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Let's Read Neverwinter: Mount Hotenow
Mount Hotenow is a huge barely-dormant volcano on the southeast end of the Crags, in Neverwinter Wood. The heat it produces is the reason the region’s rivers never freeze, and therefore it’s at the root of Neverwinter’s prosperity. It was also the cause of its downfall 27 years ago, when a Thayan ritual caused it to erupt.
Even before the cataclysm Mount Hotenow was already the subject of many rumors and legends. It’s an opening to Hell; it’s an opening to the Elemental Chaos; demons live here; giants live here; dragons live here; and so on. The most recent tale is that anyone who enters one of Hotenow’s many caves is fated to die within a year, even if they make it out.
Fire Cultists
Though the original mountain in the middle world is back to its pre-cataclysm state, its reflection on the Shadowfell has been spewing a slow and steady stream of lava since the cataclysm. Some people believe that this shadow eruption could cause one in the middle world if the barriers between planes wear thin enough. Such a state of constant eruption would spell doom for Neverwinter.
Chief among these believers are the many elemental fire creatures that do indeed make Mount Hotenow their home. They’re led by the hunchbacked fire giant Gommoth, who has lived here since he was banished from his clan. The eruption 27 years ago was a major ecstatic experience to him and to every other fire creature who lived here, and since then Gommoth started a cult dedicated to making it happen again.
The ecstatic experience happened because it was Maegera’s near-awakening that caused the eruption, and her power tugged at the elementals’ primordial nature. Gommoth doesn’t know this, but the cult’s latest rising star probably does. This is Qualthus, the shadovar outcast. Remember him? He was banished from Xinlenal after being blamed for the accidental sabotage of their mythallar. True to the general disposition of his former buddies, Qualthus has decided that the best way to remedy this injustice is to cause Mount Hotenow to erupt again and bury Xinlenal in lava.
He’s confident he can do it. After all he’s an arcanist of the Netherese tradition (read: a megalomaniacal asshole). His actual chances are incredibly small, after all it took the full might of the Dread Ring to make it happen the first time. But he could get lucky, since Maegera’s bonds are weakened.
To represent Gommoth, the book suggests using an ogre mercenary stat block with added fire resistance, increased Charisma, and with attacks doing fire damage. You could also level down a standard fire giant stat block to make him fit with the campaign’s level range.
The River Of Flame
Deep underground, beneath the territory of the fire cultists, there is a river of liquid flame. This isn’t poetic language or a metaphor for magma, but a literal description. The river follows a winding subterranean path, and the important thing for player characters is that it passes by a tunnel that leads directly to Gauntlgrym.
PCs who know where to disembark could take some sort of fireproof boat or submersible through this river, and arrive at the lost city. Their main challenge here besides the hostile environment is Karrundax, the very territorial young red dragon who lairs in the area.
Seekers of the Way
One thing that happens repeatedly in this book is that a theme description in Chapter 2 will give us the impression that the PC in question is the only one doing something, and then a faction or location description further down the line will give us a whole group of NPCs with the same goal, and that’s going to be the first time we hear of these NPCs.
This might be a disconnect between different authors, or it might be a sort of soft “Player’s Guide/Campaign Setting” separation within the same book, since presumably you want PCs to choose a theme without seeing any spoilers about what they’ll encounter during the campaign. Whatever the case, we now run into the group that ties to the Heir of Delzoun, and it’s a genuine Dwarf Fortress expedition!
The Heir’s description actively lied to the player: they’re not one of the last dwarves who are still looking for the lost city. In reality there are so many that after their disparate teams and groups joined together to coordinate their efforts they had to elect a government to keep them organized. Their newly elected leader decided that Mount Hotenow was their best bet, since there were many stories connecting it to Gauntlgrym and a few confirmed Delzoun outposts on its slopes.
This extremely large expedition set out from Neverwinter before the Heir got here, and the litany of setbacks and tragedies they experienced along the way is what gives me that Fun (TM) Dwarf Fortress vibe.
First they bought a letter of safe passage from Neverember in order to pass through Many-Arrows territory unharmed, but the dwarves and orcs just couldn’t resist provoking each other until hostilities broke out.
Then they arrived at the Wood and lost yet more dwarves to eladrin arrows and miscellaneous monsters. Either Shandarar’s guardians were particularly trigger-happy or it was those old rivalries flaring up again.
Then they got to the volcano and lost a bunch more dwarves to Gommoth’s cult.
And now they’re stuck at the river of flame. Can’t forge ahead because no one packed a fireproof submersible, can’t retreat because the survivors aren’t sure they can make it back to Neverwinter alive. To say that morale is low is a massive understatement.
Morale would be even lower if the expedition’s leader, Vandra Hillborn, revealed the terrible secret she’s keeping. Many of the dwarves “lost” to the elementals actually defected to them, and now work together to bring about the volcano’s next eruption. Hillborn believes they cracked under the strain of the trip and went insane, but the truth is even worse: they were intentionally driven insane by the Gauntlgrym mind-flayers through remote telepathy. The flayers believe that a volcanic eruption is just the thing to permanently block access to Gauntlgrym and prevent any meddlers from finding it.
As we already know, the mind flayers are themselves being controlled by the aboleths, so we have a true conspiracy onion here.
Impressions
There are several ways to discover Gauntlgrym’s precise location elsewhere, but the River of Flame under Mount Hotenow appears to be the most viable path to actually go there. The fate of the dwarven expedition is a good blueprint of what an overland journey from Neverwinter to here would involve.
It’s possible to have an entire party of PCs who would be more interested in pursuing this journey than dealing with the other hooks in the setting: not just one or more Heirs of Delzoun but also perhaps one of Oghma’s Faithful who’s really into archaeology, a Dead Rat Deserter who’s after the score of the century, and even a Neverwinter Noble in a campaign where finding Gauntlgrym will give them the popular acclaim they need to take the throne. If there’s an extended detour to deal with the eladrin, then perhaps the Iliyanbruen Guardian can get into the mix too.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Xinlenal and Related Locations
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.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: The Dread Ring
In the gloomiest and darkest part of the Wood, there’s a perfectly circular clearing whose ground is ash. None of the Wood’s animals dare enter this place. This is where the Dread Ring was built. It was both a fortress and a ritual tool for a grand spell that would have turned Szass Tam into a god. Though the spell failed, the ruined fortress now serves as the main base for the Thayans in the region.
The entire area of the Ring, both indoors and outdoors, is super cursed. Check it out:
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It counts as both defiled and necrotic ground, the rules for which are found in the DMG 2. Basically, undead are boosted and HP gains from spending healing surges are halved.
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Powers with either the arcane or necrotic keywords crit on 19-20. Powers with both keywords crit on 18-20. This is one of the only instances of “critical range” boosting in the entire game, it’s an extremely rare bonus.
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Creatures take -1 to Will against powers or effects with the fear keyword.
Since this is also Lorragauth’s grave, some smaller areas in here might also count as acid-based fonts of power or elemental spouts, making them even more hazardous.
The Ring from the Outside In
Frequent clashes between Shadovar and Thayan forces have turned the outer areas of the clearing into a blood-soaked battlefield littered with corpses.
Inside the ruined outer walls is the Flesh Factory, where corpses, body parts, and sometimes living victims are stored and used as materials for Thayan necromancy and flesh-shaping projects. The place’s design lets it raise undead at a much faster pace and a much larger scale than usual, effectively mass-producing them. This is where most of the Thayan undead are made, and also the facility in charge of repairing the fortress’ walls. Instead of bothering with the logistics of procuring and shipping stone, they decided to patch the walls with slabs of undead flesh. These walls get a stat block as a trap, because they can sprout grabby hands that deal damage.
Past the Factory are the halls of the fortress, which follow no plan a living mind would consider sane since their main purpose was to act as a ritual tool.
The center is open, and it’s the current site of the Thayan excavation that’s trying to reach Lorragauth’s resting place. They’ve managed to reach his bones and partially unearthed them already, but there’s plenty of work to do before they’re free of the soil. The excavation pit is deep and hazardous, and the book has rules for navigating it and for operating the many cranes installed here during combat to either drop rocks on enemies or slam the crane arm into them.
The undead workforce here doubles as the Dread Ring’s garrison, so they get depleted to a, er, skeleton crew when the Netherese attack. They’re overseen by Praddak, an battle wight (stats in DMG 2). Also here as protection is the sacred totem of the Thunderbeast tribe, which as we saw before was a fossilized thunderbeast skeleton. It’s been animated by necromancy, with the stats of a rotclaw (an undead monster from the Draconomicon). This of course is a horrible blasphemy, particularly to the Uthgardt Barbarian PC.
Somewhere near the pit is the Dread Spire, the tallest surviving tower of the Ring. It houses the Thayan war room, the entrance to Valindra’s sanctum, and a perpetually dark room that contains a portal to the Shadowfell. It also contains the Chapel of the Dragon, where Kroskas’ cultists research how to raise Lorragauth as a dracolich.
The Shadowfell portal is what lets the Thayans bring corpses from Neverdeath Cemetery for reanimation, and to receive caravans that come from Surcross via the Shadowfell Road.
Valindra’s Sanctum houses her library and an arcane observatory that lets someone scry remote locations and perform astrological divination. It’s operated by Lurrens, one of her lieutenants, who watches it 24/7. Lurrens is a former wizard who was turned into an undead Brain in an Armored Jar (from Open Grave).
The observatory’s grinding machinery is hazardous terrain, should a fight break out here. PCs might find information on Gauntlgrym and other campaign secrets by either researching Valindra’s library or learning how to operate the observatory.
Impressions
Contrary to my earlier expectations the Dread Ring cannot rise as a floating battlestation or giant undead mech, though the possibility of them raising a dracolich is a decent substitute. The place is perfectly usable as an endgame dungeon, though it could also end up being “just” an important stop on the way to Gauntlgrym depending on the campaign’s focus.
And I have to say “Brain in an Armored Jar” is the best monster name ever.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: The Ruins of Shandarar
Historical Errata
Before I continue, I feel a correction is in order. This one’s on me, not on the book, since it was a detail from that long and detailed timeline at the start that I missed. I’m correcting it here because it will be important later.
As we already know, Shandarar was the former capital of Iliyanbruen, an elven/eladrin empire that existed in this region thousands of years ago. It coexisted with the human empire of Netheril, and witnessed its fall when the flying city of Xinlenal fell on the Neverwinter Wood.
The bit I got wrong was this: the fall of Xinlenal did not also cause the end of Iliyanbruen. The crash site was far from the city, and though the elves explored it soon after the event they decided to declare it off-limits after the first few explosions and carried on with their lives.
Iliyanbruen would last for a few centuries longer. They’d manage to repel a massive orc invasion that covered the North, but their kingdom would collapse from the effort it spent to kick those same orcs out of the human city of Illusk (located where Luskan is today). From here on out things proceed as previously detailed, with the empire’s population scattering and some of them deciding to take refuge in the Feywild.
Present-Day Shandarar
The middle world ruins of Shandarar cover a sizable area in the Wood but were mostly hidden by the passage of time and the growth of vegetation. Sometimes a farmer at the edges of the forest would find shards of pottery as they plowed a field, or some village builders would end up unearthing a ruined structure. These rumors helped the Netherese find the core of the ruins and steal a bunch of ancient relics from it, which has the eladrin in a tizzy as we already learned.
Most of the ruins are still, well, ruins. They’re overgrown and weathered enough to be hazardous. The oldest part of them, however, is being rebuilt and renovated by the eladrin, since that’s where they crossed over from the Feywild.
The biggest news here is that there are still several shielded vaults in the ruins that haven’t been found out by anyone yet. They contain extensive troves of ancient Iliyanbruen artifacts and works of art, of immense cultural value even when they aren’t magical, all protected against the ravages of time by stasis spells. The eladrin themselves don’t remember their locations, and this is the first time the book itself mentions them.
Here is also where it goes into a little more detail on the Feywild side of the crossing. That’s where the military outpost of New Shandarar is. It was also built on top of ruins, after the eladrin force kicked out the evil fey that had been living in them.
New Shandarar’s fortifications are living vegetation shaped by magic, and the portal opens into a courtyard kill zone. Aside from all the military defenses you expect, built of out living and magically reinforced wood, the fort also has plenty of facilities for long-term habitation. This includes a temple to Corellon.
The Hidden Serpent
As we saw before, Merrisara Winterwhite, the force’s commanding officer, is part of their moderate faction. She spends most of her time in the middle world overseeing the restoration of the city. Her second-in-command is an extremist, and spends all of his time in the Feywild. Addemios Three-Dawn, the secret Asmodeus worshiper, also spends all his time in the Feywild. He has a hidden shrine to his god underneath Corellon’s temple. The evil fey who were supposedly kicked out of the area have a hidden camp not too far from the fort, and they cooperate with Three-Dawn because their interests align.
A side box here explains that Asmodeus presents himself in the Feywild as a trickster god of a “better class” than the usual archetypes found there. Instead of lying and cheating for the lulz, he encourages and teaches his followers to do so in order to advance their own power and influence.
The Fey and the PCs
Another box discusses the possible attitudes of the eladrin towards PCs. As we already known even the moderates are standoffish and aggressive to outsiders by default. However, they are likely have a more diplomatic stance towards a party which includes the Iliyanbruen Guardian.
Which of the two sub-factions wins out depends largely on the actions of the PCs. The moderates win and might become valuable allies if the PCs can offer them evidence that the Shadovar are responsible for the relic thefts, or if they can prove Addemios Three-Dawn is a traitor who is manipulating them.
On the other hand, if the PCs steal from the ruins, fight the eladrin or attack Three-Dawn before proving his guilt, the Fey will adopt the extremist stance and launch a full-scale invasion of the region, likely starting a major open war with the other factions.
Impressions
How important the fey of New Shandarar are depends entirely on what the group wants for their campaign. They could be anywhere from isolated and irrelevant to a potential region-wide threat that needs to be defused as soon as possible. Even groups who aren’t interested in spending a lot of time dealing with these elves might still get an adventure or two out of a visit to their camp, perhaps as they’re traveling the Wood on the way to some other location therein.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: The Neverwinter Woods
The Neverwinter Wood dominates the northern half of our regional map and is much larger than the city that gives it its name. It’s a classic Creepy Forest, where the canopies block out all sunlight and even in the safer trails it seems like someone is always watching you from the shadows. And that’s just the baseline mood - the Wood is also currently full of ill-intentioned outsiders.
Characters in a Neverwinter campaign might need to trek through this place for any number of reasons. This section of the chapter covers some of the Wood’s most notable places, but it’s large enough that you could run a full hex-crawling campaign on it.
The book actually includes rules for a “Creepy Woods” hazardous terrain type that can be included in exploration or combat maps. Anyone on this terrain when a fight starts must roll a save before rolling Initiative - if they fail, they’re surprised during the first round. They also gain a -2 to Will while on Creepy spaces and when they fail a Perception check there they always think they heard something that’s not there.
This first post covers the “smaller” areas and “standard” geographical features of the Woods. It also contains several faction strongholds that will each get their own post.
The Crags
This is a large mountain range that splits the Wood in two, running from NE to SW. Mount Hotenow is the most notable place in the Crags, as it’s where the Neverwinter River starts and also the source of the eruption that caused the cataclysm.
There’s a lot more besides the volcano though - this is a typical D&D mountain range full of monsters, caves, and hidden valleys and is also rumored to contain paths to lost Gauntlgrym. Whether those exist or not, the range does definitely contain a lot of old Delzoun outposts.
Those outposts will give the Heir of Delzoun something to marvel at even if they don’t find a path to the lost city here. They’re also targets for Netherese plundering in their unceasing quest for magic items to burn.
Iceless Waterways
All of the Wood’s rivers are warmed by Hotenow’s heat, so they never freeze even during winter, and generally act to keep the forest warm and untouched by the seasons. They teem with non-monstrous aquatic wildlife but never gave rise to monsters - except for the River Morgur, the northernmost tributary of the Neverwinter. It’s still iceless, but also has river monsters.
Bones of Thundertree
Thundertree used to be a logging village that produced a lot of quality timber. It was completely destroyed by the eruption, and all of its surviving inhabitants fled to never return. The place is now haunted by possessed plant monsters (take plant monster stat blocks of your choice and give them undead traits). Aside from them, only the dwarf Favria, leader of the more violent faction of the Ashmadai, calls this place home. She lives in an underground wine cellar.
I was given to understand her whole Ashmadai sub-faction used this place as a base, so it looks like there was a miscommunication between different authors here. I’d probably add them here if I ran a Neverwinter campaign. Maybe say those plant monsters are possessed by devils instead of undead. How do you like evil treants with 20 fire resistance?
The Tower of Twilight
There used to be a wizard’s tower built in the middle of a lake island. It, and the bridge leading to it, only appeared at night, becoming more solid as the sun set and fading out again when it rose. During the Spellplague, the tower vanished entirely and did not return until after the cataclysm. Now, it appears sporadically with no set schedule, and no one knows what goes on in there anymore.
One suggestion from the book is that the tower fades out of time when it’s not visible in the physical world, and the people inside only experience the passage of time when it appears. This mean that the tower’s wizard and their apprentices and staff might still be there, either absorbed in their studies as if this was still 3e or struggling with what is to them a very recent bout of “original strain” Spellplague.
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