Kelvin’s Cairn

Kelvin's Cairn is a free-standing 1,000-foot-tall mountain fronted by a river valley about as deep as the mount is high. The mountain top is always capped with snow and ice even through the short summer. The mountain is the only peak within a thousand miles, even though it appears as merely a pile of loose boulders.

History

Reghedmen legend held that Tempus defeated the frost giant Kelvin in this spot and gouged out the rocks here and piled them on top of his corpse. Many mining tunnels in the Dwarven Valley had to be collapsed when the army of Akar Kessel attacked in 1356 DR and it was atop the Cairn that Akar Kessel conjured up fiery magic with Crenshinibon, subsequently melting the ice and snow around him, which caused an avalanche. Most of the Dwarven Valley was abandoned when the location of Mithral Hall was rediscovered but some of the dwarves who'd left for the Hall returned to their homes beneath the Cairn. Over a century later, in 1484 DR, the corpse of Akar Kessel was discovered upon the Cairn's summit by an expedition from Luskan. It had been transformed into a wight and came to live in some of the deeper mines beneath the Valley. Kessell's wight helped a dwarven stonecarver named Baerick Hammerstone to distribute black ice, which corrupted those who touched it, altering their behaviour to be more evil. This resulted in a divide forming between the dwarves living in the Valley and Kessell himself raised many zombies to harry those dwarves who weren't corrupted. Eventually, Kessell was driven off by adventurers but shortly afterward, the Valley was invaded by a drow force led by Tiago Baenre.