Flame of Ambition

orld quakes when it sees... the flame.
Beneath Mora there has always been a... hum. Like there was something gigantic, or at least really powerful, breathing... its heartbeats being palpable all the way over in the halls of Hyljaheim, and the walls of the castles of River'Reach drone to its beat. The first ones to notice its awakening were the cats, who all left the city-state in a single night. Then, the children started to cry, all at the same time, in unisson. They all had the same nightmare, it seems, of a being of yellow flame swallowing the world. Multiple citizens were seen wandering, babling nonsense to themselves, their yellow eyes wide open... and their gaze was madness.

Watch naught to where those maddened eyes point, for 'tis deep underground, in the very bowels of Mora, and there Nihilla Eleanora needed to find the source of all of this.

Occult Diggings
Under the guize of developping a sewer system for the city, Nihilla dug deep and she dug greedily. With the help of her Vicar the Goblin Knight she got ever closer to the heart of darkness beneath the settlement, but she needed heavy equippment. Using the gold and iron that she collected from the excavations she paid Yaron Stonehelm, a dwarf and mining specialist, to dig the rest of the tunnels. He, it seems, was quite resistant to the maddening effects, as all dwarves seem to be.

The Vicar Goblin Knight could no longer stand the aura of dread and returned to Castle Worgtooth, and eventually the dwarf, too, finished his paid duties, so Nihilla stood alone to find it...

A Brief Pause
She decided that more knowledge about this entity would be required to study it further, so she took on a hefty amount of books. In between her late night readings she spotted something that matched the description of the children's dreams: the first coming of the Witchflame. In a book given to her long ago by Habbarsnatch the Lesser she found some answers... and promtply sealed the dangerous gospel.

It would seem that the first ember of this so called "truest of all gods" landed right where Mora stands right now, which would explain why the area has attracted many a magic user throughout the ages, including the seldom seen tribes of kikimores. The only discrepancy is that the Witchflame is said to be green, not yellow, so 'tis a mysterious connection indeed. The book alcove that Nihilla uses for her studies can still be found in the sewers and while she reads there she is visited by many a friend and neighbor, such as Starra, Marquis Sanguis and Doctor Tancred of Seregost.

The Yellow Rats
The sewers are alive, moving, breathing... its getting out of control. Rats, vermin of all sizes. Small, hamster like, all the way to savage predators of the dark tunnels, bigger than dogs. Their yellow teeth glow in the dark, and their yellow eyes... they follow you through the walls. They nibble on the flesh of both the dead and the living, and only Nihilla's stone skin is anywhwere near safe from them, but the dwarf miners do suffer. They are smart, intelligent even... and are led by a yellow furred rat authority. The miners and the builders took a break to attend the tournament at River'Reach, while Nihilla herself left on a very peculiar quest. When they came back the tunnels had expanded and built themselves... and they were full of rats.

The Shrine
The rats dug deep, the rats dug quickly, and when it was all set and done they were gone, as if they were never there... The dwarfs took to the tunnels and found... it. A shrine to the Flame of Ambition, and the first ones who saw it went properly mad.

The Yellow King Beneath Us
Beneath us there was once a kingdom and its king. Far below, in the bowels of our kylorne, did they live, and they all dressed in yellow, for it was the colour of the gods. There they had peace and prosperity, for a long time at least.

In vast underground galleries they lived. Long lasting but seldom born, the yellow folk were, and their gods are said to be immortal, or at lest they were.