The glare from the innumerable volcanic vents in the rock burrows through the eyelids, haunting sleep with their terrible crimson glare.Īt some point I could take no more and collapsed. I suffered mild burns in my throat and nostrils from the smoke that hangs heavy over the land. The suffocating furnace air of the place, which blisters the throat and eyes, gradually cripples the visitor. With the Cauldron long since completed, there is no reason for them to remain standing. Though undoubtedly made to serve a purpose (the digging of the Cauldron, I eventually learned) they look pointless, more like the idols of a dead and despised god. Along the edges of the Cauldron are crooked metal towers, brutish in size and grandiosity. Great wheels and forges burn with activity in some parts, tended by imperial soldiers and engineers. Most of the Dark Iron buildings are just crude tents, though I saw more development as I went further west.

They are as vicious as they are beautiful, and I had to fend off their attacks on two occasions. I also encountered giant blue spiders, possessed of an oddly crystalline appearance. I passed numerous Dark Iron encampments on my journey, frequently guarded by clones of the stone nightmare that I saw in Angor Fortress. I was black with soot after a few days, and I found it hard to believe that any living being could survive there for long. It is as hot at night as it is in day, and there is the added terror of the oppressive darkness that descends after sundown. Time is largely meaningless in that place, where scorching heat and the sounds of fire bruise the senses. I do not remember precisely how long it took to get from the edge of the Cauldron to Thorium Point though it could not have been more than a few days. These rebels make their home in the northern mountains at a place called Thorium Point. The Thorium Brotherhood consists of those who elected to stay and fight, hoping to craft weapons of incredible power that would destroy the emperor and his blasphemous deity once and for all. Most Dark Iron dissidents attempt to flee to Ironforge. While in Kargath, which seemed a verdant paradise compared to the Gorge, I learned of a group called the Thorium Brotherhood. The tortured red sky rained ash on the miserable souls that made their home in the Searing Gorge. I stepped back from the brink of that abyss, overwhelmed by the cruelty implicit in its existence. The eastern section of the Cauldron is nearly abandoned, inhabited by berserk elementals instead of Dark Iron dwarves. Metal walkways line the chasm walls, twisted by the eternal heat.

Ash and dust, the result of endless flame and toil, clog the air and make it as dark as night, brightened only by the flare of lava and fire. The burning stink of sulfur rolls up from the Cauldron, that great wound in the earth running through the Searing Gorge.

Gate to searing gorge