The Sentinels

"We arrived at the Sentinels scant hours ago, but I really must put pen to parchment before my initial impressions of the place fade. What a remarkable city!"

- Reuben Kyte, Explorer and eventual Firemaster of the Angry Fist Tribe

The Sentinels are a pair of enormous rock formations jutting out of the ashen plains, the settlement being located deep in the Howling Wastes. They are the only area of relative safety in this nightmarish landscape, despite their close proximity to the Black Fortress and the Daemon's Stump, a ghastly citadel where the scions of Chaos gibber and prowl.

The Sentinels act as a trading post for Rhinoxen, furs, provisions and other equipment necessary for a sustained trek through the mountains and a caravan will often change guard in this location before heading off on the next leg of its journey. The sheer faces of these standing stones, eroded by aeons of hars weather, have countless winches, lantern tunnels, Gnoblar nests, smuggling holes and pulley systems set into them, and harbour so many adventurers and entrepreneurs that they teem with activity day and night.

Overview
round the bases of the Sentinels are clustered mesas and spires of both naturally occurring rock and yet more standing stones, forming a network of crevasses, tunnels and chasms in which I now rest. The whole place has been hollowed out and inhabited by countless adventurers, entrepreneurs and brigands who scurry on their urgent business through the darkened passageways, reminding me strongly of a nest of termites I once encountered in the south. Goods are transferred to the upper tunnels by means of great winches set into the sides of the stones themselves.

Lines of red meat and dried fish are strung between each stone wherever there is shelter like an Altdorf washerwoman's linen (I swear I saw a few corpses amongst the meat) and a constant stream of scruffy Gnoblars scurry underfoot from shanty town to nest. Almost every nook and crevice is occupied, not with birds as one would expect, but with the diminutive thieves intruding upon our journey with alarming frequency. Horses, mules and Rhinoxen fill rough paddocks on the outskirts of the stones, tethered to great rusted rings set deep into the rock and traded so often they seem to change hands by the hour. At night, great strings of fat-burning laterns illumniate the main streets and caverns, lending the place an almost magical glow in the darkness which surronds it. The whole place is alive with commerce, an oasis of color and light in the forbidding darkness of the plains.