Telgotha Plateau

Winds chilled by ice as they swirl around the surrounding peaks constantly buffet this desolate plateau, scouring away the earth until only heavy gravel and bare rock remain, nearly incapable of supporting any but the hardiest plant life. As a consequence, the Telgotha Plateau is virtually uninhabited save for a few wandering bands of dwarf scavengers searching the abscesses carved into the exposed rocks for any artifacts from a past age. Over the years, salvagers have managed to retrieve Hundaei relics from their brief passage onto the plateau during their conflicts with the Hyperboreans, along with small objects of Khemitite origin along the plateau’s southern edges, likely left behind during exploratory missions from the Kingdom of Arcady’s fleeting heyday 2,000 years ago.   At an average elevation of 16,200 feet, the elongated mesa towers over its neighbor to the east, the much lower yet more viable Vingotha Plateau, and its neighbors to the extreme south, the Eragotha Plateau and Feirgotha Plateau. The escarpments surrounding the plateau’s edges are littered with dangerous rockfalls and nearly vertical surfaces. A handful of mountain dwarves claim to have found an extensive tunnel system accessible through cave entrances carved into the sheer rock face, yet these individuals are virtually impossible to locate. Not even the dwarves know who excavated the underground network of passageways and chambers, though a popular theory suggests they existed before the Stoneheart Mountains sprang into existence eons ago. The only object ever purportedly brought to the surface from the subterranean complex was a small alder wood statue of a grotesquely pregnant mother with a demonic face and a pair of claws digging their way out of the woman’s womb. The horrific totem is currently said to be in the possession of a collector of ancient artifacts in Bard’s Gate. If any have delved back into the site to further investigate the discovery, no tales of their success or failure have yet been told.