Joldale Overhang is a ruined mining town in Ofica, now a depopulated ghost town. Its undoing began with Banor’s Wrath, the cataclysmic Mount Origin eruption of 1523 PE, which birthed the Mythek Vortex and the Crimson Crying that followed, and it fell for good in the Mythek Massacre of 1524 to 1525 PE. Its ruins overlie the skeletal remnants of the copper mines that once sustained it.
The abandoned mines, now treacherous and littered with forsaken equipment, still draw occasional treasure hunters after the copper veins that remain. They are drawn as well by the danger of the Mythek Vortex, a swirling well of volatile magic birthed from the ignited Stars of Power during Banor’s Wrath.
The Mythek Vortex, an ever-shifting gyre of multicolored energy, is regarded as one of the purest expressions of magic in Rolara. Its influence has warped the surrounding landscape: nearby trees bow and twist toward it, their wood hardening into an aether-infused, obsidian-like material, and the rocks glitter with crystalline veins. The power is a hazard rather than a resource, and those who try to harness the vortex are often driven mad or consumed by it.
With the vortex came a resurgence of the Crimson Crying, a rare and dire affliction that attacks the nerves of those exposed for too long to the particles and light the vortex casts off. Victims’ eyes turn red, their tears leave scarlet trails on the skin, and the disease brings on deep anxiety, a mind-blistering fever, and a fear so acute that it can drive its host to violent mania. Spells of lesser restoration ease the fever for a time, but the psychological toll is far harder to treat. The first cases were recorded at Three Falls, and no reliable prevention is known beyond limiting exposure to the vortex. Sufferers who do not recover undergo a monstrous transformation into embodiments of the disease.
The Agon-Titans, humanoid stone creatures that once labored in the mines, remain among the ruins as silent sentinels. Their bodies are carved of copper-touched rock, and their life force is bound to the rare copper veins running through the earth. Abandoned by their Human masters, they stay tied to the mines.
At the deepest point of the mines lies the Aetherite Crystal Cavern, encrusted with blue-white crystals that pulse with a light likened to starfire. It is said to be the lair of the Lethbane, an elusive creature of local folklore that passes through several life stages, from a translucent worm to a hard-shelled chrysalis and finally to a monstrous beast studded with shards of Aetherite crystal. Legend holds that the Lethbane is both guardian and prisoner of the cavern, bound by ancient magic, and that its final form will emerge only when the Mythek Vortex reaches its zenith.
Joldale Overhang thus stands as both a relic of its past and a warning for the future. The meeting of the copper mines and the Aetherite Crystal Cavern sets the raw power of the Mythek Vortex against the primal energy of the Lethbane, and what the ruins still hold is reckoned more dangerous than the mines alone.