The Soul Mines
The soul mines are where those tanar’ri berks get down to the dirty business of reaping what others have sowed, so to speak. The mines are a place where the air vibrates with the cries of the damned, and where the ground is as unsettled as the souls that are yanked from it. You’d think it a myth, but oh, it is as real as the muck in Sigil’s streets, it is.
Now, these mines, they ain’t like any ordinary pit in the prime. Oh no, this is the Abyss we’re talkin’ about, a place where creativity in cruelty reigns supreme. The terrain, it be a grotesque landscape, twisted and warped, with jutting formations resembling tormented faces. The ground breathes and pulses, as if it’s a living entity harbouring the souls of the ill-fated petitioners that find themselves trapped within.
The tanar’ri, now they are master craftsmen when it comes to extracting agony and despair. They dig deep into the flesh of the plane here, with tools forged from nightmares, pulling out poor sods who’ve found themselves bound to this fate. They yank them out like roots from the ground, each soul coming out with a scream that echoes through the mine, a symphony of agony that permeates the air.
Once extracted, these souls, or should I say, unfortunate petitioners, find themselves thrown into great distilleries, oh yes, places of unspeakable cruelty. It’s a sadistic form of art, it is. Picture gigantic vats, bubbling with a mixture of spirit and flesh, a concoction of the finest, or worst, depending on how you look at it, elements of despair and torment.
The tanar’ri, they have a taste for the finer things, see. They distil these poor souls down to their very essence, creating a beverage most foul, yet highly sought after in the Lower Planes. Imagine the most potent spirit you’ve ever had, then multiply it by a thousand. It’s a drink that contains the very essence of human despair, a distillation of pure, unadulterated misery, it is.
It’s served under the counters in the seediest of joints, in glasses stained with the tears of the damned, and it hits you not just in the gut, but in the soul, tearing at your very being with each sip. They say it’s a drink for the bravest, or the most foolish, depending on your perspective, a drink that carries the weight of lost dreams and shattered hopes, a real killer in a glass, it is.
Them mines, they’re a place of hard work and harder hearts, a place where mercy is a foreign concept and the air is thick with the scent of brimstone and fear. It’s a brutal business, cutter, one that serves the needs of the darkest denizens of the multiverse, a never-ending cycle of torment and indulgence in the name of that most damnable of spirits. It’s a business that brings the horrors of the multiverse to your very lips, a literal taste of despair, it is. And between you and me, it’s the sort of place that makes even a seasoned planewalker think twice before venturing too deep, so it does.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
