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The trip to Iron Mountain was shorter than you'd expected. Within what felt like an hour, you were there... at the base of the mountain, of course.
Yet, even from here, you could <span class="mu-i">feel</span> how acrid the air was. Your nostril hairs burnt if you tried to approach any closer, your hair stood on end... at times, when paired with the August sun, your skin felt like it was melting.
A considerable distance was put between you and the accursed place. It was a horrible miracle that the miners of this town were so driven that they'd work entire days there without dying from the hostility of the area. Had the town been any lazier, most of it would probably be healthy enough today to keep the place running.
Now then... you were here to search for Neofauna. You needed to find the source of all this as best you could without dying yourself and, surely, these outskirts were a good place to start. Even giving the place a lazy glance caught many anomalies that you hadn't even made out near Shenanigan's Gulch.
Huge lumps of dirt uprooting natural bushes were common. Commoner yet were entire swathes of dead flora, burnt and blackened and crippled, rotten like they'd been left to grow in only the worst soil one could imagine. Most of the rocks you could find had scratches embedded within them, their orange and beige coloring segregated by deep gashes, with tree trunks and fallen logs faring no better. The most bizarre bit of all of this, however, had to be the regular flora nearby. The berry bushes and tree saplings with hardly a scratch in sight, the blossoming flowers... the sight was unearthly beyond compare.
Where could you even start looking?
>The lumps of dirt. Most of them seem to be next to deep, DEEP holes into the earth. You'd have to find some kind of cloth to cover your mouth with, but maybe these tunnels led to some kind of poisonous vent..?
>The haphazard scratches. They look random, but maybe they could lead you to what caused them. There's an entire line of them to your left, all in a row...
>The rotten bushes and trees. There's a clear trail of death here that runs through your right. No doubt this will take you somewhere... but if the poison is potent enough to fell a fully-grown tree, you shudder to think what it would do to you.
>The odd patches of blooming wildlife. Helping the townsfolk is important, of course, so maybe some foraging for berries could help. Or maybe the source of all this lush growth could help make Redding's fields just that little bit more efficient?
>Someplace completely different. Patrol the outskirts for any kind of creature activity and clear out what you see. There's no time to delve into specifics: this is urgent.