This post covers the city itself and several nearby locations related to the Gray Wolf Uthgardt, who serve the Netherese.

Content Warning: “Brutal Savages” nonsense

There is a lot of Gray Wolf material in this section, and this is where the mounting inconsistencies in their portrayal start to get in the way. The stuff about them that I read so far gave me the impression of a people who were mostly minding their own business before the Netherese turned their leaders into fascist assholes. Most of the actual tribe members were not happy with the situation: a significant number of them had defected, and those who hadn’t were open to persuasion by a PC like the Pack Outcast.

This section drops most of that and goes all in on the “brutal savages who disdain civilization” cliches, painting the Gray Wolf as being bad guys even before the Netherese got to them. After being co-opted, they got even worse. Anyone who’s still a member of the tribe at this point is either on board with the cruelty or too cowardly to ever stand against it. Even their guardian spirits are disgusted with them.

I’m going to report what the book says below, but I personally would completely change it were I to run a Neverwinter campaign.

Xinlenal From the Outside In

As we saw before, Xinlenal wasn’t just a Netherese flying city, it was the first ever built. It fell here in the Wood when Netheril’s magic stopped working. Today, when viewed from the outside, it looks like an out-of-place 60-foot tall plateau jutting up from the ground in an otherwise flat area of the Wood. The structures atop it are hidden from view by the Wood’s vegetation, which grew over it in the two millennia since the city crashed. The Shadovar led by Prince Clariburnus use Xinlenal as their main base of operations in the region, and are hard at work trying to make it fly again.

The Forest of Hides

The Gray Wolf recognize this is the center of Netherese power even though they don’t know what goes on in here. So when they declared war on the Forsworn, they started hanging up the skins of their “traitorous kinfolk” in a clearing outside the plateau. This acts as both a warning to enemies and as a show of support for their new masters.

Ironically, the sheer brutality of this practice has led many rank-and-file Gray Wolf to question their leadership, and the horrible smell of dead werewolf lingering about the place acts as a cover for Forsworn spies and makes it easier for them to scout the plateau.

The act of building the Forest of Hides outraged and horrified many of the primal spirits who used to be friends of the Grey Wolf. If the Pack Outcast, Uthgardt Barbarian, or any other PC who uses primal powers dismantle the Forest of Hides, those spirits will reward them with a daily power named Wrath of the Fallen, which can be activated after an attack hits and makes the target vulnerable 5 to all damage (save ends), including that of the triggering attack. Once the target saves, they take another 10 damage.

Here you see the first instance of what I talked about in the intro paragraphs above. There’s more below.

The City and the Web of Stone

The walls of the plateau are a sheer climb, but they look natural after two millennia of weathering. Some flying monsters even made lairs there. The city at the top looks completely ruined when viewed from the plateau’s edge.

Those moving towards the center will soon spot a massive suspended “web” made of stone looming over the skyline. This acts as a gigantic crane and construction tool used in the Shadovar’s renovation efforts. It can lift whole city blocks for relocation, or remove an equivalent quantity of soil and vegetation to reveal the structures buried beneath. Workers both organic and artificial are constantly swarming all over it.

This web was built by the shadar-kai witch Korvina, who realized she could use residual energy from the city’s old protection rituals to power it. Later she would find out she was actually drawing power from the city’s broken mythallar and delaying its repairs. When her bosses found out about the oopsie, she managed to pin the blame for it on her colleague Qualthus, whose fate we’ll learn in a future post.

The Womb of Stone

Gee, these Netherese sure have a knack for naming things, don’t they?

This building is an ancient construct factory reactivated by the Shadovar. This is where they build all the thaalud constructs they’re using as a workforce. The ones they build today aren’t as powerful as the ones from ancient Netheril (using the thaalud constructor stat block from earlier in this book), but they can do their job just fine.

The Womb of Stone is run and operated by a shade named Ulrukan (stats as a human slaver with shade traits). His left arm and leg are animated prosthetic constructs, which I think is awesome. Ulrukan discovered the problem with the Web of Stone before anyone else, decided to keep it to himself until he could gain something by revealing it, and lost the chance to do so when other people found the issue and reported it immediately. Now that it’s public he’s trying to figure out how to extract some advantage from the fact that he knew it before anyone else did. I don’t think he knows it’s Korvina’s fault, or he’d already be blackmailing her.

Cathedral of Night

This is a ancient building repurposed as a temple to the goddess Shar. The exterior is still ruined and worn, but the interior is very fancy and all done up in onyx and jet. It’s also protected by enchanted hungry shadows, a very interesting hazard that can temporarily remove PCs from play and cause ongoing psychic and necrotic damage to them while they’re gone. This security protects the usual temple treasures and also a portal to the Shadowfell, which is used by the Shadovar to access their supply routes.

Orthinos Eln is the priest in charge of both the temple and the restoration project. He can be found here either meditating or communing with his boss Prince Clariburnus, who leads the faction as a whole.

Xinlenal’s Heart

The city’s mythallar is located at its very center. The tower that houses it was the first building to be completely restored, and a small army of Shadovar artificers is now busy restoring the artifact itself.

The restoration process is simple to describe but very hard to execute. It consists of mixing melted glass with large quantities of residuum, carefully pouring the resulting substance over the mythallar, and molding it so that it slowly recovers its original spherical shape. Right now it looks like a partial sphere, already over 100 feet (30 meters!) in diameter.

This is why the Netherese are scouring the region’s many ruins and dungeons for magic items and other ancient enchanted relics, and also why they’re poised to begin raiding Neverwinter. All of that loot is going to get destroyed for its residuum. The Shadovar are burning the legacies of others to rebuild their own.

The central tower is also where their main war room is located, as well as Clariburnus’ quarters and throne room. He can either be found here coordinating the faction’s overall strategy, or somewhere out in the world leading another raid for magic items. He also sometimes brings members of the Gray Wolf leadership here for briefings.

Vellosk

This is the main “settlement” of the Gray Wolf tribe, located in the Wood away from Xinlenal. The quotes are there because they are mostly nomadic, and this is just where a few more permanent structures are built - pack leader’s homes, a feast hall, and some other communal buildings. You can also find a number of tents and lean-tos scattered around the area, belonging to other tribe members who are currently staying there.

The book says the Grey Wolf have the technology to make weapons and tools as sophisticated as that of Neverwinter, but that they have no real culture to speak of beyond an obsession with behaving like D&D’s idea of a wolf pack. It could be that this is what the current leadership thinks, but the way the book phrases it kinda makes me think this is what they were like even before.

Vellosk’s central feature is a sloped pit whose bottom is coated in dry bones, and also contains a totem pole decorated with animal skulls. This is their center of worship, dedicated to Uthgar and the tribe’s guardian spirits. It’s also where ritual combats and duels happen.

One of the permanent structures here is the home of Ormshas, a dark creeper necromancer who is here officially as a Netherese ambassador and in reality as a spy placed to make sure the Grey World remain under control. She has a large group of wraiths under her control, which she uses to uncover secrets and silence dissenters.

The Gray Wolf and the PCs

A lot of the rank-and-file Grey Wolf are very unhappy with the direction the tribe is taking, but they also believe their leaders’ commands are absolute and those leaders have been completely bought the Netherese party line. Many tribe members would rather leave than try to challenge their leaders, but these days those who express a desire to leave are executed on the spot.

PCs such as the Pack Outcast or the Uthgardt Barbarian would have an easier time convincing the Grey Wolf to reject their leadership, but they would still need to challenge those leaders to ritual combat and win (or convince/help a friendly Gray Wolf to do so). Ritual combat is, of course, to the death.

Making a legitimate challenge would also require convincing a majority of the tribe that their leaders are being bamboozled by the Netherese. Just going for the leaders at once is a sure way to get the whole tribe to declare war on you no matter what they think about those leaders, so it’s not a good option for most groups.

Conyberry

Conyberry is a small village at the edge of the Wood that became quite scenic during the Spellplague when a populated slice of Abeir was isekaied there. It gained a new lake, a bunch of floating earthmotes, and a mixed population that learned to live well together after some initial friction.

Unfortunately you don’t get to see that version of it, because the Grey Wolf killed everyone long before the Netherese even got to them. According to the book they believed the people from Abeir to be hostile invaders and the people of Conyberry to be their co-conspirators.

The Gray Wolf used the now empty village as a storage area for a time. No one else went there because everyone (rightly) assumed it had been destroyed after news stopped coming, and when someone did stumble into the place they were killed.

When the Netherese recruited them they started using the village to, in the words of the book, “practice civilized behavior” so that they would blend into the communities they were ordered to infiltrate. Now when outsiders end up there by accident they’re received by a bunch of Gray Wolf in sheep’s clothing eager to test their acting skills. Only after the actors are satisfied, or when they’re found out, do the murder attempts start.

Impressions

Xinlenal itself seems like a good dungeon location. A final battle against Caliburnus in the mythallar chamber would look awesome.

But everything about the description of the Gray Wolf kinda ruins it. The text is filled with the exact set of racist tropes that draw so much criticism to D&D. I’m left with the distinct impression that the Gray Wolf are described as being bad because they’re tribal, in contrast to the “civilized” people they disdain and victimize. Yikes!

That’s definitely something I’d completely rewrite if I ever ran a campaign in this setting. It actually kinda tainted the good memories I had of this book, and made me stop writing new Let’s Read material for it for a while.