d20 Fat Dragon Games Dragon Lore - The Red Doom Dwarves.pdf - Fat Dragon Games - R5700

Vol.

DRAGON LORE

The Red Doom Dwarves

Author

Kevin Buntin

Editor

Gary Wegley

Play Testing

Kevin Buntin, David Hellard, William Herron, Chris Lensch, Mike Romano,

Walt Smith, Chris Stephens, Kevin Stephens, Russ Temple, Tom Tullis, Gary Wegley

Open Game Content & Copyright Information

Reproduction of non-Open Game Content contained in this book by any means is prohibited without the written

permission of the publisher. This book contains Open Game Content (see pages 12-13 for licenses). All item statis-

tics and are considered Open Game Content. All other content such as stories, drawings and paintings are copyright-

ed by the artist or Fat Dragon Games (see page 13 for copyright info). The ‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo

are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version

6.0. A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.

Requires the use of the

Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook,

Third Edition, published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

FAT DRAGON GAMES

Making Fantasy Fantastic

www.fatdragongames.com

Far away in the midst of a great and dis-

tant mountain range, hidden within the lofty

peaks and quite removed from the sight of

most mortal eyes, there rests a great ver-

dant valley. This singular feature appears

as though some colossal and divine hand

had hewn one of the frozen peaks from that

same sheltering chain of mountains to form

this perfect green bowl- a sheltered high-

land paradise for its own amusement and

pleasure. Rare and beautiful in its appear-

ance, it was, however, the sight of a titanic,

drawn out, and extremely bloody war: a war

for emancipation, a war driven by centuries

of oppression and utter desperation. If the

viewer were upon the wings of a hawk or

descending from the sky upon the back of a

particularly cooperative dragon, she would

behold this green jewel set within the arms of

the snow-capped peaks and steel gray moun-

tain sides, and she would see all about the

green valley a high, jagged ring of hills and

broken ridges that make up the vast valley’s

upper edge. This ring, a circlet of irregular-

ly-shaped ivory stones in which the emerald

valley has been set by that divine jeweler’s

hand, is a stark white border- a blinding

white milieu- set against the dull slate and

shale of the mountains, causing this oddly

placed setting to stand out even further. But

as one looks closer, descending through the

clouds, the true nature of what these oddly

shaped rocks truly are slams into focus with

shock and realization like diving into an icy

mountain pool: for it can be seen that they

are not great white rocks or cliffs at all, but

the wind blown and sun bleached bones of

countless slain creatures of such variety as

seldom seen before. And, even more strik-

ing, are the immense bones of what can only

be the remains of a race of long-dead giants.

The great mounds of bones are all that re-

main of those who had enslaved, tortured,

and exploited the people who now dwell

within this land. (And, it is the slayers, of

these giants and sundry horrors, who live

here now, who ever dwelt here, and who rule

once again, now with a mighty and undis-

puted hand, the whole of this vast mountain

range- above and below.) No one or thing

can ever hope to oppose them and their rule

again.

As most stories go, it was once upon a time

that there reigned a great nation of peaceful

mountain dwarves. Theirs was a race who

once- like many of their kind- lived their lives

as miners and smiths- craftsmen- shapers

of metals and ores and gems; a simple folk

comprised of hard workers and adept artisans

who traded with the many folk who dwelled

in the lowlands. But one dark day, they were

set upon from above and below their under-

ground kingdom by hoards of a deep-dwell-

ing, black-hearted race of dwarf known as

the Duergar, along side an army of outcast,

dark elves known as the Drow. And, all these

terrible creatures were led by a mighty and

fearsome race of giants, a race whose exis-

tence has since vanished from the face of the

known world. The simple miners were all

caught unaware and unprepared and taken

and enslaved with barely one weapon drawn

and the only blood spilt was their own. First

to fall were the whole of the ancient royal

dwarvin house. The mountain dwarves were

broken. And thus began four centuries of a

living hell for these simple folk, who would

never return to what they had once been.

These giants, whose name is now lost to

history- for even their memory was destroyed

and removed from recorded knowledge by

the warring dwarf slaves- were described in

the few scant texts that still survive as some-

thing likened unto a hybrid of frost giants

and the fabled storm giants- powerful and

truly terrible to behold. These gargantuan

creatures had plotted for a time with their

deep-dwelling allies to seize the fruitful val-

ley kingdom of the dwarves and to make the

rich dwarven mines and forges their own.

Planted deeply within their cold hearts were

the seeds of greed and burning lust for the

dwarven wealth, inally blossoming into such

fervor as to make even the most covetous

dragon seem casual and disinterested. And

so, they swept down upon the dwarf clans

like a sudden mountain storm and took all

for themselves. For a time, trade continued,

unchanged, except now the dwarf merchants

were collared thralls led by heavily cloaked

Drow and Duergar slave masters. Too many

of those dwelling in the lowlands, however,

were deeply disturbed by this new develop-

ment, and they began to whisper in fear at

what had become of the friendly and robust

dwarves of the Adamantine Mountains. The

people of the lowlands began to fear that

they, too, might one day be set upon by these

dark and ill-favored slave masters. So, trade

with the outside world began to dry up and

the villages eventually were all but aban-

doned and the lowland areas became wild

and untamed. Eventually, the caravans were

forced to travel further and further abroad

and it was then that many of the dwarves

managed to escape. Word came back to the

giant overlords: their wrath was horrible to

behold. Every last overseer was tortured and

then slain, and the wrath that rained down

on the already wretched dwarves was terri-

ble. Years passed, becoming decades, low-

ing into a century when inally there was no

trade to be had that did not take over half

a year’s travel to reach. By then word had

spread about the haunted dwarven trade car-

avans and their suspicious, silent, cloaked

overseers, and none would trade with them,

or even allow them to come near their vil-

lage markets. Eventually, the giants’ greed

and impatience with the outside world led

them to hoard the dwarven treasure, keep-

ing it all for themselves, and so, for the most

part, the giants left the dwarves to the de-

vices of the black-hearted Duergar and the

twisted and perverse experiments of the

Drow. Over time, the giants grew mad, and

their bitterness towards the outside world

turned to distrust, then fear, and the great

forges of the dwarves were set to creating

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