Uthgard Ancestors Mount

"1 Nightal. I'm not dead and Amelior is gone, probably decorating someplace where gooney Alustriel would never allow him were he not in his present condition. For the record, I just walked out of Laeral's Stronghold. My cell was unlocked and I had not been fed for days. Even so, I can't say that I was hap¬py to see the purple squid symbol on the door frame.
"3 Nightal. Book nearly done. With A. A. gone, I didn't think I could describe those barbarian mounds found up north, but I met a strange old coot in green gear at the Frosty Tankard last night. Wan ted me to find Grandad Tree for him, but I kept his mug full and he told me about mounds."

These are the holiest sites of the Uthgardt barbarians. Most tribes believe their tribal founders to be bur¬ied in their ancestor mound. Although there are many lesser burial mounds and shrines revered by smaller clans within the tribes, it is to these large mounds devoted to their most ancient and holy ancestors that the Uthgardt tribes return each fall to spend their winters near the protection of their ancestors.
The ancestor mounds are all roughly similar. Two mound rings called cairn rings surround a large central mound called the altar mound. The ancestor mounds of large tribes may also be sur-rounded by smaller, nondescript burial mounds. Usually all mounds are formed of turf-covered earth.
The spaces between the rings and the altar mound are called vales. They are as wide as a cross section of a cairn ring (about 40 to 45 feet) and are known as the inner and outer vales.
The cairn rings often echo the shape of the altar mound, but many are circu¬lar. The outer cairn ring is usually bare, and still serves as a burial ground. Four large stone menhirs are set at the four cardinal directions (N, E, S, W) on the more holy inner ring. The rest of the inner ring is spiked and thicketed with tall wooden poles. The top of each pole is grotesquely carved, depicting fierce human faces, monsters or clan totems.
The altar mound in the center of the ancestor mound is often shaped like a tribal totem beast (though this is often difficult to discern from the ground). A fifth large stone, usually low to the ground marks the altar. There is no writing here, but arcane symbols on the stone are renewed yearly.
Most Uthgardt are superstitious about their ancestor mounds. They both fear and revere them. In the cairn rings surrounding the altar mounds, they have buried their mightiest chief¬tains with treasures and luxuries for the world beyond life. They believe that the spirits of dead ancestors protect the graves from harm.
The actual location of most ancestor mounds is a secret, yet they are regu¬larly looted by grave robbers, orcs, and Uthgardt who no longer fear their ancestor's curses. Even so, many still contain carefully hidden treasure.

Game Information

Each burial mound contains a large number of log- lined crypts 6 to 10 feet below the top of the mound. Few contain real treasure (Treasure types B, M, plus the treasure type of any undead beings who guard the things they valued in life most have been looted. Tomb guardians are usually more substantial undead beings like wights, coffer corpses, mummies, or skeleton warriors (DM's choice).
All Uthgardt mounds are guarded. Most have a lone (crazed) shaman of 5th to 7th level protecting them. All are pro¬tected by champion spirits bound into service each year at Runemeet. At the DM's discretion, champion spirits may be almost any type of spectral undead: ghosts, wraiths, spectres, apparitions, etc. However, their alignment is always CN (they are barbaric guardian beings).
Finally, the eldest Uthgardt shamans work an involved ritual (similar to the clerical spell plane shift) that opens a gateway into the Astral Plane atop the altar mound. Any cleric who knows this secret ritual can open the gate. 

Individual Mounds

Beorunna’s Well

This is both an ancestor mound and a small town of about 500 Uthgardt, named for another semi-mythological Uthgardt ancestor, Beorunna, the mythical father of Uthgar.
The village is quite unremarkable, a number of huts and tents for the tribes- folk who work the small fields, raise cattle, and hunt the surrounding woods. It is unremarkable until one learns that the unfortified village has never been successfully raided. The Black Lions claim that the spirit of Beorunna keeps them from harm.
The namesake of the village is the huge pit which contains their circular ancestor mound. The pit is supposedly the ruins of a collapsed cavern in which Beorunna died while saving the world.
"It is probable that Beorunna (or Berun in the Northman tongue) was a hero of the pre-Uthgar people who merged with the followers of a rene¬gade from ancient Ruathym. Legend holds that Beorunna destroyed Zukothoth, a type IV demon in the cavern, collapsing it in on both of them. What local legend doesn't say is that a vast fortune in ancient treasure is also in the collapsed cavern. It is quite sur¬prising to me that these folk have sur¬vived here for so long. Maybe their legends about the spirit of Beorunna are true." — Amelior

Game Information

The ready militia of Beorunna's Well consists of 80 1st, 30 2d level, 20 3rd level, and five 4th level barbarians and is led by Heaf- stagg Four-finger (6th level barbarian, ST 18, DX 17), the eldest son of Alaric the Strong, the Black Lion tribal chief¬tain. The trapdoor in the water- surrounded altar leads downward through a flooded passage way to a par¬tially collapsed cavern complex, home to all kinds of slimes, jellies, molds and insectoid creatures. Ickshar, a rakshasa and his ally X'ss'a' (ZHE-see-sa), an illithid have been trapped in stasis here since the collapse of the cavern.
Beorunna, or Bey of Runlatha as he was known in ancient Ascore, was a powerful wizard/warrior who led human refugees from that city north¬ward into dwarven territory to save them from what had occupied their city. Beorunna died in the battle with Zukothoth, but his spirit is perpetually reincarnated into the bodies of small, furry forest animals, which slowly take on semi-human form (a CG, 20th level wizard/10th level warrior). Beorunna guards the folk of Black Lion Village from harm.

Flintrock

This bleak ancestor mound in the moors east of Longsaddle is situated on a gnarly knob of flinty stone. The cairn rings and altar mound are created from piles of heaped rock, barren of plant growth and are shaped like a leaping elk stag. The Elk tribe follows other gods, so the mound is almost aban¬doned, though a few tribesfolk use it at Runemeet.

Grandfather Tree

This is the other of the two abandoned ancestor mounds, a gnarled oak tree of gigantic proportions towering above the surrounding trees of the High For¬est. Its location is not marked for it is not known. The giant oak on the altar mound is the altar itself. The shamans would climb up steps carved in the gnarled bark to perform their rituals. The menhirs on the inner cairn ring are lesser oak trees. There is little evidence of the works of man here and a few rot¬ted logs are all that remain of the tribal totem poles. In summer, the foliage of the great oak shadows the entire ances¬tor mound. Those brave enough to climb the tree to its uppermost branch¬es can see almost the length and breadth of the High Forest.
Long ago, the mound's champion spirits drove the Blue Bear tribe away for unknown reasons. The tribal shaman carried away a cutting from this tree to become the now-ancient oak at the Stone Stand ancestor mound. When the arrival of Tanta Hagara and her cor¬rupting influence caused the Tree Ghosts to splinter away from the Blue Bears, both tribes set upon a single goal... find Grandfather Tree.

Game information

The Hall of Mists does exist beneath the tree. A complex of 81 giant ants (MM1) has its lair in the roots also (68 workers, 12 warriors and a queen). The evil of the Hall has warped the ants such that they now have the ability to shift out of phase like phase spiders. Several warped warrior ants will have 5 hit dice and regeneration abilities like trolls. The Hall of Mists itself is part of a small temple complex. A great stone statue of a green slaad and two stone golems resembling bipedal dinosaurs guard the bubbling pool and glowing portals which form the gate between planes here (also see Grandfather in Green in Appendix D).

Great Worm Cavern

This unusual ancestor mound is entire¬ly underground, deep within massive, multi-level caverns at the base of a mountain in The Spine of the World. It can be reached by a well-worn, well- guarded path from the surface. The largest cavern of the complex has a level floor and contains the ancestor mound. The altar mound is shaped like a spiralling winged snake, the great worm. Elrem, the great worm who is both clan totem and chief shaman to the tribe, sleeps at the center of the mound.
The cavern complex is large and unmapped. It is quite possible that oth¬er things live here, choosing not to dis¬turb Elrem and his human followers.

Game Information

Although he is not a red dragon, Elrem shares that ilk's love for treasure. Generations of Uthgardt have entrusted their funeral riches to Elrem's care, where it has remained unmolested for centuries. As a Great Wyrm (extremely old dragonish creature), Elrem has 400% of a normal red dragon's treasure (H,S,T). In addi¬tion to Elrem, the ancestor mound is guarded by the normal champion spir¬its, and the Wyrmguard, 60 3d and 10 5th level barbarians, and 10 5th level shamans.

Morgues Mound

The altar mound is shaped like a crude, long-necked, wingless dragon, the Uthgardt impression of a thunderbeast. The bones of some great beast are arranged on the mound in roughly their proper relationships, although the ribs are set upright and the neck verte¬brae and skull have been threaded onto a pole to tower above the mounds.
"I haven't seen the bones, or the mound, but the 'thunderbeast' of Morgur's Mound is probably an apato¬saurus, a beast from ancient history and not the unholy creature of the same name from the Abyss. It may also be that the 'Morgur' of the mound is Morgred Gardolfsson, a brother of Uther Gardolfsson, the Ruathym North¬man who may be the legendary Uthgar. If so, then Mogur's Mound most likely holds the loot taken by Gardolfsson's raiders from fabled Illuskan." — Amelior
Game Information: During Runemeet, the combined power of the shamans can cause the bones to come together as an apatosaurus skeleton: AC 7; MV 6"; HD 15; #AT 1; Dmg 3-18; THAC0 8; SD Edged weapons do half damage, mental spells have no effect, holy water does 2-8 points of damage.

One Stone

Shadowed by deep forest, this aban¬doned ancestor mound served the now- dead or disappeared Golden Eagle and Red Pony tribes. Instead of an altar mound at the center of the cairn rings, there is a single massive, rounded boul¬der, easily 20 feet across and 12 feet high and covered with precisely engraved tracery. Carved steps ascend the south face to the altar on top.
"The legend of One Stone tells of a god who sealed a passageway from the Nine Hells with a single rock, thrust into the ground. One can only wonder if the evil that is supposedly sealed beneath the stone was able to reach out to whisk the missing tribes away. Some say the Golden Eagle and Red Pony tribes were destroyed by intertribal rivalry. Darker tales suggest that they disappeared beneath the ground, where they yet dwell today."—Amelior

Ravenrock

This is the alleged breeding site for the gigantic ravens that the Great Raven tribe uses for their "sacred banditry." The holy ground is situated along the Black Raven River, in a canyon near the river's source in the foothills of the Spine of the World. The central altar is a large natural stone formation which bears a striking resemblance to a great black bird. The giant ravens are neither native to the North nor are they natural creatures. Using secret rituals, the tribal shamans transport normal raven eggs into another plane and return with gigantic ravens only moments later.

Game Information:

Gigantic ravens have the same game statistics as giant ravens (MMII), with the following exceptions— Hit Dice: 6+2; Damage: 3¬12; Size: L (22' wingspread Level/X.P. Value: IV/225+8/hp. Shining White
The circular cairn rings of Shining White are separated by vales of purest white, where the barbarians have cut through the shallow turf to the chalk layer below. The menhirs and altar here are made of a bright white marble.

Stone Stand

A tall oak tree surmounts the altar mound here. The oak is a cutting taken long ago from the legendary Grandfa¬ther Tree. Both cairn rings here are sur¬mounted by menhirs, spaced roughly 10 feet apart and capped by lintel pieces that link the stones together into two unbroken rings of capped columns.
The nearness of this holy area to Hellgate Keep would seem to make life difficult for the barbarians. Although this ancestor mound is holy to both the Blue Bear and Tree Ghost tribes, only the Blue Bear hold Runemeet here — undisturbed by the things in Hellgate.

Game Information:

Magic cast within the mound's inner vale (inside the inner cairn ring) is more potent. The effects of all spells are half again more potent. That is, a spell that would last six turns lasts nine. A spell that would heal 1d8 points of damage heals 1d8+1d4, and so on.

“8 Nightal. If I hadn 't found it, I wouldn 't have believed it (it wasn 't here when I left for the High Forest). A wooden wardrobe in A. A. 's sleeping chambers bore the badge of Silvery- moon and was full of... um... women's clothing. I mean, we all have secrets, but... then I snooped a bit more and there he was... in the corner of what turned out to be Alustriel's boudoir looking just like I left him, though some- on e had cleaned off the pigeon droppings."

— Erek