Mort's Trip

The world in which our adventure takes place does not have Yelp. That is a good thing for the Sand Deserts, who would probably not fair well.
Mortimer traveled up there in the weeks around the 300th day to meet up with the "local" hellknights, and to hire a tracker to find what had become of Jaq.
Getting there is quite the trek. One first needs to head to Skor (nearly as far north as you can go in the Valley) and catch "The First Boat", an ICG passenger ship to Stonegardens, an old dwarf hold a few day's boat ride north.
Stonegardens is in the Dwarflands, essentially a thick, horrible mountain range that runs from coast to coast north of the Valley, forming a natural border. The Dwarflands has about the same area as the Valley, but is wider east-to-west and shorter north-to-south.
Stonegardens itself is a moderately sized hold, housing 2,500 stern dwarves and a light smattering of other cave-dwelling creatures. Dwerfater is the religion of choice in the southern Dwarflands, and construction is the preferred prayer. The Stonegardens got itself its name from its abundance of statue gardens. For every dwarf living in the hold, there's said to be at least two statues of marvelous quality.
The place is honestly amazingly creepy, but with a letter from Priest Snooks, and another from Lady D'Larariel, Mortimer can pass through with only a limited amount of bother.
There a number of ways to access the northern border of the Dwarflands, and they're all bad. The occasional ship passes between Stonegardens and Port Shaw on the Razor Coast, the south-eastern-most point of the Sand Jungles. The boats run irregularly, and Port Shaw is a bit far out of the way. Travelling overland via flight is possible (although long), but winds of 40-degrees below freezing and the mountain-dwarves make this incredibly dangerous.
While hold-dwarves as generally lawful-good types with poor social skills, mountain-dwarves are a race of assholes. Scraping together a living in the habitable parts of the mountains, they are hardy and vicious, aided by the easy access to things like obsidian, adamantine, mithril, magical stones and magma. They may be the best smiths in the world, but outsiders are treated like game animals. Mountain-dwarves are famous for producing shield-chewingly-mad barbarians by the dozen, and have enough flying pets and mounts that air-travel is strongly discouraged.
The last option is the Deep Roads. Gods above know why dwarves need to build these fucking things. Long, large, straight tunnels between holds are great in theory, but patrolling them are impossible, and they are vulnerable to invasions, flooding (acid, magma, water or mud), cave-ins and infestation by things too numerous to list.
Most of these were built in the third age, and scholars of that bright and optimistic time prize the Deep Roads as the premiere source of untapped information about that time. 90% of the roads are impassable for one reason or another, but the dwarves have found a clever way to keep some open. These tunnels were intentionally flooded with sea- water many decades ago, which quickly froze. Passengers climb in the Brute, a bullet-shaped carriage some 100 feet long. The Brute's front face contains a coal furnace (aided by magic), which melts the ice in the tunnel ahead of it, flashing it into steam. Fluting in the surface of the Brute funnels steam behind it, propelling it forward. The remaining ice collapses behind it, allowing more seawater in and essentially resetting the 'track'.
The Brute manages speeds of around 40 km/h, making it one of the fastest methods of land travel available. The downside is that you're sitting in a box travelling through a frozen, pitch black tunnels with no brakes or capacity to defend itself. If the hull breaks or the forge goes out, the Brute would be quickly destroyed by the ice. Of the 33 originally built, 18 still run.
The north-most stop on the Brute's line is a large, prosperous hold called IronHome. The dwarves here follow Torag, a much more forceful and struct god than Dwerfater. Mort likely did not spend long here, because the place is so fabulously wealthy, Mort's meager supply of gold would have run out very quickly.
From IronHome, it's a relatively short trek north to the Sand Deserts. It's a pretty dumb name, until you see it. The "sand" is a pale blue. as are all the local stones. The stuff is also much finer than normal sand, although it contains golf-ball sized grains that make sandstorms extremely deadly. Some people have described it as the most beautiful place in the world, and with good reason. With a supply of dwarven artisans from the south and an impressive slave culture, statues and carved cliffs are everywhere. Treating the sand with heat changed it's color back to a more traditional yellow, allowing for some truly impressive art to be found in the area.
Mit Gulain (Miht Gyo-lane) is the largest city in the Sand, and Mortimer's eventual destination. 500,000 people call Mit Gulain home, and it is truly a sight to behold. The city is built along the shores of three parallel rivers and is dominated by mastaba style buildings
http://www.kenseamedia.com/dece…/images/mastaba_exterior.jpg
Since the exterior stone walls of these serve little importance (as there is no need for reinforcement, laquer or tarring), each and every one is carved and colored, creating perhaps the most dense concentration of art above ground (if measured in square meters of carvings per square kilometer of city).
Set, the Lawful Evil god of Empires is the god of choice, and the city is built in his honor with a strict caste system and strong slave class. Like all cities with more slaves than slave-owners, the slaves are treated well and kept healthy, out of respect for the work that they do, and to make a revolution less palatable. "You cannot punish a man from whom you've taken everything" is a common Setite sentiment.
The city is far too huge to ever describe, containing so many people and places that nearly anything can be found, if one has enough patience and ability to haggle. Order is the city's main feature, which is a bit different from Law. Order decrees that there is no yelling or fighting in the streets, and no crime or other poor behavior is permitted. Rather than having a strict bureaucratic legal system to deal with criminals after the fact, lawbringers are instead given extensive training in how the city "should be", and then given a club and told to go and make it so. This means the city leader's vision can be carried out swiftly and accurately, resulting in the kind of peace you get in a dictatorship with "guilty until proven innocent" and "on the spot beatings" policies
The lawbringers themselves are sourced from the Order of the Nail, whom Mortimer has gone to meet. Their Citadel (called the Dominus) is built into a large step-pyramid near the center of the city. Each steps represent the order's hierarchy; a hellknight or lawbringer may ascend no more floors than he has attained ranks. The basements are entirely composed of labyrinthine prisons, representing people who have managed to exclude themselves from society because of their behavior.
The leaders of the Hellknight section are Lictor Severs Diviri, and Maidriane Vox, Mistress of Blades (essentially the second in command). They're both eager to meet Mort and discuss his new order. Surprisingly, they're kinda supportive, while they want nothing to do with the Valley, they're not going to impede the formation of new Order(s), and are willing to give him some resources to aid him on his path.
Diviri gives Mort a large stack legal-texts to help him establish his order, mostly detailing legal processes and what makes a "good" order and city. He also gives him three scholars who know much of the order's history and would serve as good advisers. With them come a selection of ceremonial items (mostly robes and weapons) to make Castle Grey look more professional. He also offers Mort a troop (two dozen) of slave-soldiers.
Vox is some sort of meanness-golem, put together by the same arcanist that assembled Tabitha. She offers Mort books on city design and other boring topics, but spends most of the time just lecturing him. At the mention of Jaq however, her interest is piqued. Apparently a few local captive paladins have also gone missing recently, some of them from the very cells of the Dominus. She insists that one of her trackers accompanies Mort back to the Valley, suspecting that some of the paladins may have fled there.
A quiet, creepy man named Paravicar Acillimar is in charge of the religious aspects of the order. He's very much a supporter of Set, and spends much of the trip shamelessly trying to convert Mort.
Agamemnon is meant to come collect Mort at the end of his journey, which may be an anticlimactic way to end the trip, but it is a lot better than another ride on the Brute.