead end the next, and solid floor might, without warning, turn into a plummet of dozens of feet.   The mercurial nature of the Labyrinth means that even should an invader avoid the more deadly pitfalls of the Labyrinth, they are liable to become lost, and succumb to starvation or thirst as they stumble blindly through the narrow passageways. Many tricks have been tried through the years, and while some are successful once, rarely are they ever successful twice. The sole guaranteed means by which an outsider might survive a journey through the Labyrinth is with the invitation of one of the Amethyst Geon.   This is not to say that the Amethyst Geon are possessed of a special artifact that they can use to bypass the defense mechanisms of the Labyrinth, or that the Labyrinth's enchantments are attuned to grant safe passage to an Amethyst Geon and their companions. Rather, the Amethyst Geon have developed, with the passage of the years, a certain instinctive familiarity with the Labyrinth. They play in its shallowest parts as children, and learn to venture deeper as they mature. Their appendages and unique constitution permit them to navigate the jagged amethyst in ways that most outsiders would struggle to do, and by doing so they learn how to instinctively detect the things that would momentarily disable traps or dispel enchantments for only long enough to admit a visitor.   Traversing the Labyrinth, even with a guide, is a perilous task. Still, those who brave it and survive are treated to the majesty of the Amethyst Geon's ancestral homeland. For those who have gone and returned to tell the tale, it is said that the view alone is well worth the danger.