What characters perceive and are told
High in the broken shoulders of the Kalorand Range, at the end of the High Fang Road, lies a cave system known to caravan masters as the Watching Caves.
The entrance is unmarked. No tower, no gate, no warding sigil. Just a dark cleft in pale stone, often half-buried by scree or snowdrift.
Inside, the caves are dry, cold, and quiet in ways that feel deliberate.
Footsteps echo inconsistently. A whisper spoken behind you may arrive from ahead. Lantern light behaves poorly, revealing walls that seem farther away than they should be. Passages branch and rejoin without pattern, and careful chalk marks have been known to reappear somewhere else entirely.
Those who reach the inner chambers describe a squat, hooded figure seated among stone ledges and scattered objects: tablets, scroll fragments, bones etched with symbols, and items whose purpose is unclear.
Multiple eyes glow within the hood.
How many varies from moment to moment.
The figure introduces himself as Dṛṣṭi of the Far Gaze.
He speaks readily. Too readily.
He answers questions before they are fully asked. He repeats your words back to you, improved. He knows names you did not give him. He notices things you hoped no one had seen.
Visitors leave the caves with answers.
They also leave with the uneasy sense that they have been thoroughly examined.