Biringan
The most recently fallen of the cities-between presents a unique challenge to
delvers, as much of the physical structure seems to flicker between corporeal
and incorporeal states. Streets that appeared solid moments before may
suddenly become translucent, allowing glimpses of chambers below, while
buildings waver like heat mirages despite the perpetual dampness of the air.
Streets paved with opalescent stone shift and rearrange themselves when
travelers look away, creating a network of roads that defy mapping.
Cartographers
who have attempted to document Biringan have produced wildly different charts,
each valid only for the moment it was created. The central plaza, constructed
around
a crystalline clock tower whose hands move counter-clockwise, serves as the
only reliable landmark. Even then, the tower sometimes appears as a solid
structure of translucent crystal and other times as little more than a
suggestion of architecture, its outline barely distinguishable from the mist
that perpetually shrouds the city.
Sometimes this shifting reality gives opportunities to access locked chambers
full of strange treasures, but just as often it causes the ground to fall away
beneath the feet of an explorer. These phase shifts also cause electronics to
behave strangely.
The deeper chambers of Biringan harbor creatures that adapted to the magical
environment; translucent crabs with crystalline shells that can phase through
solid matter, schools of fish that swim through air as easily as water, and
more troubling entities that some delvers describe as “human silhouettes
filled with starlight.” These beings observe explorers from a distance but
vanish when approached, leaving behind only the faint sound of wind chimes.