Preenfriado

West of Mt. Hlim, near the shores of Highstar Lake, is a pit half full of loose rubble. An opening cut in its rock walls leads into the Halls of the Hammer, a long-abandoned dwarf hold.

Nearby stands Hammer Hall, a log house and stables encircled by a pal-isade. Hammer Hall was built by an adventuring group who called them-selves the Men of Hammer Hall as a base to explore the dwarf hold from.

On several occasions the adventur-ers, who hailed from Waterdeep, fought off trolls, orcs, and bugbears from this fortified home—but they went north several years ago, and have not been heard from since.

Hammer Hall has reportedly been broken into several times. I found it deserted, and with stones dug up in a corner to reveal a storage niche (empty, of course). It remains, how-ever, a stout building offering shelter to travelers in this wilderness area.

Stacked, dry firewood even waits beside its main chimney!

The humanoids that roam the High Moor know its location, of course, and can be expected to attack anyone seen traveling to it.

Wood smoke will draw them, of course, but in a blizzard or blinding rainstorm, Hammer Hall may prove a refuge worth the harrying. The design of its entrance forces intrud-ers to make a sharp turn down a wooden hall, or chute, fitted with

ports for archers or spearmen to attack from. A lone swordfighter can hold the narrow entryway beyond.

Inevitably, rumors have spread of treasure buried by the adventurers in Hammer Hall and not recovered.

The dug-over state of the grounds suggests that many have come look-ing, but none have found.

Rich treasure may well lie in the dwarf hold. The Men of Hammer Hall told a bard of their adventures once, and the tale he recounts has been echoed by later adventuring groups. The dwarf hold (the Halls of the Hammer) is said to have a large central chamber wherein a hundred human corpses dangle from the ceil-ing in a forest of chains—an illusion that vanishes and reappears from time to time, for no known reason. At least five watchghosts (powerful wraithlike things)³ roam the halls beyond, guarding a glowing magical war hammer that floats by itself in a chamber guarded by helmed hor-rors⁴ and magical defenses. What powers the awesome-looking ham-mer possesses, who put it there and why, and how to win past its

defenses are all mysteries as yet unsolved. Seeking the answers has killed at least 20 daring but unlucky women and men thus far.

Adventurers wishing to join in this deadly game are advised that the pit with the opening into the dwarf hold can be found by traveling south and east from Highstar Lake, following a line of three hills whose tops are all

3Encountered in Undermountain, beneath Waterdeep, as well as elsewhere in the Realms.

4These magical constructs are fully detailed in the FORGOTTEN REALMS Campaign Setting boxed set.

bare rock. The hill closest to the lake has a spring gushing from it that joins the waters of the lake, and it is the only crag on the eastern shore of the lake with a spring that does so.

Highstar is an eerily beautiful lake of clear water that the dwarves believe has magical properties. The lake has many other names, and so often appears without a name on many maps of the area. It is the large lake in the northern reaches of the High Moor and is usually the only lake shown anywhere near that locale. Called Dauerimlakh by the dwarves and Evendim by the elves, this body of crystal water has several names among humans, and some folk travel days just to see it, risking

monster attacks.

One human legend of the lake speaks of it holding in its depths a drowned temple to an unknown or lost goddess, but the most popular tavern tale of the Coast lands says the lake holds magical treasure in its depths—a sunken Netherese airship crammed with gems and magic. The wreck is guarded by undead wizards, the tale goes, who seek to steal the bodies of the living for their own use.

They jealously and persistently stalk adventurers who take something from the ship and then escape. They walk by night and leave trails of slimy water, following their prey clear across the known Realms to get their belongings back. Supposedly, if they kill a thief, they steal his or her body for their own twisted uses.

Orzogoth

In the heart of the High Moor stands a notorious ruin—a beacon for trea-sureseekers from all over the Sword Coast, especially Amn.⁵ Tales of heaps of gems caught the imagination of greedy Amnian merchants so strongly that Orogoth found its way into the lore learned by every wide-eyed child. No guidebook to the Coast is complete without mention of this lure for adventurers—a lure that brings swift death to almost all who seek it.

Orogoth was a gigantic, sprawling villa, the luxurious home of a Netherese family of cruelty, idle wealth, and magical might. They dab-bled in strange magical experiments involving captured dragons—yes, their magic was that strong—with the aim of gaining dragon powers for themselves. Most accounts say the senior mages of the Orogoth family perfected not only means of acquiring dragon powers, but also of taking on dragon shape. The tales go on to say that they flew away in dragon form and never returned. Some tales swear they were trapped in dragon shape when their human bodies collapsed under the strain of changing, and a hasty retreat into dragon shape was all that saved their lives. Other accounts say they preferred dragon form, and still others that they were magically bound into dragon shape by treacherous young relatives.

The elders vanished, and Orogoth became the playground of the

arro-gant, spoiled, willful, cruel family members, who magically compelled dragons—perhaps their shape-changed elders, perhaps not—to wing about the Realms, seizing treasure, and bringing it back for the amusement of the young Orogoths. This treasure was usually acquired by slaying other dragons and seizing their hoards, but also by tearing open castles and plundering known treasuries within. A dragon-like hoard of heaped treasure accumulated.

Inevitably, there was strife among the proud younglings, resulting in some sort of titanic battle. Some say it was over some magically mighty plundered item, but it is clear that dragons were blasted from the sky.

Orogoths died screaming as they burned like torches, towers were toppled—and when all was done, the villa was a ruin, the Orogoths were dead or fled away, and all that remained to guard the treasure was a dracolich (an undead dragon, the result of some horrible spell).

Ever since, adventurers and the Cult of the Dragon have come to the ruins to seize the treasure—and been killed, transformed into beast shape, or sent fleeing across the Moor. Some folk say other dragons aid the draco-lich in defending the hoard, or that one or more deranged surviving Oro-goths lurk, invisible, in the ruins, wielding strange and awesome spells and magical items. Whatever the truth, Orogoth remains a deadly fasci-nation to all who have heard of it.

50rogoth’s location is shown on the map found in the entry on Xonthal’s Tower, in the chapter on the Backlands.

Secomber

This village of 900 folk rests on the northwestern bank of the confluence of the Unicorn Run, the cool, clear river that runs down from the mysterious heart of the High Forest, and the Delim-biyr, the watery road to the eastern wildernesses of the High Frontier. Sec-omber stands on three hills, atop the western fringes of a once-mighty city that was, if legends are true, the proud capital of the long-ago human realm of Athalantar, Kingdom of the Stag. Folk digging cellars in Secomber usually turn up old cobbles and stone walls. Inadver-tently freed gargoyles are a fearsome, recurring problem, but sometimes mag-ical treasures are unearthed. The fallen

city is said to have been ruled by mages.

Secomber is a peaceful, rather bor-ing village of fisherfolk, farmers, stone-cutters, and hired guides and guards for the frequent caravan traffic. The holdings of the farmers fan out north-west of the village, and the fisherfolk make a meager living spearing and drag-netting fish and freshwater crabs from small skiffs on the two rivers. The stonecutters manage a decent living quarrying slabs of pink granite from the cliffs that mark the northern edge of the High Moor.

Roughly half of all Secomberites are human. Almost as many are halflings, whose low, garden-adorned homes make the hills of the village seem more a terraced estate than a settlement. The remainder of the citizenry are a few dwarves of the Ironeater clan and a scattering of gnomes and moon elves.

Secomber has a garrison of 30

sol-diers provided by the Lords’ Alliance.

They dwell in a small palisaded fort atop one of the hills and train a hundred or so locals in swordwork and rudimen-tary tactics. Many of these swingswords hire out as caravan guards.

The garrison is led by the Lord of Sec-omber, Traskar Selarn, a ranger of some fame. The garrison patrols the farmland and vicinity diligently, capably dealing with the few orc and bugbear raids that get this far west. If it has to defend the village, pitched battles in the tree-girt, unfortified hills are likely but the defenders will be aided by an iron golem and two stone, beast-headed, winged golems provided by the mage Amelior Amanitas—and by the mage himself if he’s at home. The winged golems look rather like giant gargoyles, but can’t fly.

Lord Traskar has made sure that adventurers are welcome in Secomber, and many adventuring bands use the vil-lage as a supply base for treasurehunt-ing forays. Secomber is also known for its gardens and eccentric architecture.