Great Worm Cavern

The spirit mound of the Great Worm tribe of Uthgardt barbarians is inside a spacious cavern between the Ashlands, Uthgardt Wastes, and Anauroch. Thick ice hangs above the pillared entrance to Great Worm Cavern, and the interior walls of the place are covered with an icy glaze and lined with massive icicles that gleam and glitter in reflected light. The walls are too slippery to be climbed without gear or magic.
The cavern floor is a sheet of slippery ice flanked by 70-foot-high ledges of rock, atop which stand two totem poles of chiselled ice with carvings that resemble winged snakes. The walls of these ledges are riddled with caves in which the Great Worm tribe members live. Natural steam vents in the rock keep the caves warm throughout the year. Above the ledges, dug into the cavern walls, are narrow crypts where the honoured dead are placed, their frozen corpses propped up in a standing position.

Altar

Rising from the back of the cavern is a triangular promontory of ice-covered rock, 120 feet above the cavern floor at its peak. Thereupon stands an altar of frost-covered stone, carved in the shape of a coiled serpent with great wings. The altar represents Elrem, the Great Worm. Here, the tribal warriors make sacrifices to the Great Worm in honour of Uthgar. Doing so, they believe, ensures that Elrem doesn't return to devour them.
Bound inside the altar is a couatl. It can phase into and out of the altar at will. While inside the altar, the couatl is undetectable and can sense creatures within 120 feet of it.
If anyone damages the altar, the couatl emerges and tries to frighten them off, attacking only as a last resort.

Ancient Relic

At the back of the cave hangs a relic of giantkind: a crescent-shaped gong in a crude stone frame. The gong, a circular disk 13 feet in diameter, was once the shield of a frost giant champion, but it was broken in combat and is now missing a large piece. What remains of it weighs 250 pounds. The shield is made of red dragon scales bolted to a beaten copper frame. Its leather arm straps are long gone. The ropes holding up the gong can be cut with two swings of a sword.
If the gong is struck inside the cavern, its deep tone echoes throughout the cavern and causes a few large icicles to break away from the ceiling and crash down onto the icy floor. The crashing ice awakens three young remorhazes hibernating in a cyst beneath the ice. The remorhazes burst up through the ice and attack any creatures they see. The Great Worm tribesfolk are unaware of the remorhazes and have no way to control them once they burst forth.

Maps

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  Great Worm Cavern

Type

Cave

Location under

Anauroch

Inhabiting Species

• Remorhaz