The Salt Mines
The Abyssal salt mines, one of the most accursed places a body can find themselves working in, that’s for sure. They stretch deeper than the despair in a lost soul’s heart, a network of tunnels both vast and convoluted. In this labyrinthine nightmare the walls were are encrusted with layers upon layers of salt; not your garden-variety table salt, oh no, this Abyssal salt stuff’s got a foul, acrid smell to it, the scent of desperation and lost hopes, as if the very essence of the Abyss itself crystallised into these rocky formations.
Why are the tanar’ri digging up salt, you ask? Well, the fiends have got all sorts of uses for the blighted stuff. They use it in their foul rituals, a sort of unholy seasoning to give their wicked magicks that extra bit of kick, you know? They’ve got a taste for the suffering it inflicts when applied to wounds, an added savoury note to the feast of pain they’re constantly indulging in. Plus, the hard-hearted sods have found it works wonders for preserving the bodies of their victims, a sort of demonic taxidermy to decorate their twisted halls, gruesome stuff.
Now, the chant goes that conditions in the mines are something else, I’m tellin’ you. It’s an unbearable place, stiflin’ hot and chokin’ with dust. Imagine working day in and day out, with that corrosive dust eating at your flesh, scouring your lungs. And the overseers, they’re a brutal lot, quick to whip and torment the slaves to satisfy their own cruel whims too. The miners, poor sods, they’re a miserable bunch, broken and battered, with skin like cracked leather and lungs filled with the poisonous dust. They’re petitioners, captured mortals, or tanar’ri deserters from the Blood War. It’s a slow and agonising death for most, their life force slowly drained away day by day, a pound of flesh for a pound of salt; a fair trade in the eyes of the tanar’ri, it is.
And as for the creatures lurking down there in the shadows of the tunnels, don’t get me started. Unspeakable horrors, they are, creatures birthed from the very essence of the Abyss, always hungry, always watching. You’d think the mining part would be the worst of it, but oh no, you’ve also got to worry about being torn limb from limb by some monstrous thing waiting in the shadows to snatch the unwary.
So, that’s the Abyssal salt mines for ya, cutter, a place where hope goes to die and the screams of the damned echo through the tunnels, a true vision of the underworld, if ever there was one.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
