The Stormcrest Mountain Region

The Ashen Gorge

One mountain stands out among the Stormcrests. Its twin peaks rumble with fury, breathing fire and smoke into the sky to mingle with the stormclouds that surround the mountains. Lightning tears through the ashen stormclouds with unusual excitement—this is a place of supernatural power. Cartographers in Emon call this crater the Ashen Gorge, but the people of the low valleys call it the Dragon’s Throne, for they know what creature once lived atop the mountain. They remember when they too were under the dominion of Thordak the Cinder King. Today, several shattered tribes of lizardfolk and kobolds fight for dominion over this ruined vale. When the mountain was the lair of the Cinder King during his first incursion into Tal’Dorei, the lizardfolk flocked to his side, worshiping his might and cruelty. Though Thordak is slain, his influence yet lingers in this place. His lair overflows with gold and jewels, the lion’s share of his relocated and forgotten treasure hoard. Magic items from all ages of the world lie in wait within the halfdozen vaults of the Cinder King’s lair. When the king of dragons still held dominion here, he had thousands of kobolds, lizardfolk, and half-dragons at his beck and call, moving invaluable treasures into deep holds. Beyond the main cavern of Thordak’s lair, even the Cinder King himself had to take human form in order to traverse the winding tunnels his servants carved through the rock. Thordak’s old servitors now fight an endless war over his treasure. Every year, it seems a petty new “Cinder King” rises to power within the Ashen Gorge, but they are always dethroned before their minions can enter the ancient locked vaults. In order to steal Thordak’s greatest treasures, an adventurer would have to either broker a peace between the warring clans, or somehow sneak into the mountain undetected.
Warring Clans of the Gorge
The following three major tribes fight for control over the Ashen Gorge:
Scions of Flame This tribe of black-scaled lizardfolk claim to have been Thordak’s elite guard in ancient times, and are the current rulers of the gorge. They are lead by a five hundred-yearold druid named Burning Oak, and while his awesome magic keeps the other tribes at bay, his frailty makes him vulnerable to attack—and the other tribes know it.
Tinysoot:  Any kobold will tell you that their people are small, but fierce! Every ten years brings a new generation of kobolds, and while the Tinysoot tribe’s warriors are not the mightiest, their numbers have allowed them to overwhelm even the greatest of the Flame Scions’ champions. The Tinysoots’ leader, a zealous young warqueen named Yabber Tinysoot XIV, wears around her neck the key to Everflame Crevasse, Thordak’s deepest treasure vault.
Black Snow:  When Thordak’s ally, Umbrasyl, was slain atop Gatshadow, his caustic blood seeped into the corpses of a dozen goliath scouts from the Herd of Storms. The black dragons’ magic, combined with the fell power of Gatshadow itself, transformed the goliaths into a squadron of undead black dragonborn. Skeletal wings sprouted from their backs, and the Black Snow tribe flew instinctively to the Ashen Gorge, drawn to the Ruby of Oblivion, a pitchblack ruby of immense unholy power—now stored in the Obsidian Geode, a treasure vault guarded by a legion of golems and elementals. This tribe of hateful revenants is small, but each of their kind wields the strength of twenty lesser warriors.

Bronbog

Village • Population: 740
(64% Human, 18% Half-Elf, 9% Halfling, 9% Other)
If there ever was a civilization that called the Dreamseep home, Bronbog is all that remains of it. Its buildings are made from planks of water-logged bogwood, the only sign of its previous greatness being the ring of stone pillars that once supported the Temple of the Dawnfather. Even though the temple to their patron god has crumbled, the people of Bronbog keep the faith; their belief in the sun god’s afterlife is their greatest comfort against their meager lives. Yet for all the gloom that surrounds the Dreamseep Marshlands, the Bronboggi keep a sunny disposition. There’s a saying in the village that goes: “If you don’t feel the storm, you can’t know there ain’t sun.” The only reason anyone north of the Stormcrest Mountains knows of Bronbog is because of the queenscap, a rare swamp fungus that serves as a reagent in creating potent potions of superior healing. It’s been harvested almost to extinction in the more accessible K’Tawl Swamp, and Tal’Dorei’s alchemists pay good money for a shipment.

Cavern of Axiom

The Cavern of Axiom is a lost shrine to the Knowing Mistress spoken of only in riddles. Hidden by ever-shifting illusions, the entrance to this cavern opens only to those who are expected by fate. Its entrance looks different to every group that finds it, from the imperious to the humble, but it appears simply as a heavy snowdrift to those not fated to open its doors. Within its shifting facade are dangerous challenges and trials designed to test the will and mettle of those who seek the infinite knowledge of the Knowing Mistress. The chambers plunge deeper into the rock beneath the mountain as half-eroded murals and strange puzzles evaluate any wanderer who seeks an audience with the keeper of the cavern, an ageless androsphinx named Kamaljiori. The final challenges presented by the sphinx alters from subject to subject, and failure banishes the subjects from the cavern, barred from ever returning.

The Dreamseep Marshlands

East of the Stormcrest Range, within the Kirmont Valley, is the sprawling, fetid Dreamseep. The perpetual rain rolling off the Stormcrests’ enchanted slopes have transformed this once-lush forest into a fetid morass of rotting vegetation, sulfurous mud, and gnarled, weeping trees. So many cruel murders have been committed within the Dreamseep that the very land is cursed, forsaken by the gods. Negative energy pools like the water, and the dead drink deep of it. More than just the walking zombies of killers and their victims, awful amalgamations of dozens of bodies, both humanoid and bestial, are birthed within the Dreamseep’s fetid womb. Somewhere in the middle of this accursed realm is a sinkhole that plunges deep beneath the earth. At its deepest point is the the Tomb of Udah, a legendary necropolis of countless chambers, littered with traps and treasures that have claimed the lives and imaginations of untold hundreds of treasure hunters and grave robbers. Every death within Udah’s accursed walls only adds to the legions at its dread master’s command; characters who explore its tunnels face not only undead warriors in armor from a bygone millennium, but steely warriors in armor from every epoch in Tal’Dorei history. The small community of Bronbog holds the only lights of civilization within the shadows here, and those that continue to thrive against the oppressive swamp are of the heartiest stock.

The Frostweald

Along the northern base of the Stormcrest lies a forest magically locked in perpetual winter, cursed to eternal cold by the invasion of the Ice Lord Errevon during the Icelost Years. Within the forest, ponds magically freeze into perfect mirrors, reflecting the snowy sky above, and the snow-draped trees hide families of fey hiding from enemies in the Feywild. At first blush, the Frostweald seems a wonderland of crisp snow and aromatic pines and firs, yet the serene landscape belies sinister danger. Herds of basilisks roam the woods, so travelers who encounter mysterious snow-covered statuaries or copses of petrified trees are advised to flee. A massive tribe of orcs known as the Shivergut also calls the Frostweald their home, to the chagrin of its fey inhabitants. Travelers are easy sport for them, a relaxing hunt for these battle-hardened warriors. The Shiverguts throw an annual coming-of-age festival, in which the tribe drinks and brawls the night before their young warriors leave to cross the mountains on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Ruiner in the Dreamseep Marshlands. Those who brave the perils of the wilderness return as true warriors. The Frostweald is also home to a host of benevolent fey, most of them pixies or dryads, using the forest as a safe haven away from the Feywild. If pressed for answers on why they have left the Feywild, their answers are always cryptic and dissatisfactory, but always ominously suggest a “Great Shadow” has descended upon their lands, perhaps even a host of warriors from the Shadowfell? A nymph named Arethusa (use mage statistics) watches over a cluster of three mirror-like pools that form a pathway into the Feywild, each to a different Archfey’s forest. She is suspicious of all mortals, and both her trust and a favor, are required for passage. Many forgotten obelisks of the Knowing Mistress also lay buried under the ice and snow, half-lost beacons that guide travelers to the Cavern of Axiom. If any living creature knows why these ancient monoliths reside here when no other ruins of the Knowing Mistress have been discovered, they have kept the knowledge secret from the other scholars of the world. Ten years ago, the halforc Emonian archaeologist Jorlund Vohr discovered a cache of Ioun stones buried here and returned them to the Alabaster Lyceum of Emon, but his research and findings were stolen the week after he returned. Vohr has since stated he “got over it,” and is back to work on new research on Visa Isle.

Wrettis

A relic of the Age of Arcanum, Wrettis is the ruined tower of a powerful mage driven mad by the seductive whispers of beings from the beyond. What few legends survive of Wrettis’s master say he was known as Clemain Astural, the Sight Shepherd, and that he was a powerful arcanist who peered into a realm beyond the planes in search of power to end the war that ravaged his world. He found it, and thought it would serve him. He was wrong. Astural’s sanity crumbled, but his power only grew, fueled an entity he called the Sightless One. As devastation crept across southeastern Tal’Dorei, heroes of the land rode to Wrettis to end Astural’s chaotic reign, destroy his tower, and bury his corpse in the rubble. Wrettis is now a moss-coated ruin, but some chambers within and below the tower still hold secrets, as well as creations, of the mad mage.

Ruhn-Shak

Small City • Population: 6,670
(92% Dark Elf, 5% Deep Gnome, 3% Other)
If you find carved arches and steel gates in the mountain slopes, do not rest there, no matter the cold. There are no dwarf-halls among these forsaken peaks. Deep below the surface world, countless caverns and tunnels wind into regions where light finds no purchase. It is here, beneath the Stormcrest Mountains, that the largest subterranean society of dark elves maintains its tyranny. Hidden entrances riddle not just the mountain range, but the Dreamseep, and darker regions of the Verdant Expanse, allowing hunting and raiding parties quick and easy access to the surface under cover of night, slaughtering many, enslaving the rest, and taking the spoils as gifts to the Spider Queen. This twisted network of tunnels are easily collapsed and reopened through the use of “Pit Witches”, dark elf druids who master the art of rock and dirt manipulation, making it near impossible to give chase. Syngorn is ever alert and seeking a way to find and destroy this center of dark elf society on Tal’Dorei, but the sly and cunning ways of Ruhn-Shak have yet to meet a match.