The Fortress
Fresh from a dragon encounter. The harried party returns to Bremen, where the town speaker requests an audience.
"Invisible enemies walk among us. We have seen their boot prints in the snow, and now we know what they are: duergar. These malevolent dwarves of the Underdark have infiltrated Ten-Towns in search of a rare crystal known as chardalyn. With it, they're building a mighty construct that will lay waste to Ten-Towns if nothing is done to stop it.
"Our militia captured one of the duergar and forced it to divulge the location of their mountain stronghold. Therein you will find a duergar warlord named Xardorok Sunblight. He aims to conquer Icewind Dale and destroy us all. For the good of Ten-Towns, will you penetrate the duergar fortress, slay this evil warlord, and destroy his terrible weapon?"
The speaker provides the party with a map of Icewind Dale that marks the location of the duergar fortress. It takes nearly two days to reach the fortress, including a fight with another frost druid, and an unfortunate collision into a tree.
Beyond the snowy foothills, low-lying clouds obscure the icy peaks of the gargantuan mountains that form the Spine of the World. Eventually, you get above the clouds and behold a sheer mountain wall rising more than a hundred feet before you. Carved high on the wall are rows of arrow slits with lights burning behind them and clanking sounds issuing from them. A narrow staircase hewn from the rock leads up along one side of the wall.
From high above comes a loud grinding noise as large sheets of ice break off the fortress walls and tumble down the mountainside. Suddenly, great doors of ice previously hidden under snow stand open more than three hundred feet above you, and from between them flies a huge dragon made of dark ice. Its eyes glow with a bright golden light as it lets out a terrible roar, hurls itself into the air, and glides away from the fortress, then turns and heads north toward Ten-Towns.
Stuck with the dilemma. The party debates for...well...a very long time. But ultimately decides to infiltrate the fortress. Cautiously, they move forward and eliminate any duergar in their path.
They find Xardorok's bedroom, steal his shit. They find his creepy shrine to Deep Duerra hidden in his closet.
They also find the war room.
This rectangular room has two sets of double doors, one to the north and the other to the south. A brazier of glowing-hot coals stands in each corner. In the middle of the room is a low stone table, on the top of which is drawn an illustration that looks something like a map.
Closer inspection of the drawing reveals that it's an accurate depiction of Ten-Towns and its environs. Mounted to the top of a thin iron stand on the table is a 6-inch-tall dragon figurine carved out of chardalyn—a miniature version of Xardorok's chardalyn dragon, its wings outstretched. The figurine's stand is attached by an iron rod to a groove carved into the table, allowing the figurine to move across the map from one settlement to another. If a lever on the west side of the table is pulled, the dragon figurine "flies" over Ten-Towns on its preset course.
This leads to another dilemma. They have the course of the dragon now...but can it's creator stop it's path of destruction remotely?
It's worth the risk.
Carrying on, they run into some duergar that are...well...not friendly, but they don't like Xardorok's rule, and are conspiring with Grandolpha. An elder duergar who is taking Xardorok's affection, and turning it into a weapon. He's plied her with gifts, such as a pseudo-dragon made of chardalyn. She has no interest in him, and is planning his demise.
She doesn't actively help the characters, but doesn't hinder them either.
Moving into the bowels of the fortress, the characters encounter several creatures from the underdark. Some working for Xardorok. They find duergar imprisoning an umber hulk. Which the duergar releases on the party. The take a beating, but ultimately defeat the creature before dispatching the duergar themselves.
They also find quaggoth servants subduing a myconid sovereign. They ripped it's arm off and are threatening it with bodily harm to produce more spores. Unforutnately the myconid is so traumatized that it is beyond saving.
After fighting horde after horde of duergar. The party finds themselves exploring what looks like a temple.
Inside this room, you can hear loud mechanical noises that seem to come from behind the south wall.
Standing in the middle of the room, facing the double door to the north, is a seven-foot-tall statue of a female duergar in a scale mail robe. The top of its head above the eyes has been sheared off, making a space for a stone brazier that gives off a flickering flame. Chained to the statue's pedestal is an emaciated, malformed creature with rubbery, purplish-gray flesh, a bulbous head with a metal plate bolted to it, and sinister eyes.
The creature chained to the statue's base is a mind flayer with 9 hit points and no armor. Klondorn, the duergar priest, has amputated its face-tentacles and removed the part of its brain that enables the mind flayer to use its psionic powers. Consequently, it has no innate spellcasting abilities and no effective attacks.
Klondorn himself can be found in another room. And upon being threatened, he tosses off his hat of disguise and reveals himself to be a barbed devil, sent by Asmodeus himself to help Xardorok conquer Icewind Dale.
After the barbed devil is sent back to Avernus, the party continues on to find Xardorok interrogating his captain of the gaurd. He believes that she plans to betray him. She is innocent, but Xardorok, driven mad by the chardalyn crown he wears, refuses to listen.
The fight between the party and Xardorok is...lackluster really. For a chapter 2 villain, he just really needed to be amped up. He was easily overpowered by Dain at first, they asked him how to stop the dragon. He could not stop it, it was preprogrammed and the programming can't be changed.
Ultimately he was defeated. Grandolpha allowed the players to keep their loot, but threatened death if the characters loitered in the fortress.
Frustrated at the time that was lost to exploring the fortress (This shit took like 3 in game days, and like 3 out of game months), the party turns to Icewind Dale. They start the tedious journey back, this time without their wagon. After about a day, a sled appears and a woman white white hair pulls up on a dog-sled and asks, "Need a ride?"
Completion Date
Sometime in March...I think
Sometime in March...I think
Plot type
A whole ass region changing questline
Parent Plot
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