Mount Niri is a sacred Japanese mountain, seen in the film Highlander: The Final Dimension.
Background[]
As seen onscreen in the third Highlander film, Mount Niri (also sometimes referred to as "the Mountain of Niri"), located in modern-day Japan, was the site of a cave complex formerly occupied by the powerful Immortal sorcerer, Nakano.
A quasi-sentient statue in the lair of the Sorceror Nakano.
The mountain proper appeared to possess some rather unique, unexplained supernatural qualities, such as the seeming amplification of Quickening-abilities, and the presence of quasi-sentient statuary capable of detecting the approach of other Immortals.
Also, the collapse of the mountain served to somehow "suppress" the Quickening-presence of three Immortals within the world, encysting their auras away for centuries until the ruins were reopened in the late 1990s, and with other Immortals not regaining awareness of these individuals until this finally occurred.
It is not clear in the movie whether the actual mountain and cave-complex were responsible for the heightening and acquisition of the powers of Illusion, (either possessed or gained by various characters in the film at various points in time), but regardless, the sorcerer, Nakano, used the mountain as his home base, and the mountain's location was not easily found by casual travelers in Japan during the sixteenth century.
Destruction and Excavation[]
Connor MacLeod trains with the Sorceror Nakano beneath Mount Niri.
Around the year A.D. 1594, Immortal, Connor MacLeod, having lost not only his wife, but also his First Teacher, arrived at Mount Niri after traveling the world, searching for answers to the secrets of Immortality. Once there, he began an apprenticeship under the sorcerer, Nakano, and received some nominal instruction in the power of Illusion.
Dr. Alex Johnson (and assistant) excavating Mount Niri, in 1994.
His apprenticeship, however, did not last long, as the evil Immortal Kane and his two henchmen (Khabul Khan and Senghi Khan) soon located the mountain. Kane confronted his former master in the caves beneath the mountain, and ultimately beheaded Nakano, the massive resultant Quickening caused a gigantic seismic event which collapsed the mountain, entombing Kane and his henchmen there for the next four hundred years. Connor MacLeod barely escaped the devastation alive.
Kane escaped Mount Niri in 1994
Four centuries passed, and in the year 1994, an archaeological project sponsored by the Japanese government, aimed at excavating the lost site of Niri, and the sorcerer Nakano, (led by Dr. Alex Johnson) succeeded in unearthing the past, but also freed Kane and his followers from their imprisonment, releasing them onto an unsuspecting world.