Connects to: 02.03, 03.04, 03.08, 04.06.
Overview
Though scarcely 80 feet wide, this deep rift runs through the Draugmere Peaks for miles, unearthly sighs emanating from its bottomless depths. Dwarven lore holds that any words which remain unspoken at a person’s death will find breath in the Rift of the Great Lament. While most scoff at this superstition, mountaineers report uncanny sounds issuing forth from the Rift just before a storm, and several report the name “Scorshia” spoken on the winds (02.03). These very same mountaineers - among them Maris (03.08) and Rhyond (04.06) - scoff at the notion of using the Rift to reach all the way down to the Sunless Sea; the blowholes which riddle the Rift make any such expedition lethal. None have rappelled into the Rift and lived.
Dwarven monastics (03.04) believe that the voices of their ancestors struggle to come thru the Rift in times of crisis, and thus it is not unheard of for lone dwarven mystics to meditate near the edge of the Rift. The oldest among them may relate the story of how the Rift was once home to an ancient dragon whose wing-shadow spanned hundreds of feet, but that the Drinker of Iron, Forge-Father-Mother of the dwarves, drove the dragon from the mountains. The only other clues about the nature of the Rift come from the grinning skulls of the Ice Mummies (03.02). On rare nights when a foul mist hangs over the Draugmere Peaks like dragon’s breath, the skulls glow as if lit from within by silvery light. A keen-eyed traveler notes strange runes etched in the skulls, only visible when this silver “ghost light” illuminates the skulls. While no living scholar knows this dead language, the runes appear to be pictograms depicting a great dragon emerging from the Rift to massacre a mountain community.
Hooks
- Are the Dwarven superstitions about the Rift true?
- Why does the name “Scorshia” carry on the winds of the Rift?
- If there indeed was a dragon driven off by the Drinker of Iron when the world as young, what became of its hoard?
- Could this dragon be the one revered by the dragon cult in Cragsend (04.06) and referred to in several other hexes? Where is it now?
