The merchants start to close up their stalls and the boardwalks begin to fill up with people (such as they are) beginning their early revelry. The smith shutters the doors to his smithy, and taps a rune that glows purple, then fades out of sight. He motions whomever is willing to accompany him to follow, as he walks toward the southern gate. Quickly, you exit past a pair of hulking, purple-skinned guards with prognathous jaws, and large ivory tusks curling over their upper lips. They barely register your presence as you pass between them.
In the gathering gloom, the dwarf (who insists you call him Fanrin) waddles quickly down the deeply rutted, muddy road that follows a perched bank between the river and the steep sided gorge. After about a half-mile of walking, the roar of a falls begins to fill your ears. Fanrin looks furtively around, paying careful attention in the direction of Dreg; seemingly satisfied he grunts to himself and takes out a pouch and pulls out a pinch of sand from inside and throws it in the air. As the fine sand disperses in the air, you watch it settle and blink in surprise as it settles on a thick hedgerow of thorny brambles. Suddenly the brambles pull back on themselves as if they were an insect recoiling from an open flame. Beyond, you see a well-worn path leading down to a set of stone-stairs carved from the living rock of the cliffs overlooking the rushing river.
Fanrin motions you to enter, after you do, he takes another pinch of dust and throws it in the air behind you and the brambles quickly grow together. he pushes past you and nimbly descends the stairs down to the river's edge. Cleverly, tucked into a declivity, that is almost invisible until you are right on top of it, is a narrow passage that descends into a drafty tunnel cut into the cliff. Fanrin leads you inside and you find a steep spiral staircase that drops hundreds of feet into the ground. He sparks up a torch and leads you down into the depths. Eventually the staircase ends in a bell-shaped cavern with tunnels radiating out in a dozen directions like spokes of a wheel. Confidently he turns to the left and picks a dark passage. After 10 minutes or so of walking in a very damp tunnel, you come to the end and a small chamber, where a long, steep staircase ascends. Climbing hundreds of steps leads you to a smooth rock face. Fanrin taps on the three spots and three runes spring to life and fade. As the last rune dims, the rock face rolls away to the right. When you step through, the ground is rimed with frost and hundreds of fireflies flit around illuminating a hazy, dim woods all around you. Fanrin smiles and walks along a path only he can see. After ten more minutes the sounds of flutes, pipes, and drums can be heard drifting through the tightly packed trees.
At last, you walk around the bole of a very large oak and the source of the music reveals itself: In a small clearing, garishly striped tents, and a small horde of diminutive folk are milling around, inspecting a variety of goods and things that defy easy description: Strange animals in gilded cages yowl and screech, hawkers shout out their prices, and auctioneers can be heard rapid-fire calling out bids, for bolts of cloth, jars of swirling colors, and other strange and nameless things that seem to call out to you. Mixed into the crowd are tall folk that look very much like Hyperboreans, and hulking brutes of gigantic proportion.
Fanrin smiles and says, "Grand ain't it?"
