Editing Sigil:Vulk (section)

== The Citadel Mountains ==

Vulk lies among the '''Citadel Mountains''', a hard country of basalt escarpments, volcanic glass, snowfields, immense glaciers, mineral-darkened rivers, and upland valleys where permanent settlement survives wherever soil, water, and shelter permit it. Much of the surface land is poor by southern standards, and agriculture depends upon hardy roots and grains, mountain herbs, sheep, goats, fish, preserved foods, and whatever can be coaxed from sheltered valleys during the short growing season.

The realm's wealth lies chiefly beneath and within the mountains. Iron, copper, obsidian, building stone, agate, bloodstone, and other minerals have been worked by Vulkah craftsmen for millennia, while the mountains themselves provide spaces that no surface realm could easily duplicate. Beneath the fortress-cities stretch mines, reservoirs, store chambers, burial ways, roads, workshops, defensive galleries, and emergency refuges, some recent enough that their builders are still remembered and others so old that even their original purposes are uncertain.

Not every passage is open. Some doors remain sealed by design, sometimes with inscriptions explaining the prohibition and sometimes without them. Rhone travelers have been known to find this infuriating, particularly when a Vulkah guide refuses to satisfy curiosity merely because curiosity exists. The Vulkah regard the matter differently: if their ancestors took the trouble to close a door and leave it closed for centuries, opening it for the entertainment of a visitor would be an extraordinary act of arrogance.