Narrative

The party emerged from the Great Tunnel into a snowy mountain valley, with the road winding between high peaks. Two red-bearded dwarves, rugged people resembling Invar’s kin and apparently experienced diggers, had been displayed on spikes near the exit. Eliana examined them: both throats had been cut from behind, without signs of resistance. The wounds might have been self-inflicted or inflicted by someone who surprised them. They carried no belongings, tools, or identification, so the party could not tell whether they had been rebels, victims of Envy, or something else, and continued toward Hammerguard.

The cold increased as the party’s three wagons moved along the mountain road. Their lizards were uncomfortable but kept pulling. The party suspected observers in the hills, and Geldrin marked a wagon with an anti-Envy or Hammerguard-style symbol whose exact appearance is unclear. A road obstruction and a dwarf’s deliberate reflected-light signal confirmed hidden contact. Eliana scouted stealthily while Morgana sent Betty, her raven familiar, to look from above; Betty found roughly twelve or thirteen well-camouflaged dwarves in the escarpments.

After clearing the obstruction, the party found a Dwarvish warning: take care, patrols ahead. They wrote back that they had come from the Dome, intended to stop Envy, had killed her brother Pride, and wanted to aid the resistance. Betty carried the message to the signalling dwarf. The old, burgundy-bearded dwarf cautiously replied in Common that someone was looking for the party specifically, warned them to be careful, and said the hidden group would arrange a meeting. The party did not remain long enough to expose the dwarves’ position.

The temperature reached roughly minus one: still and biting rather than windy. The party adopted a convoy disguise, presenting guards, a Bellburner or other local workers, and kobolds, while Geldrin hid in the dark armoured wagon and Morgana appeared to drive the animals. They stayed on the main road because the side tracks were unsuitable or unknown for three wagons.

An apparently unattended stagecoach, drawn by two giant bears, blocked the road. A thin man with silver hair, ice-blue eyes, refined blue-and-silver foreign clothes, and unusually elven features but no elf ears emerged, seemingly unaffected by the cold. The party judged him to be one of Envy’s dangerous enforcers and pretended to have a broken wheel while investigating. Invar saw plush seats and a floor covered in silver coins inside the coach. Morgana spoke to the bears; they said their master fed them but gave no indication whether they were compelled.

The party attacked. Morgana’s Sunbeam tore open the coach, and Eliana critically shot the man in the shoulder. He transformed into a large silvery-blue dragon with chrome-like scales. The dragon kept out of close range, flew ever higher, and discharged frost-edged lightning that badly injured people in the open and frightened several members of the party. Dirk used a Wand of Magic Missiles; Eliana, Geldrin, and others made attacks or defensive efforts; and Morgana became a giant eagle to pursue him. The dragon eventually headed away rather than resume the fight. Morgana believed it was following their route or could report the party’s approach. The party scattered into cover where possible, then regrouped at the wagons.

The ruined coach held about 300 old silver coins. One face bore a crude portrait of a female elf; the other showed two mountains and a bridge, without naming a city. Invar recognised deliberately poor dwarven workmanship: dwarves forced to mint Envy’s coinage had made it competent enough to circulate while visibly insulting the elf. The coins appeared a few hundred years old, suggesting Envy’s domination or resistance to it may have endured for one or two centuries. The party freed at least one bear from its damaged yoke with a fire bolt, then left the frightened animals rather than risk a closer encounter.

Colonel Bilgewater Windle the 7th estimated that the road would reach Envy’s main entrance in about ten hours by cart and agreed to guide the party off-road in exchange for goat meat. Morgana scouted out an old single-wagon-width route hidden behind movable pallets dressed with brush and rocks. It had been repaired recently enough to use, despite its abandoned appearance; a large sack of loose dirt, gravel, or sand was concealed behind the screens. The party shifted the screens, took all three wagons up the steeper route, and restored the concealment behind them.

As they climbed, the Barrier became visible across the mountains. Snow and cold worsened and slowed the lizards. The party hunted mountain goats; one was skinned and butchered passably for goat meat and improvised hide or warming material for the lizards. Colonel Bilgewater Windle received two goat legs, his promised “two meats.” Morgana scouted ahead and located a reinforced, snow-covered mountain opening that appeared to be an old dwarven mine entrance and radiated warmth.

Four thick-coated dwarves in metal face masks emerged with heavy crossbow-like weapons. Their scarred spokeswoman, who later gave only the name Copper, said the hill watchers had reported the party and brought them into shelter. Fine knife scars deliberately marked her face except around one eye. The entrance chamber was heated, could hold dozens of carts, had fine dwarven pillars and signs for residential, mines, recreation, and eating areas, and concealed additional crossbow positions. Beyond it lay a guarded underground settlement of carved dwellings and families.

Copper explained that Envy ruled the former dwarven city, but dwarves who escaped her charm through willpower or chance had formed small mountain enclaves. Their resistance mostly aimed to survive and curb her expansion. Envy enthralled people both directly and through minions that manipulated thought and feeling. Copper listed her enforcers as dragons, loyal dwarves, shape-shifting cat people identified as lamias, demons, and Noxia-associated creatures. Resistance intelligence held that a large silvery-green dragon helped Envy seize the northern empire and then disappeared; a blue dragon had not been seen for thirty or forty years; and their silvery-blue offspring, perhaps five or six hundred years old, was the dragon the party had just fought. This lineage and age remain resistance intelligence and inference rather than confirmed identity.

Copper said Hammerguard’s old bridge to Grimcrag had broken a few hundred years ago, cutting it off from its last allies and its only route into the Barrier. An underground highway had formerly linked Hammerguard, Grimcrag, and Magstein, although current mountain routes were dangerous. The Grimcrag-Magstein bridge was reportedly intact. No one knew who destroyed the Hammerguard bridge, but Copper believed it had been deliberate and required immense power. Her people had stopped using the Great Tunnel after trade toward Belburn and Dunnen lands ended, Envy’s influence spread in that direction, and unfamiliar firewise creatures appeared, including Noxia-linked wasp and scorpion peoples.

Copper further described Envy as able to inhabit forms, influence dreams, and make herself difficult to locate. Envy had lived in her mountain enclave for about forty years but did not regularly purge it, killing people instead when they interfered directly. Copper said Envy was dangerously fixated on affronts to her image, name, and demanded worship, and had allegedly exterminated an entire family line for keeping a Stolchar statue, personally killing them while others watched. The party began considering an affront to Envy’s pride as a way to draw her out rather than assault her fortified city.

Copper gave the party secure guest rooms protected by a stone key. Rather than operating a mechanical lock, a door physically opened and closed as the mountain’s stone responded to its holder. The dwarves attributed this to speakers communing with local earth elementals. Copper arranged food and care for the lizards. Asked about the two rescued elven husks, she said Envy had a handful of dangerous elves and that there were no ordinary elves outside the Dome, only creatures that once had been elves. She summoned the head speaker for a fuller explanation.

Groushin, the settlement’s head speaker, historian, Attabre priest, and Stoneteller, arrived. He was a lean dwarf with black curly hair and beard. He said Hammerguard took its name from ruling classes whose members styled themselves “of Hammerguard,” and he told Invar that his ancestry likely reached back there. Groushin apologised to Eliana for earlier brusqueness because the stones now called her a friend. Speaking for them, he called her “Eliana of two lives”: both identities were equally valid, and she need not surrender either heritage to another’s voice.

Groushin said the stones saw the party as six people linked through ages and time, capable of major achievements but not guaranteed success. When the party said it meant to bring down the Barrier and stop the corrupt forces behind it, the stones agreed, having learned that a supposedly protective Barrier might enable mass extermination. Groushin then spoke with Tor’s voice, identifying Tor as part of the stones, or the stones as part of Tor. Tor described the stones as ancient protectors that had sheltered early mortals in caves and overhangs and still wanted to protect life. Through Groushin, Tor said he could hear an enchained soul grieving from this region, its tears filling a waterfall.

Speaking through Groushin in Tor’s voice, Tor called bridges an old union or pact between earth and air. The fallen bridge’s pain still felt fresh despite having fallen only a few hundred years ago in mortal reckoning. Tor entertained, but did not confirm, the party’s theory that Bridged’s removal from godhood and transformation into a god of destruction ended the Hammerguard-Grimcrag bridge’s divine support. Tor could not identify Envy’s shape-shifting cat people and considered them unnatural, perhaps corrupted through some connection to land.

Groushin explained that elves were among the oldest mortal peoples and close to the gods. In his account, elves outside the Barrier suffered the Great Removal and became hollow shells with gaps in their souls. Those gaps could be occupied as an enchanted object could be occupied, including by Envy, Pride, Wrath, or other dangerous entities. Their minds had become sallow, their lives unnaturally extended, and they might be dying out. Dark elves, by contrast, had retreated deep underground and escaped the Removal. They retained and cultivated pride, envy, and wrath; made pacts with darkness; and sometimes worshipped forms of Kasha. One dark-elf city lay beneath these mountains, though Groushin did not know whether dark elves supported Envy, only that some were in her city.

This testimony offered a possible context for the invisible dark elf who apparently died or disintegrated in the party’s wagon in the Great Tunnel. Groushin suggested that the dark elf’s death might have provoked an instinctive or ancestral reaction from the two husks, while whatever inhabited or accompanied the dark elf might have reduced him to dust. The actual cause remained unknown.

Groushin said Envy builds power through lamias and succubi. These demons were, in his interpretation, extensions of her primal energy, almost daughters: she could create more as she grew stronger, and their deaths could reduce her forces, although he did not think she automatically knew whenever one died. He stressed that Envy was not a god, and that a god manifesting physically was vulnerable. Prime beings, he said, were constrained by a bargain to preserve balance, acting through vessels, communications, gifts, and limited miracles instead of direct intervention.

The party considered breaking Envy’s enthrallment with a temporary barrier, but the barrier-creation devices were back in Freeport. They did have a power crystal and discussed whether Geldrin’s armour could power a short-lived effect; no decision was made. Groushin could not send them through stone, but could guide them. The stone key became a tiny ruby-eyed earth elemental calling himself Chip. Chip called Tor his great-grandfather, asked for gems, and agreed to lead the party to “evil Envy” unseen.

Chip reported that the old throne room in Envy’s city held a worn-out shield crystal, copper structures, a floor circle, and a sphinx statue. It had once been a trap associated with Kokirem, whom Chip identified as a sphinx. The stones’ account, as relayed by Chip, associated Kokirem’s capture with Browning and the old wizards: they imprisoned him, may have burned him alive, and then performed strange magic on him, leaving a smoke-like remnant identified with Merikok. Chip was not present and presented this as what the rocks were saying, so the exact sequence and responsibility remain uncertain. The party considered repairing the device to trap Envy. Chip said Envy’s palace area had jade walls and a jade throne. Groushin offered to contact people inside the city: not fighters, but potentially a small army of dwarves if Envy’s control could be broken.

Late in the day, the resistance fed the party stew in the guest rooms. Chip returned from reconnoitring with three routes into Envy’s city: the watched main entrance; the broken-bridge route, which was under repair; and an old sealed ore route. The ore route followed an old mine passage and track to a still-used warehouse or storage district on the city edge. Chip had asked earth-elemental allies to open it. The party considered wagon travel, minecarts, and using Morgana’s connection to Errol, the obsidian raven, to view a safe teleport destination.

Chip rode Errol on a test flight. At a safe pace, the flight would take about two hours, compared with roughly a day by cart from the settlement. The party’s working plan became covert entry through the old ore route, followed by using the old throne room and its former trap to draw Envy out. A statue or bust of Wrath, perhaps with jade details, might offend Envy enough to make her appear. The party had not yet entered the city or made the statue when the day ended. They took an uninterrupted long rest in the secure rooms; the following morning began Day 64.

People, Factions, and Places Mentioned

• The six linked player characters: Eliana, Dirk, Morgana, Invar Hammerguard, Geldrin, and Dotharl. Cardonal is an NPC travelling with them. Morgana’s raven familiar Betty and Errol, the obsidian raven, are companions.
• Colonel Bilgewater Windle the 7th; the two unidentified dead red-bearded dwarves; the old burgundy-bearded resistance signaler; roughly twelve or thirteen hidden resistance dwarves; Copper; Groushin; Chip; the settlement’s speakers, families, guards, and inside-city contacts; and the two rescued elven husks.
• Envy; Pride; Wrath; the unnamed silvery-blue dragon fought from the bear-drawn coach; its reported silvery-green parent; its reported absent blue-dragon parent; loyal dwarves; lamias; succubi; Noxia-associated wasp and scorpion peoples; earth elementals; Tor; Bridged; Stolchar; Attabre; Kasha; Kokirem; and dark elves.
• Hammerguard, its former city and occupied city area [relationship to the hidden settlement remains uncertain]; the hidden Hammerguard resistance settlement; Envy’s jade palace area; the old throne room; the warehouse or storage district at the city edge; the Great Tunnel; the snowy mountain valley; the mountain road; the hidden single-wagon route; the old mine entrance and sealed ore route; the broken Hammerguard-Grimcrag bridge; Grimcrag; Magstein; the Barrier; the Dome; Freeport; Belburn; Dunnen lands; the northern empire; the mountains’ dark-elf city [unnamed]; and the waterfall containing an enchained soul’s tears.

Items, Rewards, and Resources

• Three wagons, their cold-strained lizards, the dark armoured wagon, and the convoy disguise; Geldrin’s unclear anti-Envy/Hammerguard-style wagon symbol; the Dwarvish warning note and resistance reply; and the blocked-road contact signal.
• The bear-drawn stagecoach, its damaged yokes, at least one freed giant bear, and about 300 old silver coins bearing a crude female-elf portrait and two mountains over a bridge.
• Goat meat, a butchered mountain goat, improvised hide or warmth material for the lizards, and Colonel Bilgewater Windle’s two goat legs.
• Movable camouflage pallets, the hidden sack of loose dirt/gravel/sand, the screened single-wagon route, the secure stone key, Chip’s transformed elemental form, and the settlement’s earth-elemental door protection.
• The party’s Wand of Magic Missiles, Sunbeam, Eliana’s pistol, Geldrin’s armour, a power crystal, the barrier-creation devices left in Freeport, and the possible temporary-barrier proposal.
• The worn-out shield crystal, copper structures, floor circle, sphinx statue, jade walls, jade throne, old mine track, possible minecarts, and the proposed Wrath statue or bust with jade details.

Clues, Mysteries, and Open Threads

• The two dead dwarves were killed by throat wounds from behind without resistance; their identities, killer, and connection to Envy or the resistance are unknown. Someone was specifically looking for the party, and the silvery-blue dragon may be able to report their approach.
• The resistance believes Envy has controlled the former city for perhaps one or two centuries, though Copper says she has lived near the mountain enclave for about forty years. Her reported dragon family, enforcers, and links to Noxia-associated creatures remain intelligence rather than confirmed fact.
• The exact relationship among Hammerguard, Envy’s occupied city, and the unnamed hidden resistance settlement is not stable in the sources. The deliberate destruction of the Hammerguard-Grimcrag bridge, its connection to Bridged, and the intact Grimcrag-Magstein bridge remain unresolved.
• Copper’s account that Envy exterminated a family for a Stolchar statue suggests her worship and image fixation can be exploited. The party’s Wrath-statue lure, covert ore-route entry, old-throne-room trap, and possible temporary barrier are unexecuted plans.
• Groushin spoke with Tor’s voice about Tor’s connection to the stones, the enchained soul whose tears fill a waterfall, and bridges as pacts of earth and air. The broader claims about prime beings and the balance bargain remain religious or metaphysical testimony rather than settled fact.
• Groushin’s Great Removal account explains elven husks as soul-gapped vessels and dark elves as a separate underground people who escaped it, but the fate of the rescued husks, the dark elf’s disintegration, and the husks’ reaction remain unresolved. Dark-elf support for Envy is also unknown.
• The old throne-room device may once have trapped Kokirem. The stones’ account, relayed by Chip, says Browning and the old wizards imprisoned Kokirem, may have burned him alive, and transformed him through strange magic into the smoke-like Merikok remnant; Chip was not present, so the account and sequence remain uncertain. The device’s repairability, original purpose, and suitability for trapping Envy are also unknown.
• Chip can access three routes into Envy’s city. Earth-elemental allies were asked to open the sealed ore route, but its current condition, the safety of the warehouse district, and whether Errol can provide a safe teleport destination remain open.