KING KULDERMOG

“I was brought from the Underdark to serve Darkoon. But KINGS SERVE NO ONE.”

"The agreement was for release from my imprisonment inside an emerald prisonstone. The leader of another tribe, Obullachk of Bladetongue Klan, had long ago captured a magic user whom he enslaved to entrap me. This occurred was when I was king of many tribes."

"I do not yearn for battle, I yearn for the ring of an anvil and the perfect fires of the tribe’s forge. There exists still a centuries-old battle in the Underdark in which we make war on the Svirvfneblin, who destroyed our home city of Granadrush. I am descended from the ancient Skullbiters Tribe in the Spine of the World. Our race returned to the surface in what humans call Faerûn's 9th century. Our Cavern City beneath Toril was once home to ten thousand Orogs, served by nearly five thousand slaves. Oh how I long for the smell of the volcanic vents and the pools of magma beside which we create our great forges! The Grey Dwarves and the Drow value our Orog Mines."

“I was born in the caverns beneath the halls of the Dwarven king, Tuir Stonebeard, some 20 winters prior to the Year of the Costly Gift. Upon my 20th winter I witnessed a sight that I have thought about each day of my 400 year imprisonment. ..I once witnessed a human warlock who, along with an apprentice, arrived to see the Dwarven king. I witnessed this human warlock possess the bravery of Gruumsh himself! The Warlock ripped out his own bloody eye to achieve his goal. He went by the name Maskyr. I was at that moment a prisoner of Stonebeard, bound for slaughter, when I had overheard the transaction. Do you know of him?"

"You see, Maskyr’s apprentice was with him. As the two had left, having been horrified by what he had seen, the apprentice asked Maskyr repeatedly why...why...? Of course, it was meant to show bravery before King Stonebeard in order to acquire some land from him—for that is what had been discussed in the Great Dwarven Hall."

"But he turned to his apprentice, torn veins pouring blood from his eye-socket, and whispered, 'I.... I must guard the flame of Calimshan.'”

"Since my release the wizards known as Baneites have provided me what little history has transpired since. What do you know of this flame?"

"Now, indebted to the wizards for my rescue, my army marches on a small town called Thunderweep, then northward to destroy the town of Maskyr’s Eye. I do not ask much. Perhaps we can assist each other?"

"The time spent in contemplation during the hundreds of years of my imprisonment has led me to conclude that Forge’s Flame Undying is the source of the BLOODMETAL that had appeared in past centuries!"

"You ask what I intend to do next? I would break my pact with the Baneites and return to the Underdark to battle with my Svirvfneblin Foes, never to be heard from again. There is value in this forge for me, for my people, for the hope we share to reclaim our home city."


What will the party do?