Book of Taltos pg 313-314 - The emperor sits apart and watches all that goes on to ... fend off the disasters that our world tries to throw at us from time to time--disasters you can hardly conceive of. I assure you, for example, that the stories of the ground shaking and fire spitting forth from it and winds that carried people off during the Interregnum are not myths, but things that would happen were it not for the Orb. The Lord of Castle Black pg 44-45 - Lord Drien was known to have favored extravagant plans of all sorts, and was better than usual in carrying them out. In this case, his idea was for a series of towers, anchored in [Nacine] to serve as a center of communication between the coast to the south, the Shallow Sea to the east, the Adrilankha River to the west, and Dzur Mountain to the north ... The Vallista, however, had barely begun their work when Dzur Mountain, some seventy or eighty miles north, had unexpectedly erupted, either because of the arcane activities of the Enchantress or in spite of them. The eruption had resulted in a remarkable flow of lava, which, in turn, resulted in the [Hightower Brook] becoming blocked to such an extent that it was no longer suitable for navigation ... [Later] Drien [died] and the Cycle had turned, bringing to preeminence a Lyorn Emperor. The first passage suggests that natural disasters are prevented by the Orb, but the second suggests that towards the end of some previous Dragon reign (prior to a Lyorn reign, so long before the Interregnum... Alexx dates it at 197,000 BI), Dzur Mountain erupted. If the Orb prevents natural disasters, why wasn't the eruption at Dzur Mountain prevented? Especially since it appears to have caused quite a bit of damage. It seems to me that either the Orb couldn't, or the Emperor/Empress chose not to stop it... Set that aside for a moment. The other odd detail about this eruption is that it seems to have occurred in a different "part" of Dzur Mountain than most other references to Dzur Mountain. For example: The Lord of Castle Black pg 47 - not fifteen miles from [Nacine] are the ruins of a castle that once floated above this district [future home of Castle Black] The Lord of Castle Black pg 182,197 - The distance from [the future home of Castle Black] to Dzur Mountain was not long--only some forty or forty-five miles Nacine to Morrolan's Encampment is about 15 miles, and Dzur Mountain is 40 or 45 miles from there, so at its furthest, Dzur Mountain should be 55 to 60 miles from Nacine, not 70 or 80 miles. Of course, Dzur Mountain *is* a (presumably large) mountain, so this discrepancy is not in and of itself a problem, but consider one more passage: The Paths of the Dead pg 335-336 - there was a remarkable sight some five hundred leagues to the south and a little west [from Deathgate Falls] ... in the western part of the duchy of Arylle [the Necromancer appears, and travels] the twenty leagues [to] Dzur Mountain ... from the north and the east, which permitted a more gentle, gradual ascent up that part of the mountain that resembled the tail of the great cat, and then along its back until, reaching its head, she came around to the west in order to climb that which can be called its face This suggests that Dzur Mountain "faces" south or southwest. So perhaps the eruption occurred at the "rear" of Dzur Mountain, 10 to 25 miles north/northeast of the "head". That's about as far as reasonable speculation goes, and this is the reasoning I'm using on the geography project. If you're willing to make the plunge into unreasonable speculation, it occurred to me that the above fits in nicely with the suggestion made on this list (I'm sorry, I don't remember who made it) that Dzur Mountain might be some kind of spacecraft. One would presume the engines would be in the rear, so perhaps the "eruption" was actually the firing of its engines? Bryan