Threshold Caves

Ceremonial Hall, in Threshold Caves

A dark and foreboding atmosphere is only broken by occasional pulsating firelight or the reflection of lava-like lakes on the walls. Accessible via Threshold Pits, it also has portals leading to the Dorsal Rift and Caudal Rift. Go with a guide until you memorize the multiple dark mazes to reach either the Ceremonial Hall, or to the portals to the Rifts.

The boundaries of the hall shift and waver, spreading outwards to a range beyond sight. Silence is so pervasive it throbs in your ears, punctuated at rare intervals with the faint rattling of iron on stone. The altar seems to draw the heat from the room despite the glowing braziers atop it. Acrid smoke climbs in thin spirals from the fires to sting your eyes. Air, thick and cloying, with an unidentifiable scent, leaves a coppery taste in your mouth. Pulsing light from the swirling pools below reflects about the room, bathing it in a crimson glow that causes the murals to seem a dance of macabre and grotesque figures.

Connecting Planes

Caudal Rift

The Unknown

Dorsal Rift

Threshold Pits

Map

Threshold Caves Map

History

Long ago, before The Great Loss and during The Nightmare Wars, Lagumbar Staggern was credited with the creation of Portals in the Dream City. Moreover, it was said that besides the Portals that divide the Dream City, he had constructed portals that could transport souls to different times. Tux sought out the lost scrolls that gave specifics on these portals and could assist in bringing Lagumbar back to the dream. Finally in the third month of the Year of Revelations, Lagumbar appeared, bearing answers from the past to help bring about the opening of Threshold Caves.

Lagumbar required certain tools to perform the opening of the caves, and there was a search for his toolbox. Snapcase found the Jade toolbox, and Mack Daddy, Tux, and Railston found corresponding tools. Interestingly, before the ceremony could be divined for the cave-digging, the Caves appeared suddenly on the twenty-first day of that month.

The caves have been referred to as the third rift. And yet my studies have not really indicated that is true. The rifts as we have seen lie at the outskirts of the city. The caves are at the very heart of it. The cave I believe is actually the force from which the city first sprung. It is said that the first dreamers learned to form solid matter from the essence of the dream. Yet they must have had a power from which to draw from to do that. When you enter the realm of the caves and proceed down the right corridor or around the central room you see off into the distance a pulsing energy pattern in the distance. I believe this energy is actually the very soul of the city. It is where all of us reside when our time of ending has come. It is the consciousness of the city.

This power is very unstable and thus you have the formation of both good and evil. It is here that Osric speaks of the creation of the ultimate product of warped chaos. I believe the altar is in the first room that was created by the first dreamers. It is here that they continued to conceive the rest of the city, as we know it. As time passed these dreamers became very powerful and arrogant. Again Osric speaks of one called Horron. His mind was warped and thus his powers became tools of evil. His children the mares of Underlight. The other dream rights developed the basic arts here as they city above them developed.

Soon they had trouble containing their power and knew the dream would come when they had to seal off the caves. They also knew that some dream out in the future they would have to reopen the caves but they had to develop a way to insure the time was right so keys were developed to open the caves. One such key is the Eye of the moon. The Dreamwrights knew that until the dreamers of Underlight understood how to use the keys that the caves would remained sealed. It was their way of insuring that when they were reopened the dreamers would be mature enough to use the powers that it contained.

by Carniworker

Some of you know of Wesex, mine and Snapcase's father Dreamstrike Master, all around evil person... so you say, we know of him, who cares? well it is because of him that Threshold Caves were formed, how do I know this??? he told me.

Long ago when the Dreamstrike offensive was in its prime, the Dreamwrights realized that soon, even Threshold would no longer be safe, and so the went down unto the its and there started a labor of creating a new plane, a plane to be used as a fortress against the evil to come. As shown by 2 different mazes, and a vault the whole place was not meant to be penetrated, but it was.

After it was built the master Dreamwright gathered all the dreamers they could into these caves. Originally there was no portal from entrance to Ceremonial Chamber, that was done by the DreamStrikers, the Ceremonial Chamber was where the Dreamwright gathered all the dreamers, but when the Dreamstrike forces came, many went through the mazes and were lost, but the smart ones created a portal. When the Dreamwrights knew all was lost, they made all who could wake, and they sealed themselves, and the dreamstrikers in the caves hopefully, never to be opened again... but it has been so releasing a great evil upon the dream, one that was bound unto a codex, long long ago. . .

by Bilbo Baggins

The Lost Scrolls and Threshold Caves

Our interviewer sits in the Facade of Union of the Covenant, listening to Tux tell a story about his father and the building of the dream city.

"Well young lady, sit back and get a quill and scroll, and let me tell you about my father."

Calysto brushes the rocks off her knees and turns to a fresh page.

"My father is Lagumbar Staggern, together with his partner Syiand the Grateful they constructed the portals in the city. This was during the Nightmare wars Calysto and it took them a very long time to do this but it was necessary as the mares were running rapid in the city. They started at threshold way and worked outward to all eight houses, I watched and helped as a small boy. The MOST significant offshoot to this was the creation of several arts that are still used today quite often!

"I bet a real good dreamer like you can name them?"

Tux decides to turn the tables on her and smiles.

Know, Locate?

"Thats two..."

Tux thinks she missed the most important one. Tux whispers to Shaolin "Don't tell her is Join party!"

"Think about it a minute... how important JP was to the confused dreamers then as they were "trapped" in small rooms they were not used to, as before that the City was wide open. The group that actually found that art were called the Seekers of Knowledge, Dreamwrights that worked for my Father and helped him construct the portals.

"I will tell you the rest of the story but it’s not pretty. Shortly after the Battle of Rock Falls, Some of the Dreamstrike masters from the House of Light went on a rampage.

"Calysto... my entire family, wife, children, and their spouses were all struck dead, in front of my eyes..."

Tux sighs audibly and pauses again at length.

"My grandson, the former Ruler of Calenture and I were spared."

Calysto looks Tux in the eye to make sure he is still comfortable.

"At the time I wanted only to die, but he, the infant gave me hope for the future.

"It was then, when I took my father’s family journal from his dead body did I find the answer to our survival.. Beside the portals in the city he had constructed another that could transport dreamers to a different dream "time." Many know this story, and this is why I know so many lyrans as I knew their families from so long ago, you see, my father was highly respected by all in the city.

"And a voice I heard a few months ago from beyond the timeless Chaos gives me hope that he survived somehow and can return once more to open the caves."

Gallery

Temple of Meditation

Churning Vortex

Broken Bridge

Crossway

Labyrinth

Hidden Ambush

Path of Madness

Meditation Hall

Hidden Vault

Right Wing

Reference

• https://web.archive.org/web/20030728150843/http://www.underlight.com/php/story/history.php?histID=00034