The Pentacity StatesCampaign Wiki

place

Hammerguard

Invar at the Great Tunnel
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.

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.

Open Questions

  • What is the jade big thing, and how does it relate to the new bridge?
  • 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?

Images

Invar at the Great Tunnel