10

The day is but an hour old when suddenly it begins to get darker. A ceiling of black cloud spreads across the sky, fed by billowing plumes of noxious gases that pour from the cracks and craters of the southern wastes. Violent electrical storms rage in these plumes and a thunderous rumbling, like the growling of an angry giant disturbed from sleep, echoes in the bowels of the lifeless earth.

A redness in the clouds grows stronger as the Zlanbeast flies westwards. It fills the horizon, setting your pulse racing as you sense that Nengud-kor-Adez, the chasm of fire that surrounds Helgedad, is the source of the scarlet glow. You correct your course, steering the Zlanbeast away to the north, and within minutes you catch your first glimpse of Aarnak.

It is a grim spectacle, a mass of huge steel buildings grouped haphazardly around the mouth of a frigid estuary, surrounded in turn by a defensive ring of spike-topped earthworks. Everything appears to be eaten by rust, aggravated by clouds of corrosive steam that arise from rivulets of black water criss-crossing the ground. It strikes you as an uninhabitable place, yet its murky thoroughfares are teeming with thousands of grey-skinned creatures all pulling or pushing great iron carts filled with ore. As the Zlanbeast speeds towards the city, you search for somewhere suitable to land.

If you possess the Magnakai Discipline of Huntmastery and have reached the Kai rank of Principalin or higher, turn to 127.

If you do not possess this skill or have yet to reach this level of Magnakai training, turn to 301.