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<p>The Gournal of Geographic Affairs: The Sun-Touched Mountain</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>title: "The Gournal of Geographic Affairs: The Sun-Touched Mountain"</p>
<p>updated: "2017-12-23 Sat 14:21"</p>
<p>categories: AP, WP</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Welcome Readers, to the second Special Edition of our illustrious catalog of facts and figures.</p>
<p>Last year, after our exploration of the Lowerdark's Cragmag Caverns proved such a fantastic success, we set our sights higher: to answer a [nagging] reader's question. Lola, age 8, from the Valanacian city of Florora, has been sending us letters. Over two hundred letters to be precise. Each has asked the same question,</p>
<p>"Deer GGE, what is the talest mowntun [sic] in the world?"</p>
<p>And while we don't usually reward improper spelling, her insistence, and the fact that no expert in the world seemed to know a precise answer, convinced us to settle it once and for all. Who knew that simple question one year ago would spark a fantastic journey of discovery and collaboration that may have ramifications beyond what we dreamed possible. Returning laden with treasures only one month ago, the GEE (& co.) Expedition has brought us the greatest treasure of all: an answer.</p>
<p>Dear Lola,</p>
<p>The greatest mountain in the world stands atop the far-northern range of snowy mountains known as the Sunpeaks.</p>
<p>Since the entire northern ridge is filled with enormous mountains dwarfing (or maybe even gnoming) all other mountains found elsewhere, it was rather difficult for our sages here at the Imperial Center for Geographical Excellence to locate the general area of the range in which the peak might exist, much less its correlative parallel, and the sheer size of the range combined with its namesake ever-present blinding sunlight made clairvoyance and scrying spells of little use above 50,000 ft.</p>
<p>Yes, you read that right. 50,000. That's almost three times the height of Mount Pang and twice that of the Skyknife, but in the Sunpeaks, that's barely passing for average.</p>
<p>But fear not dear readers. The Geournal for Geographical Excellence is here to quench your thirst for knowledge. For comparing the several dozen peaks which form the Upper Cluster, we had to go to extreme lengths (and heights). Simply put, we had to go there.</p>
<p>With our collaborative sponsors, The Community Climber, Aerial Affairs, Snowpeak Tea, and a grant from the Ministry of Maps, we raised 1.3 million Imperial silver swans (a little more than the monthly taxpayer cost to support an entire legion of cavalry), to finance a voyage into the unknown, staking both our reserves and our reputation on the Expedition.</p>
<p>We spared no cost, hiring only the best of the best. Trackers, weatherworkers, guards, and guides, we set out into the Plateau of the Sun to find our answer.</p>
<p>Six months we searched the pockets of mountains that exceeded our 50,000 mark, listening to local legends, sending up balloons, and using a combination of our savvy and our ability to take small arcane gateways to cross from peak to peak. And those were fruitful months, even though we had yet to locate our quarry, days spent mapping and drawing, nights spent gazing into the clearest sky anywhere in the world (and then mapping and drawing it too)!</p>
<p>We had found mountains. Tall ones. But had we found the tallest?</p>
<p>We wouldn't know for almost three more months. The answer, it seemed, was always no. We would crest a peak, only to find another rising above us on the horizon. We had to to maintain a constant litany of darksight spells to see (without going blind) and frost spells to avoid melting (while in the sun) and fire spells to avoid freezing (while in the shade).</p>
<p>We had to conjure air to breathe.</p>
<p>And it was in these inhospitable conditions that we found them. Not mountains, those would come later, but our guides and our salvation.</p>
<p>We were somewhere precisely north of the 47th parallel, when one of our forward seers called for a halt. He had found a body. We assumed the worst, and began to prepare a frost-bag for storing it to take back with us when we came down the mountain (as we'd had to do with most of our veritable zoo of animals by this point).</p>
<p>Imagine our surprise when the body rose to greet us with a smile.</p>
<p>He was a bald human man, and no more than a few years into his young adulthood, and was absolutely blind, and fairly near naked. He led us to his small mountain abode, filled with others like him. They called themselves monks, but when I asked them about their order, they had none!</p>
<p>Though I would have offered the poor unregistered fellows use of my official quill and Imperial ink (had it not been alternatively frozen and then boiled) to register with an approved order, they assured me that they had no interest in the ways of the 'folk from down below'. Upon our request (and a few oddities accepted in exchange, namely a small bowl made of True Timber and a pair of hollow diamonds) the unregistered 'monks' agreed to aid us towards our goal (though I gathered the distinct impression that they very much acquiesced primarily in order to rid themselves of us).</p>
<p>Two weeks after meeting with the 'monks' we had found it.</p>
<p>The Sun-Touched Mountain.</p>
<p>So, Lola, I'm sure you're lost interest by now, being the petulant and insistent child that you are, but deep within the Sunpeaks, beyond the ken of the civilized peoples, stands the tallest mountain in the world.</p>
<p>We didn't climb it; we didn't dare. And our humble guides requested that we saved ourselves the trouble. For we had found it. High above the world, on a ridge of mountains the locals call 'The Edge' stands the impossibly massive peak.</p>
<p>Shrouded from below by almost constant cloud-cover and the jutting cliffs of that massive ridge, we only dared observe it from afar. The expanse between the ridge and the cluster we found ourselves on was measured in miles.</p>
<p>Our best calculations put the height of the Sun-Touched Mountain at a staggering 179,400 ft. And at it's peak, a brilliant day's Sun.</p>
<p>I'll never forget the sight.</p>
<p>Thank you Lola. Now please stop writing us.</p>
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