Halls of the Mountain King Session 26 – Hammer Time!

Halls of the Mountain King was the second 4th Edition Open Design project from Kobold Press. I ran the adventure in 2010 as part of the same Parsantium campaign as Wrath of the River King. Here’s the write up from the 26th session.

Begin here with Session 1 – Alarm in the Dead of Night.

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Returning back down the water-rise to Heartsblood Forge, the characters unlock the door to the doorkeeper’s chamber. Inside, an ancient-looking forge hammer is locked between the stone lips of a hideous stone face on the wall, and a grotesque gold devil statue lies on the floor amongst the detritus. Krivinn and Bolval smash the gold statue, then the paladin turns his attention to the stone face. When he approaches the banshee carving sprays him with acid twice – the dragonborn smashes this too and the hammer falls to the floor. Bolval picks it up and is surprised when the hammer addresses him. The weapon is Masterstroke, once wielded by Grajava herself and now sworn to destroy the servants of Mammon.

The party check the next door along. In this room is another gold frog-devil statue but this one is a tithe eater, an infernal construct, which starts to swallow Krivinn. Khuma and Bolval rush to help their comrade and are able to drive the statue back to Hell. Freed from the construct’s jaws, Krivinn destroys the unholy symbols hanging on the walls and sets fire to the diabolic bibles.

Masterstroke is able to give the characters an idea of the layout of the Forge and the characters decide to head west and into the smelting chamber.

Here, a kyton lurks in the chains hanging above the floor – first the devil catches the party in a scalding blast from a steam pipe, then tangles up Bolval and drops a torrent of molten gold on his head! Khuma rescues the hapless dwarf as Krivinn climbs up the chains to confront the devil.

As the paladin finishes off the devil, redcloaked kobolds rush into the room and throw gears and cogs at Khuma, Khuma’s bear spirit, and Bolval. The kobolds try and steal magic items from the cleric and the shaman but the characters are able to kill the little buggers before they can run off with their ill-gotten gains. Four of them do escape though – the characters don’t fancy pursuing them into their narrow tunnels.

The party search the room – Khuma is most taken by the pair of fancy steam punk-style goggles he’s found – and then disable as many of the machines as they can. 

The vandalism continues in the next chamber where thirty Rabscuttle-like constructs stand silently, and in the storeroom beyond (but only after the characters have replenished their supplies). 

Next, the party come to the mess hall they’d heard voices in while down below in the Slag Pits. Inside the room an imp sits on top of a stone giant that is doing the washing up, while two Trollheim dwarves sit around, chewing on griffon steaks. The dwarf berserkers leap to their feet and charge Khuma and Bolval while Krivinn rushes the stone giant. Unfortunately the paladin ends up stunned by the giant’s earth shock power and Khuma falls unconscious….

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