The City of the Blood Shoal is the home of the Mahkwahb, the Elves of the Abyss. Like the Dead Well, Blood Shoal is a gigantic cylindrical shaft that has been excavated into the sea floor, with a diameter of more than five hundred feet. At the bottom of the shaft is a volcanic rift that provides the city with heat and bathes the area with an eerie reddish light. Where a coral plug seals the Dead Well to the outside ocean, Blood Shoal opens freely to the sea above; The city itself is protected by a Clear Water Dome that keeps the effects of the World Gash at bay.
The gigantic shaft contains rings of ledges, a hundred feet wide, with ancient buildings stacked upon them. The buildings range in size and function, with temples, houses, storage areas, and shops all fighting for space upon the crowded shelves. Important buildings bore pilaster entrances, columned fronts, and pediment roofs.
The minor buildings appear strange as if carved from melted wax. Age has had an affect on all the buildings. Some were crumbling into ruin. Where the buildings have fallen away, dark windows and tunnels lead to a labyrinthine city far into the rock.
Sometime in the past, the volcanic vent expanded, cutting a trench across the shaft, dividing the city in half, and sending out a spider web of smaller fissures and rents.
Down beneath the trench is a large chamber one hundred feet in height. From the ceiling hang heavy chains with hooks. The chamber is covered in a mosaic depicting various humanoids suffering hellish tortures. The walls of the chamber are made of smoky obsidian glass and just beneath their surface are corpses of some kind. It is in this chamber that the Impaling Throne sits.
The Alien Sea[]
During the events of the Alien Sea it came to light that the City of the Blood Shoal had been enslaved by the Fire Dragon, Blazewight. The dragon sought to use the Impaling Throne to alter the landscape around Blood Shoal into a domain of Chaos. In the battle to destroy the dragon the entrance to the Impaling Throne chamber was collapsed. It is unknown how long it will take the Mahkwahb to remove the debris.
References[]
- The Alien Sea, pages 249-90
- The Otherlands, pages 92-93