Final Landscape Sketch: "The Crypts of Kor" (1/3 final sketches)

(Presentation of the final version of this played to this music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNO4bfAw4UU)

A cloaked, elderly man leads you on through winding tunnels, then as slight humidity brushes across your face as you finally reach the end of the cramped, rocky passageway until a sudden light fills your view as you get used to the new-found brightness. 

You have followed the figure into an enormous cavern whose size would make even a giant feel dwarfed and vulnerable. Stalagmites and stalactites pepper the ceiling and floor and a gush of wind envelopes your body as the air chills through the lonely, endless cave. As you look over and across into the mile-deep abyss, you notice various Gothic buildings dotting the vast, natural stone pillars holding the ceiling of the cavern aloft, but their appearance doesn't seem natural. Carved into them  are what seem to be huge cathedral-like temples varying in shape and ornateness, but all are surrounded by small rocky towns at their bases. Tall statues of feminine figures hold up not the ceiling, but large, silver bowls catching vast waterfalls which shower down from the world above, accompanied by beams of divine light--the only natural source of light down here in these caves.

An eerie, golden glow emits from inside the huge stain-glass windows. Something or someone obviously lives in this cavernous, stone metropolis.