He was already short-handed guarding the newly named Quel'Danil City, so seizing the gold mine would have to wait. With no other option, the two chatted about other things until the conversation came back around to Jintha'Alor.
Yu Lin Bloodhawk said, "What I don't understand is why the trolls built this city, if you can even call it that. A giant staircase would be more accurate. Was it just for this patch of flat ground on the summit? That's ridiculous! If all they wanted was this flat ground, they could have built a road straight up here. Why bother making all those huge steps? Did they have nothing better to do?"
"Huge steps? Jintha'Alor? Wait... let me think..." Mez'dra thought carefully for a while, then said, "Come on. Let's go outside and have a look."
"What's wrong?" Yu Lin Bloodhawk asked, puzzled.
"Let's have a look," Mez'dra said, pulling Yu Lin Bloodhawk out of the stone house.
He examined their surroundings as they walked, tapping a rock here and there, then calling over some elves to dig up the paving so he could inspect the soil underneath.
Finally, he brushed the dust off his hands and stood up. "I've got it! Jintha'Alor must have been a major mining district of the Ancient Troll Empire. It was one enormous open-pit mine! Years of mining gave it the shape it has today. Those huge steps must have been deliberately left to make extracting ore easier."
Mez'dra pointed at the stone gate. "Look, the gates on levels one through four aren't in a straight line. They're staggered. That was deliberately designed to keep ore or anything else being transported from accidentally rolling all the way from the summit to the foot of the mountain. This mining district is enormous. Let's look around and