Caves of the Damned
| Caves of the Damned | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Information | |
| Plane | Dominaria |
| Part of | Halcyon, Thran Empire, Terisiare |
| Later part of | Koilos |
The Caves of the Damned were a colony of Untouchables below Halcyon during the Time of the Thran on Terisiare, on the plane of Dominaria.
Description
The Caves of the Damned had once been a penal colony, where the city shipped all its incorrigibles. Thieves and murderers were sent down into brimstone darkness. There they were to farm mushrooms and catch blind-eyed fish and carve obsidian, to learn communal cooperation or die. Some learned too well. They banded together, overthrew their counselors and facilitators, and took over the caves. Every attempt Halcyon made to force a surrender resulted in dead negotiators. War was declared. The Halcyte guard marched down to reclaim the caves. The prisoners fought viciously in their element. At last, the city relented. It sealed off all but one entry into the caves and posted a garrison there to prevent upward incursions. Though the city had lost control of its penal colony, it had not lost a repository for its human refuse. Every day, chained parades of prisoners trooped down into the darkness. Their crimes were serious enough to result in the renunciation of their citizenship.
Citizens of Halcyon were allowed to descend into the caves to visit relatives, to minister to the ill, to do whatever they dared beyond the reach of law and reason. One’s weapons were identified, and the citizen could not emerge unless all weapons came back with him. Some citizens even drifted down there to remain — lunatics and indigents, laggards, disaffected youths, perverts, brawlers, and any number of others who found life in heaven more hellish than life in hell.
Many of the inhabitants in the Caves of the Damned were sick with Phthisis due to too much exposure to powerstones through working in the Mana Rig. More than 2,000 people lived in the caves 6 years before the fall of the Thran. After Yawgmoth started transporting more infected from Halcyon down to the caves, the numbers swelled to 10,000 at the most. Gix arranged for several escapes through secret passages, and some were also raised from the caves and were given homes in Halcyon, so by the time Dyfed arrived in Halcyon, there were about 5,000 people in the caves.[1]
In these caves the planeswalker Dyfed built a permanent portal between Dominaria and Phyrexia. The planar portal could be closed by placing the two halves of the powerstone used to create it onto a pedestal in the caves. At the end of the Thran Civil War Yawgmoth ushered the last survivors into the portal to populate Phyrexia before the death cloud reached the caves.
After the fall of the Thran, the caves lay forgotten for 5,000 years, until their redicovery by Urza, Mishra and Tocasia. They then received the new name "Koilos" from Urza.
References
- ↑ J. Robert King, 1999, The Thran, Wizards of the Coast.