@TheEdVerse I can't begin to tell you how much I love your work.
I'm drafting a side quest for my players & looking for a for a new mine for Mirabar (perhaps a new type of ore?) & stumbled upon Ravens Rock. Is there anything interesting you can tell me about the Uthgardt site?— James Veevers (@one_veevers) April 11, 2021
1)
Well met!
I hope these words will be useful…Out of a narrow cleft in a frowning wall of peaks not far from the seacoast, and well west of Mirabar, part way along the southern face of the Spine of the World range, plunges the… 2)
…icy-cold Black Raven River. If you win past that torrent into the higher space beyond, you’ll find the cleft forks around a high plateau, with a small, intermittent meltwater stream descending the narrower western cleft, and…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
3)
…the Black Raven River thundering down the broader cleft. The western cleft can readily be ascended (and the eastern cleft climbed with more difficulty, farther north) to reach the top of that plateau.
Where you’ll find Raven… 4)
…Rock, a hundred-foot-tall black rock that resembles a lifelike statue of a perched black raven, its beak overhanging a wolf-shaped depression in the ground.
There’s some debate among sages about how much sentient hands have…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
5)
…shaped the stone raven, and how much it’s natural (or the work of the gods), and the top of the plateau is a mixture of odd-looking nature and human (Uthgardt or perhaps even older) tampering.
The top of the plateau has four… 6)
…higher, smaller plateaus atop it. Three of them are to the sides and rear of the plateau, and are topped by standing stones (menhirs). The fourth has two steps (a smaller plateau above a larger, that rises from the main…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
7)
…plateau all of these features stand on), and the stone raven stands on this highest, smallest plateau.
The local microclimate is cold, and direct sun rarely reaches any part of this cleft in the Spine for long, so all of this… 8)
…area is customarily covered by snow, and there are frequent snowfalls, particularly in spring and fall, but very few howling storms, as the surrounding peaks break most winds, and the only prevalent breeze is along the river…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
9)
…(past and below the plateau).
In the heart of the depression in front of the stone raven stands a stone altar: a huge hump of bedrock, not a stone block. It’s engraved, around its sloping sides, with the phases of the moon, … 10)
…and its top is flat, with a very slight oval depression large enough for six adult humans to lie down in, side by side and touching, and about as deep as the thickness of a large, burly human body.
All of the Uthgardt tribes…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
11)
…have ancestral mounds, sacred to them, where they bury their most revered tribal dead, and to which they return to speak with their ancestors and to make important tribal decisions “under the regard of” their ancestors. 12)
Raven Rock is (uneasily) shared by two tribes: the Black Raven tribe and the Gray Wolf tribe. The Black Ravens guard those two smaller, higher “step” plateaus, and let no non-Black Ravens set foot on them, nor touch the stone…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
13)
…raven (even with something flung or shot, like an arrow). This very much includes the Gray Wolves, who gather around their altar but approach the brooding stone raven no closer than that. They bury their dead and battle… 14)
…trophies (notably, an enchanted red dragon femur) “in front of” (south of) the depression, between it and the southern edge of the main plateau. The Black Ravens bury their dead and battle trophies (notably, a giant rock…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
15)
…ring; hardened volcanic flow) on the three menhir-adorned plateaus.
The main plateau does have several natural caverns within it, that can be accessed from crevices in the north (the “back” of the plateau).
There are veins of… 16)
…adamantite (the ore that yields adamant, the hard but brittle metal that can be made into the tremendously tough, durable alloy of adamantine) running through the plateau, but any attempt to mine them are going to bring down…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
17)
…repeated and fierce Uthgardt attacks on the miners.
There’s also a very large and pure vein of silver farther up the Black Raven River, within sight of the plateau and revealed by its gleam through the river’s rushing waters.18)
The Black Ravens and Gray Wolves would attack anyone trying to mine it, too; so far as they’re concerned, anyone entering the cleft is too close to the place they hold sacred—and where one group of intruders come, …#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021
19)
more (in their experience) inevitably follow.
(And dwarves and duergar of old likely delved out subterranean dwellings in the surrounding mountains, to use the river headwaters as a handy water source.) #Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) April 12, 2021