Looking to the south of the City a vast mountain range can be seen stretching for hundreds of leagues in each direction. It is hard to get a sense of scale however and most assume that even the lowest member of the range must be several kilometers high. When the rain eases from a torrent to a trickle it is even possible to make out white snow on the peaks.

The strange thing however is that no one has ever visited them - or at least no one has returned claiming to have reached them. Many have tried but most turn back after reporting months of journeying without the mountains ever getting closer.

To the north is a wide empty plain. On it are the odd rocky outcropping and occasional chasm in the earth but it never ends. People have attempted to find out what lies beyond what they can see but with little success. They have travelled for months and found nothing but more rocks and dust. Some explorers have found notable outcroppings of rock and have called them things like 'The Parrot' or 'The Ship' that (usually) resemble their namesake. Given the number of explorer groups lost out on the plane, it is likely that there are many treasures to be found abandoned out there but whether there is anything else there not of city origin just isn't known.

To the west, where the river empties, there is a great lake so vast that only the slightest hints of shapes are visible on the other side. Unfortunately this lake is incredibly acidic for reasons unknown; perhaps the pollution from the city's poor waste management does this, or maybe the bedrock of the lake is pure mineralised HCl. However it happened, walking into the lake causes agony of an unprecedented scale as your skin is dissolved off your flesh, shortly followed by your flesh off your bones. It also has the ability to do this to any natural substance; any wooden boat will get you about five meters from the shore before dissolving under you, something that has been the undoing of many would-be explorers.

To the east, on the outskirts of the city there is a forest. Those who have dared to venture in bring back tales of twisted trees that grab you and canopies that block all light, ivy tendrils that try to entangle unwary explorers and strange monsters that attack without warning. Some explorers have brought back tales of beasts 10ft tall with tusks as long as quarterstaffs and flesh eating insects that can consume a man’s leg in 30 seconds. However there are a couple of explorers that would swear blind that it gets lighter the further you go in…