The caravan stops for lunch at noon. They eat quickly, for Janderhoff is close.

Oh good. Close. Why is this built where you can't breathe. Because the dwarves acclimate. Yes. And it's a good defense. Fine. But whyyyyyy.

Soon enough they're traveling again. The incline is steep and it's a long ways up. The caravan climbs and climbs until it can climb no more.

The hours seems to blur together. Sunset nears. From here, almost nine thousand feet high, they can see all the way to the edge of Lake Encarthan in the east. The lights of what might be Korvosa twinkle, reduced to a tiny dot on the Varisian coastline in the west. Not long after reaching this incredible height—

What must be Janderhoff is visible perhaps a mile ahead. A set of enormous brilliant metal doors gleam in the distance. Cylindrical stone towers are carved into the mountainside. Everything is covered in snow. Small shapes are visible, moving along the battlements.

What a reasonable place. No sun. No pointless open spaces. Carefully produced light only where it's needed. It would be delightful if not for all this up.

The caravan arrives at Janderhoff within twenty minutes of the first sighting.

The huge doors slowly grind open. A group of armored dwarves welcomes them inside. The entry hall is magnificent to behold, with detailed stonework and metalwork covering the floor and ceiling. Huge statues of dwarves line the walls.

The caravan will need to be inspected for disease and undeclared magic before proceeding further inside.

She has none of that. She walks (slooowly) into the quarantine area so they can test for diseases.

They seem to be using a variant of the same magic item the cleric of Sarenrae used back in Korvosa. A cleric runs though the caravan with detect magic. Everything seems to be in order, and the inspector dwarf waves a small flag.

The large metal doors shut behind them. A second set at the end of the entrance hall opens in front of them. They're through within a couple of minutes. On the other side lies a vast chamber with a low ceiling, perhaps only twenty feet high. Dozens and dozens of room and tunnel entrances line the walls. Most of them have signs, indicating trading posts and inns and taverns and residences. Far at the end of the hall, a long spiraling staircase descends deeper.

The caravan heads to a trading post. The merchants begin haggling with the locals. Trade goods are unloaded.

Tencednil gets her payment. They caravan will be staying here for a few days to rest and recover and pick up some replacement guards. If she wants to continue on with them, she's always welcome.

She crawls her way in, makes for a nearby inn, and asks for a space to sit and catch her breath. Inside it's definitely less bad. She's still wiped from the final stretch.

After about an hour of rest in the lobby of an inn, Tencednil starts to feel better. Movement won't be as miserably slow for her.

Definitely an improvement. (She bought a drink about ten minutes in, slowly making her way up and back, and has been working through it for the past while. It's amazing how heavy liquids are.)

With that done, she goes to find a place to stay, for at least a few nights, as well as a Bank of Abadar to retrieve her money from and possibly anyone who gets the news from Korvosa. ...and the others who were already adapted to the heights have probably handled Dorin's belongings by now, but she checks in just to make sure.

The others have handled Dorin's belongings. His body will be buried in the mountain in some traditional dwarven manner.

The Bank of Abadar has a branch location at Janderhoff. It's conveniently in the entrance chamber. She can retrieve some of her money.

Janderhoff's entrance chamber has a few inns. The one whose lobby she rested in is called the Metal Beard but there are others.

She will explore farther than the entrance chamber before selecting an inn. Possibly this is in fact the best option, but convenience often trades off with advantages of other sorts.

The staircase at the end of the entrance tunnel spirals and spirals and spirals down. The vast majority of Janderhoff is a maze of thousands of interconnected rooms and tunnels organized to dwarven sensibilities. Tencednil gets the sense that it would be very easy to get lost down here. She spots many dwarves and some humans as she explores. She can find inns and taverns with entrances jutting out of walls in other chambers. These ones are clearly catered more toward dwarves (with lower ceilings being their most obvious trait).

If any of the inns happen to cater to darkvision, she will prioritize that. Not needing lights must be convenient, and it isn't really an option if you want to serve humans.

Many of them do! Doing torches safely underground is hard. Lanterns are easier but dwarves don't need them to see either. Not all these dwarves speak Taldene but lots of the innkeepers do. The Mithral Bear seems like a nice dark place with reasonable ceilings and an innkeeper she can understand. It's a few minutes walk below the entrance chamber.

Sounds like a deal. A few minutes' walk to neither pay for lanterns nor have to deal with lanterns in the morning is exactly what she was hoping for.

With that settled, and a room paid for, she goes looking for news. What's been happening in Janderhoff? Does anyone have a better idea of what's happening in Korvosa? There's probably nobody up to date, but the newspapers from a day or two ago might get from there to here faster than caravans do, via any of the multitude of methods that could happen.

Tencednil can't find newspapers from Korvosa, but there's definitely local chatter about the city. You see, the King of Korvosa just got assassinated by Urgathoans! It's a pretty big deal. Most hope trade won't be interrupted much (and that the Urgathoan menace is ended). It's very sad that humans do things like serve Urgathoa and horrible gods of monsters.

It is, isn't it. It makes her wonder how this would have gone if disease screening was harder. Would the dwarves still have accepted a caravan from Korvosa, with news of Urgathoans recently spreading? What would be different?

Fortunately, not her problem. It sounds like Korvosan events are proceeding as expected, though if Togomor's name has come up earlier than she remembers it hasn't spread to here yet. Maybe she can learn more at a future stop. Speaking of which, what is the current price for some Teleport space traveling... well, to anywhere within one Teleport of Almas? Not that she'll put it that way, but there are only so many cities which get regular Teleports from Janderhoff, and looking through all of them doesn't require much filtering.

Looking through the various cities, Tenccednil's best option is probably a teleport from Janderhoff to Canorate. She can afford it and she'll probably have enough left over to buy a teleport to Almas after. She will want to pay for this with a banker's draft. Carrying around that much coin via teleport is not feasible unless she wants to spend a lot more money.