place

Hammerguard

Illustrative location art based on campaign notes.

Summary

Hammerguard is an ancient dwarven or “digmen” city beyond the Great Tunnel, built by people who honoured the earth and were permitted to construct through the mountains. Its great tunnel and old bridge once connected it to Grimcrag and the Barrier-side world, but that bridge was deliberately destroyed centuries ago. Hammerguard still exists beyond the party’s familiar Dome-side geography, yet Envy controls the remaining city and uses jade or green stone to build a new bridge and other unknown machinery; nearby resistance enclaves are trying to oppose her.

Description

The route to Hammerguard passes through a huge constructed mountain tunnel large enough for multiple carts, with ruined carvings, a hammer-and-shield crest, green crystal lights, and smaller mine roads. Colonel Bilgewater Windle remembered Hammerguard as a great city of arched hallways, beautiful columns, goat meat, dwarven spice, and fire water. Outside the tunnel, the land became colder, windier, and more vegetated, with snow, goats, small creatures, birds, trees, and frost.

Source: data/4-days-cleaned/day-62.md.

Invar at the Great Tunnel, beneath the Hammerguard crest and before the earth guardian.

Illustrative campaign art of Hammerguard’s vast subterranean avenue, carved stone architecture, and mushroom-filled civic gardens.

Inside Hammerguard’s acoustically engineered trade hall, Invar uses divine power to form the forbidden stone-and-jade statue intended to provoke Envy.

Colonel Bilgewater Windle the 7th clings to the cavern ceiling with the leather-wrapped glass shard taken from the trapped wagon.

A forgotten tavern carved from the mountain stone, where the party awakened its caricatured dwarf-shaped stone cook in the hidden kitchen.

Eliana, Morgana, and Colonel Bilgewater spring the party’s moonlit ambush on Envy’s Lamias inside the forgotten tavern.

Valenth Cardonal arrests a fleeing Lamia in mid-stride while Eliana, Dirk, and Invar close the distance.

Morgana, in giant red-snake form, bites an invisible ceiling-crawler into view as Invar answers with Sacred Flame.

Dotharl stands surrounded in the sealed townhouse entrance as the second fireball fades and every Lamia remains upright.

The party breaches Envy’s unfinished jade palace, arriving amid its great teleport circle, Lamia guards, and darkness elementals.

Geldrin seals the party, Valenth Cardonal, and Envy inside a clear dome, excluding the Lamias and darkness elementals.

With Geldrin’s dome down, Envy releases the psychic anguish of thousands of hollowed elves across her unfinished palace.

Geldrin’s sight races through the night sky to the chipped purple meteor as Valentinhide places her hands on his shoulders, whispers in his ear, and helps turn it toward Envy’s palace.

Cardonal encloses the whole party in a near-colourless faceted dome as the shattered purple meteor strikes Envy’s jade palace; Envy and the Lamias remain outside.

Known Details

The Great Tunnel’s ruined carving describes construction from Hammerguard to places unknown. The crest is a hammer with a shield and matches the crest on Invar Hammerguard’s mage school robe.
The Great Tunnel is a huge constructed mountain passage large enough for multiple carts, with smaller side roads leading to mines.
Colonel Bilgewater Windle remembered Hammerguard as a great city of arched hallways, beautiful columns, goat meat, dwarven spice, and fire water.
A 30-foot earth or stone guardian said Hammerguard people made the tunnel, treated and honoured earth, and were therefore allowed by earth to build there.
The guardian connected Hammerguard to an old bridge break, a Fire Sphere or Dome rising, and party ancestry trapped on the other side.
The guardian referenced “the lightning palace,” “the fire circle,” “the void sphere,” and brothers of the Pact of Air, connecting Hammerguard’s geography to elemental prisons or elemental siblings.
Some Hammerguard dwarves remain, but Envy, named or described by the guardian as “Elf. Spirit.”, is in control and is not nice to earth.
Many green rocks or jade are being used to build a big thing and a new bridge “like ice,” made of tree and stone. The bridge can break or boom and may be used to attack other digmen.
Day 63 reaches the snowy mountain approaches and confirms concealed resistance enclaves nearby. Copper describes Envy as ruling the former city, but the exact relationship among Hammerguard, Envy’s occupied city, and the hidden settlement is source-sensitive.
Copper says Hammerguard’s old bridge to Grimcrag was deliberately destroyed a few hundred years ago, severing its last allies and only route into the Barrier. She has heard the Grimcrag-Magstein bridge remains intact.
The party is considering covert entry through an old sealed ore route to a city-edge warehouse district and using an old throne-room device as a possible Envy trap.
Day 64 confirms that the party entered the occupied city. An acoustically sealed trade hall, the abandoned Laughing Drunkard, and Envy’s unfinished jade palace became major sites of the operation.
The redirected Tri-moon meteor collapsed the city centre, including Envy’s palace area. The outskirts and resistance settlement survived. Envy’s enthrallment apparently ended, and the resistance immediately began mobilising to reclaim the city.

Open Questions

How extensive are the meteor strike’s casualties and structural damage, and can the resistance safely reclaim the city?
Which dragon is involved, and what does “Grove Crook” mean?
How exactly did the old bridge break and Fire Sphere/Dome divide Hammerguard from Dome-side descendants?
Is the old throne-room apparatus repairable, and could it contain Envy?