Mastodon Ridge

Rising like a jagged crown from the barren stretches of the Wildlands, Mastodon Ridge is a windswept mesa that overlooks the scarred rail lines leading into Brimstone Hollow. The land here is elevated and uneven, its cliffs marked by ancient erosion and carved with deep gullies that run black with old tar. Sparse clusters of wind-twisted brush cling to the red stone, while cactus blooms and cracked earth remind any traveler that water is rare, and mercy even rarer.   The plateau atop the ridge is a bleak and lonely expanse—flat and broad in places, shattered and sloped in others. Bubbling tar pits shimmer under the harsh sun like pools of obsidian oil, their viscous surfaces popping with gas that smells of pitch and decay. Half-submerged in these pits lie the ancient, bleached bones of mastodons—enormous, long-dead beasts that once roamed the region before the railroads and sulfur mines cut their paths through the land. Their fossilized remains rise from the tar like the ribs of some primordial leviathan, a grim testament to the age and violence of the ridge.   From this vantage, one can see for miles across the Wildlands— the rail line runs like a scar across the sand, the sulfur haze of Brimstone Hollow drifting in the far distance. Bandits, smugglers, and exiles sometimes take refuge among the rocks and gullies, using the ridge's natural height and tar-choked gullies as cover. Few dare approach without good reason—those tar pits don’t only hold the dead. They keep secrets too.