Warp

Warps are anomalies scattered throughout the cave networks of the Depths, where distance is distorted and either stretched or shrunk.

Passing through a warp can potentially allow for much faster travel than a long overland trip or even seafaring voyage, but it is extremely perilous. Warps tend to be unpredictable - a given warp may usually shorten travel, but at times the same warp can instead lengthen or even cause hapless travelers to disappear entirely, never to exit.

Warps are almost imperceptible, a fact that has caused some unwary adventurers to enter them by mistake. Only marked by a slight shimmer on the surfaces of caves and tunnels, warps are difficult to locate unless one already knows of their presence. The cave past a warp entrance appears normal from both sides of the entrances and exits. Many only know they have entered a warp once a strong sense of dread and impending doom sets in, a near-universally reported phenomenon.

Warps are largely static in their locations. New ones rarely appear, and old ones can be relied on to remain present - while a few are recorded as having vanished, this is quite rare. Skilled and experienced adventurers may know the location of one or even two warps, but like the Depths as a whole, the warps remain unmapped and generally poorly understood. Some dwarven peoples, however, are known to regularly travel through the Depths with the assistance of the warps, using them to venture between distant parts of the underground with relative ease.