Connects to: 03.07, 04.06 and 26.01.
This series of rocky ridges extends north by northeast from the Mocking Hills. However, this area is much better mapped and easier to traverse, having been worked by dwarven engineers several centuries ago. However, those dwarves eventually fell victim to internecine conflicts and just as the engineers completed their roads and bridges they began to destroy them. Eventually the conflict consumed the majority of the dwarves in the area, leaving the few surviving clans depleted in numbers past the point of long-term viability. Now only a very few aged individuals yet remain, bitter at their own kind more than they are at traditional dwarven foes such as goblins. These are the descendents of the Ishin Kaimanu.
While most of the earthworks were destroyed over the course of the war, the grandest still remains, albeit as a shadow of its former self: a great trench stretching for about three miles, backed by a berm of loose scree. In most places, the trench has been largely filled by the gradual tumbling of the scree and rocks into it, but in some places its original depth of nearly 40’ is still apparent.
Worse yet, some dwarven tricks and traps yet remain here and there in the Trench: deadfalls, cleverly-concealed spike traps, missile launchers and the like. Within the Trench, supposedly, lie a number of secret entrances into dwarf-built tunnels, some of which are death traps and some of which once functioned as sally points for one side of the dwarven civil war and which might still lead to underground dwarf-halls replete with treasure, or even to small, degenerate groups of derro descended from the original dwarves that lived here, surviving by a mixture of cannibalism and occasional forays into the surrounding areas to capture other creatures for use as slaves, food and breeding stock.
Some speculate that Father Dorek, the vagrant dwarf usually found in the areas around 03.07, is a descendant of the dwarves that once dwelt here, and point to a few ruined shrines to the Drinker of Iron as the scant evidence backing this theory.
Connections:
- The Drinker’s Stein is the artifact that caused the civil war, and the Ishin Kaimanu the dwarf-clan that the derro are descended from.
- Some dwarves may have been smuggled from here into Cragsend (04.06).
- This area may be one of the five great fortresses that the dwarves began to build during the goblin wars.
Hooks:
- How far do the dwarf-tunnels stretch?
- How many derro are there?
- Is Father Dorek really connected to the dwarf ruins? If so, are the derro his kinfolk? Do the others at the monastery know about this?
- What hidden treasures might remain in the ruins?
