The Monoliths of Earthgarden

Somewhere in the windswept tundra of the Western Continent, surrounded by hundreds of miles of lichen and sedge, is a pit. A hole three feet to a side, descending into the pitch black.

No one has ever found this pit. You might think that’s because the closest permanent settlement - a handful of semi-subterranean sod huts inhabited by stout, thick-skinned, slow moving folk - is over a week’s travel away by foot. You would be wrong.

The pit hasn’t been found because it doesn’t want to be found. It moves. Idly drifting around the flat wasteland until it spots a figure on the horizon, at which point it flees.

Every so often, a thing crawls out of the pit. Things with too many legs. Things with eyes that swivel and bulge. Things that, upon emerging, raise their snouts high into the air, sniff once, then trundle off toward the far distance.

Inside the pit, past the long, dark gullet, past the thing spawning grounds, past the chamber that twists and distorts passers-through, is a cylinder. Tall as an Asmund and blacker than the surrounding darkness, it rests lopsided against the cavern wall with no visible activity but an iridescent shimmer.

But it is not dormant. Back and forth the cylinder passes arcane message after arcane message, in constant communication with hundreds of others like it via some hidden mechanism. It is listening. Waiting. Waiting for the right message.

And that, students of this fine establishment, is why we can cast Fireball.

Professor Veja was laughed out of the classroom, and subsequently lost her position at the Arcane University for peddling such hogswallop.

- omegastick