High on the northern face of the Nysanna Range, where the peaks give way to the polar wastes beyond, stands the ruined fortress of Last Chance. The name is grimly literal: this was the final point where skyships traveling the northern astral current could safely dock before being swept further into the storms and ice of the world's edge.
The astral currents that flow through Alaria's skies follow paths as fixed as ocean currents, and one of the major northern routes sweeps along the Nysanna Range before curving northwest toward oblivion. Skyships caught on this current without enough Aether to break free would be carried into the perpetual storms beyond the mountains, never to return. Last Chance was built as a desperate waystation—a place to refuel, repair, or simply abandon ship before the current carried you past the point of no return.
The fortress has been abandoned for centuries now. Its docking spires still jut from the mountainside, encrusted with ice, and its interior is a frozen tomb of whatever crew last sheltered there. Occasionally treasure hunters or scholars make the dangerous climb to explore it, hoping to find salvage from the skyships that didn't make it—or records of what lies beyond the edge of the world. Few return with anything useful. Fewer still return at all.
The Wydlings avoid Last Chance. They say the wind sounds wrong there—that it carries voices from places that shouldn't exist.