The Glow

So named for the aurora that fills the skies over the central crater, the Glow is a seething cauldron of aberrant ecology, a mutagenic nightmare of warped evolution with no constraints. The landscape is dominated by the scarred basalt walls of the crater, gently sloping to a height of roughly 500 yards on the outside, before plunging to a depth of nearly three times that. The lands surrounding the crater are a blasted, desolate wasteland, a rocky desert baked black by the unrelenting sun, scarred by twisting stone spires and volcanic vents. A pervasive stink of sulfer and ash floats on the winds that howl around the perimeter of the crater. Within the steaming walls of the crater, foul vapors and mists obscure vision beyond arm's reach, only relenting about twelve meters from the ground. A riot of unnatural growth writhes in a demented parody of nature, new species in a constant flux of accelerated life. Bizarre pseudo-plant and almost-fungi compete for the nourishing radiation emanating from the pools of incandescent fluids that bubble sullenly in pits and hollows, while creatures that defy description hunt each other, each generation wildly divergent from the last. Strangely, humans seem highly resistant to the mutagenic flux of the Glow, and alchemists will pay extraordinary amounts for samples of the fluids and gasses that engender such bizarre fecundity, so much so that a small settlement has accumulated on the outside of the crater.