I often write boxed text for new in-game events and locations. I find it easier to think through the sights, smells, and other sensations during GM prep and write them out, rather than improv’ing when I’m trying to write a game. Here’s one such moment.
A curved passageway, much like the ones you encountered in Rissimo on your way to the gate of Dhol Lodahr, winds its way down into the mountain. Though not quite as intricate as those passages, the quality and resilience of the stonework here is notable.
You travel for about 15 minutes, down a blind spiraling passageway, until the road emerges from the ceiling of a massive cave. At first, your view is blocked by stalactites and large, irregular chunks of unworked rock, but as the road continues to spiral down, details begin to emerge.
The cavern below appears to be a single, massive chamber. There appears to be a forest of large mushrooms below, a dizzying maze of little trails from this height. Large crystal outcroppings and patches of fungi–including many of the large mushrooms themselves–glow softly in greens and purples, backlighting the rocky features of the cavern.
A large natural arch cuts across the cavern, further out over the mushroom forest.
And as the entire cavern comes into full view, you see it–the outline of a large cluster of buildings, somewhere on the other side of the cavern and its mushroom forest, is softly backlit by patches of green fungi along the walls. It is mostly shrouded in shadow, but the lines of the roofs and spires are crisp and clear.
The ramp eventually dumps you out onto the floor of the cavern, where the road continues on somewhere between the mushroom forest and a cave wall. As you travel along it, you notice it is shattered and worn in places, as if both erosion and some large impacts have taken their toll. As it winds towards the edge of the forest, it disappears into the patchy moss covering most of the cave floor.
You move closer to the forest, and something startles. You see a blur within the forest–large elk like creatures of some sort bolt from a small thicket deeper into the forest, their hair and antlers covered with patches of what appears to be soft, luminescent moss.