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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Creamsteak" data-source="post: 3748601" data-attributes="member: 552">Adventure Background and SettingStraight out of the book. Some of it appended to keep secrets for anyone that hasn't actually seen the module.For centuries, the dry and dusty Wyrmsmoke Mountains have been home to dozens of goblinoid tribes. Travelers skirted the goblin-infested hills by a generous margin, but the Wyrmsmoke tribes posed no significant threat to the nearby human townlands and settlements other than the occational bloody raid. Yet deep within the mountains lay hidden something that would spell doom.The setting of the adventure is a thinly populated human frontier known as Elsir Vale and the surrounding wilderlands. The vale stretches almost 250 miles east to west and averages about 70 miles north to south. Several small mountain ranges and dense forests form the vale's borders.The scattered human towns and villages of the area grew up along the Dawn Way, an important east-west trade road linking the heavily settled lands that lie northwest across the Endless Plains with the exotic kingdoms and goods of the coastal lands lying to the southeast. Much of the Dawn Way was built by an ancient dwarf-kingdom that spanned the Wyrmsmoke and Giantshield Mountains more than a thouasand years ago. While the dwarves are long gone, their roads, bridges, and cisterns remain in use to this day. After the dwarf-realm passed, the presence of various monsters and raiders kept traffic along the Dawn Way light for many years; few caravans dared the long and dangerous trek. Few humans lived in Elsir Vale during those years-only scattered settlements of druidic folk who left behind little more than grassy barrows and stone circles on the hilltops.About five hundred years ago, the nearby city of Rhest came to control the vale and a large swath of land north of the Giantshields as well. Soldiers from Rhest secured the roads all the way to Dennovar and beyond, creating a safe passage for trade. More and more traders traveled the Dawn Way, and the kingdom of Rhestilor grew wealthy on the tariffs exacted from the passing merchants. Under the Kingdom's shield, the towns along the Dawn Way-Brindol, Talar, Terrelton, and the rest-grew up from tiny hamlets or lonely soldiers' posts to flourishing human settlements.The kingdom of Rhestilor eventually collapsed under civil strife, monstrous incursions, and magical blights. Almost two-hundred years ago, the city of Rhest was burned by a savage horde out of the Wyrmsmoke Mountains. Although the warriors of Rhestilor killed many of the goblins and their kind, the city was abandoned and the already weakened kingdom broken. The locks and canals surrounding Rhest fell into disrepair and the Blackfens swallowed the ruined city.In the years sincet he Kingdom's fall, the towns of Elsir Vale have come to look after themselves. Most of the local lords, such as Jarmaath of Brindol, still hold titles derived from the old kingdom of Rhestilor. While everybody knows that the kings of Rhestilor are long dead, no new realm has arisen in the vale.This adventure is being ran "out of the box" without being tied to the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, or any other published setting. Deities will be stolen from Greyhawk for most of the setting, however also expect to see some other pantheons even from different settings popping in.</blockquote>

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