Death Beneath Helmsport

After the defeat of the Scarlet Sails, he characters spent all of April 999 in the city of Helmsport, capital of the Western Province. There, they made new contacts, established residences, and generally enjoyed all that city life had to offer.

But the adventurer’s lifestyle never deserted them, and by May, the heroes of Helmsport were itching for action. Reports of missing civilians led to an encounter with giant ants roaming the streets—a trail that Beran Findalson quickly traced to the sewers beneath the city, which dated back to Helmsport’s construction centuries ago. Along with Aethelred the druid, Seth McCullin the conjurer/rogue, Adarrial Smythe the bard, and Alarion Northsea the paladin, the ranger descended into the dank depths in pursuit of his quarry.

The five characters soon discovered a crumbling section of sewer that opened into a large subterranean cavern. After scrambling down the rubble, the heroes realized quickly that they had bitten off more than they could chew. Over a dozen giant ants emerged from the darkness, along with several larger warrior ants. Forced into a fighting withdrawal, the characters attempted to escape the nest.

But the difficult climb slowed their retreat, and the ants attacked them in force. In a brave attempt to allow his comrades time to escape, Aethelred leaped into the fray, only to be overcome by a number of hungry ants. The rest of the party could only watch in horror as their friend’s unconscious but still-living body was dragged back into the darkness. The remaining four characters scrambled to safety, knowing that they couldn’t hope to rescue the poor druid.

Once above the surface, the heroes wasted no time in recruiting someone more familiar with adventuring underground: a dwarf barbarian named Thorgrimm. Raised in the wilds of the north, Thorgrimm had only recently arrived in Helmsport, seeking fame and fortune (well, mostly just fortune).

The next day, Thorgrimm joined Beran, Adarrial, Seth, and Alarion as they returned to the scene of their latest defeat. Now prepared for the battle, and with the savage dwarf’s ferocious combat prowess, the characters fought their way through the ants to the center of their nest, where they slew the queen and ended the threat. The ants would threaten the surface no more—though this came too late to help their departed comrade.

But this cavern held another discovery. At the back of the nest, half-concealed under filth and refuse, the characters found a grand set of stone doors. Though the worn runes were no longer fully legible, there was no question that these were dwarf-runes, and that the doors were the entrance to a dwarven stronghold of some kind. Exhausted from their battle, the characters returned to the surface to recuperate before pressing forward.

Later that week, however, Seth, Adarrial, and Alarion—this time joined by the stout fighter Jarvis Osburn and the Altian cleric Duran Fortnite—returned to the mysterious doors. Knowing that they’d need someone skilled in the exploration of ancient (and likely dangerous) dungeons, they recruited the services of a “security specialist” named Thomas Johnson (the protégé of Rowan Morgan, one of the adventurers who fought the original Scarlet Sails a generation earlier).

These six passed through the great doors and into what was unmistakably the ruins of an old dwarven stronghold. The characters encountered a variety of undead on the first level, and rescued a pair of adventurers who had recently found the area through another entrance only to become trapped by the hungry undead.

Descending to the next level, the characters were stunned by the enormous open cavern they found, dominated by a great forest of fungal growths. Beyond the forest, they passed into an area of worked caverns. But unlike the untamed areas they had previously encountered, this region was controlled by an intelligent and evil enemy that sought to defend its territory with vigor.

This area was home to a group of vicious duergar—the gray dwarves of the Underdark—who sought to rebuild the mighty forge and use it to arm themselves and others of their people. But the vile dwarves didn’t anticipate the fury of these six adventurers, who put an end to their evil plans and liberated the forge from their grasp.

With this discovery, the clues found elsewhere in the stronghold fell together. This wasn’t simply an abandoned outpost of dwarven civilization. No, this was the fabled stronghold of Khundrukar, home of the famous dwarf weaponsmith Durgeddin the Black. According to legend, Khundrukar fell to goblinoid armies even before humans settled in the area some 800 years ago. It was dwarf technology that kept the city of Helmsport from sinking into the soft earth along the Helm River—a complicated system of hydraulics and counterweights discovered by wizard-architect Helm Ragnarsson, the city’s founder.

The heroes returned to the surface with this newfound knowledge, but realized that they couldn’t share it with anyone else. Should word of Khundrukar’s discovery become public, powerful forces of all variety would soon descend upon the place to loot it of its hidden treasures. They decided to keep their discovery quiet for now, until a more appropriate option presented itself. They also knew that they weren’t yet ready to descend to the deepest layers of Khundrukar, for who knew what dark evils lurked in those long-forgotten chambers?

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