DavesGaming

The next morning we set off for a place known as Lower Dorn’s Deep. This being a series of caves providing access to an ancient Dwarven city.

We found the caves easy enough. It seems we also found the source of the Neo Orogs that had been attacking Kuldahar. Fortunately, even a tribe of big orcs is a lesser challenge now. We cleared the brutes out pretty quickly.

Fortunately they were not numerous or clever enough to hit us while we gathered ourselves.

Ettins may look odd, but essentially they’re just another sort of giant. Big and strong, but not particularly intelligent.
Then we came to a bridge that seemed an entrance to the actual dwarven citadel.

But it wasn’t dwarves living there now!

Mainly thanks to Psyche clearing out the “ambush” part of things (while five of us dealt with the distraction!), we quickly turned the tide of the battle and shattered their assault.

Before long, we had the main floor of the fortress cleared out. To the back of one chamber was a great hole in the wall, a more natural looking cavern extended back into darkness.

This one was willing to talk. He claimed to have been a mage until fairly recently. He’d been cursed and knew he would soon loose his mind. He told us a bit about the nature of our foe. At least that there were several captains, leading different parts of an army. We would need all six of their badges to find the true villain.

Sounds like a silly game to me. Fortunately Psyche and Moya were a little more willing to play along. We found the badge of “Krilag”, who had been leading the fortress defenders we just eliminated.

The one path we still had to follow was a room for a large mechanism. A puzzle or a trap?

The solution seemed to be some unexplained glyphs in an outer chamber, could be matched to glyphs in the puzzle room. This led to a stairway down being revealed. This spiraled down, wrapping around the machinery for the room above. At the bottom we entered a darkened ceremonial forge.

Of course we agreed to put an end to this!

We battled the Lich once, he ran off to the Hall of Heroes. He did not seem very frightening as lichs go.

That should have cleared out his summonings, but not bothered him much. It seemed to hurt the lich some, so we got off to a very good start.

We’d been told he had a phylactery somewhere in this hall, so we searched and found it before he put himself back together. This brought peace back to the Dwarven dead.

Next we followed a long tunnel through the mountain, that let out on a glacier.

And yeti. A lot of fighting for a few minutes. As we cleared this off we had three points of interest. There was a chasm with a very fragile looking bridge across to a large cave. A trail and a mountain pass that looked to provide access back to Kuldahar. And a large stone-block building, dwarven construction of course. It looked to be some sort of ancient municiple building? We could see tracks and movement to the main doors, but the celler doors looked unused. So we chose to enter down low.

The said they had been slaves, and were now trapped. The cellar was warm, so the *Frost Salamanders* upstairs wouldn’t come down here. But there was nowhere they could go! They couldn’t last long trapped with no supplies.
We put them at ease, we’d already cleared off the outside. And we would go upstairs and deal with the salamanders. We suggested they hang tight until we secured the area and could get everyone out.

The upstairs was immediately odd. The dwarves had built a public aquarium in the mountains?

That worked well for us! It brought us to the leadership. I wasn’t in much of a mood to bargain with such elemental evil, so we eliminated the leadership first. Then pacified the whole building.

A lot more fighting for a few minutes!

Once all was quiet we returned to the slaves downstairs. They said there were more captives in the cave across the chasm. They were being held by Frost Giants. Okay, we’ll get the whole group back together before we head back to Kuldahar.

Psyche directed the rest of us in making repairs to the bridge. We moved quickly to act before we were noticed.

And winter wolves, snow trolls, yeti… the usual. It would seem these Frost Giants triggered the avalanche that destroyed the expedition we set out with. That had killed so many of the area’s best heroes. As best we could, we were setting things right.

We had also found an access to more dwarven ruins in the mountain. We would need to get back to that.

It was good to still have the crew together. It seemed like not so long ago we were celebrating graduation, and Psyche’s and my wedding. Now we’re at the edge of Faerun making a difference. Even in Icewind Dale that felt like a good thing.