Hammerfast: Craft Ward

The Craft Ward of Hammerfast is a mixture of hard work and youthful exuberance, centered around the Craft Spire and the many workshops that surround it. The crafters that live and do business in Hammerfast are based here. In the same way that the Hammerfast Lore Ward serves as a center for scholars, the Craft Ward is home to many experts in weaving, smithing, and other crafts.

Individuals

• Auran Deepmine, Craft Guildhall master
• Thortha Deepmine, apothecary
• Thar the Bevilian
• Edrin Palwyn, human mercenary that watches the Guild warehouse
• Baldreg Skullbreaker, High Priest of Vergadain
• Bruni the Black
• Frelda Blackshield, Master Artisan
• Reirir Rhaknose Hammerfast Guard Chief Investigator, and best locksmith

44. The Guildhall

The Craft Guild encompasses a broad variety of professions, including weaving, metalsmithing, and gem-cutting. The Guildhall was built to foster cooperation and unity among such disparate artisans. The guild holds weekly meetings in this large hall. Auran Deepmine maintains an office in the Guildhall, and he is perhaps the most important person in town for adventurers with mercenary inclinations. He handles requests from Craft Guild members for strange materials and rare ingredients. The artisans’ requests range from the mundane to the bizarre, since many of them use rituals and magical incantations to produce wondrous goods.

45. Apprentice Square

This large pavilion consists of a wooden roof supported by four massive stone columns. The apprentices of the Craft Guild gather here to practice their trades between periods of instruction. Master artisans visit the pavilion to inspect the apprentices’ work and to find students with untapped potential.

46. Guild Warehouse

This large wooden structure holds the various reagents, ingredients, and other rare goods that the guild gathers for its members. The items fetch quite a price on the open market, so the warehouse is heavily guarded.

47. Craft Spire

The five stories of the Craft Spire are where the masters of the major arts hold court. Although these masters are usually skilled crafters, they are by no means the best. Rather, they are adept politicians who combine a knowledge of their chosen specialties with a talent for melding the often fractious artisans of the guild into a single, coherent group. Where the Guildhall (Location 44) is the social center for the town’s artisans, the Craft Spire is the guild’s political center. Each master occupies a series of small chambers where he or she meets with representatives from the other guilds and members representing other specialties within the Craft Guild. The fifth floor features a single, large chamber for debate. The Craft Guild is easily the most divided of the guilds. The artisans who make up the guild struggle among themselves to set prices, cut deals with the Trade Guild, and consult with the Lore Guild on research into new methods of production. The debate that takes place on the fifth floor of the Craft Spire might concern subjects as varied as the metalworkers’ desire to increase prices or the brewmasters’ request for more funds to research new ales.

48. Guild Dormitory

The guild dorms are home to students sent to Hammerfast to learn from master artisans. The dorms also provide housing for any artisan who needs a place to stay. An artisan can live here for one month free of charge. After that, the guild rents rooms.

49. Craft Way

This street is the center of the Craft Guild’s daily operations. Shops and workshops line this street along both sides, offering a bewildering variety of wares. If adventurers need to buy something, they can find it here. The shops are located along both sides of Craft Way and on one side of the next street east. Each building includes a workshop and living quarters for the owner and any apprentices.

50. Khrumgod: The Black Tower

The Black Spire, like the guild spires, rises five stories above the rest of Hammerfast. This spire serves as a temple to all the dwarven gods and a great sepulchre to the dwarven kings and queens of times past. The Spire itself is hollow, with rings of balconies along the inner walls, and niches on the ground floor for the dwarven gods without their indivdual temples, including Vergadain the Laughing One (the god fo luck, trickery, negotiation and wealth), Marthammor Duin (the god of wanderers), Clangeddin Silverbeard the Father of Battles (the god of war, battle and honour in warfare), Sharindlar the Lady of Mercy and Lady of Life (the goddess of healing and mercy), Haela Brightax the Luckmaiden (the demigoddes of battle and luck), Abbathor the Great Master of Greed and the Trove Lord (the god of greed), Gorm Gulthyn the Lord of Bronze Mask (the god of vigilance and defense and patron of those dwarves that protect the home), and Dumathoin the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain (the god of mining and underground exploration). While she has her own temple, as the matron goddess of all dwarves, Berronar Truesilver is also worshipped here. The tombs of the dwarven kings and queens are buried in lower levels of the Spire.