Travellers passing through Shadow Springs Gap, to or from Saint Martin on the western coast, may see a strange sight in the sky above their heads. This is no trick of the light, but rather an extremely old but very sturdy Hanging Bridge streched across from the top of the Middlemount on the west to the top of the Orcrag on the east. Originally built by the dwarves long ago, it is a mystery how this wood-and-rope span has been kept in such good condition in such an uncivilized region of the world.
Immediately beside the western anchor-posts of this bridge, at the eastern crest of Middlemount, a cave mouth has been hewn into the living rock. An obviously dwarvish tunnel angles downward inside the cliff, ending a short distance below in a small cave with a pool of water at its lowest point. On no account may you drink of this pool, or use it to wash wounds from battle! The water has been fouled by unmentionable practices of generations of orcs, and even the smell of this chamber is enough to drive most explorers back out to the bridge-head immediately. The cave offers refuge in dire need, but that need must be powerful indeed to compel most civilized folk to venture inside.
A few steps from the eastern anchor-posts of the hanging bridge, at the western crest of the Orcrag, adventurers will discover the beginning of the Stoneway, a fine, smooth shelf-road hewn along the northern edge of the mountaintop by dwarves in ancient times. Such construction is rarely attempted anywhere in these western lands today; almost no one retains the skills needed for such a project. Since the eastern pinnacles of the Orcrag are nothing but a twisted maze of narrow, razor-sharp ridges guaranteed to bring vertigo to the most experienced climber, the Stoneway only continues some hundred lengths along the mountain before plunging down into another tunnel-mouth. An orc sentry often may be encountered near this entrance to the actual Bridge Gallery, leading down from the hanging bridge into the mountain.
The Bridge Gallery slopes downward gently at first, curving around to the right (southward) as it descends, and then suddenly drops down a very steep chimney to the small intersection where it meets the Temple Gallery opening eastward to the left, and the Shadow Spring Gallery that continues straight ahead and down to the southwest, toward the Shadow Spring Cave at the bottom of the mountain.
