Battlemap
Keltar Hold
The first thing you notice is the warm breath rising through the floor, carrying the smell of blood and wet stone.
Beneath a ruined hill lies a sprawling lair built around the feeding den of a creature that was once worshiped as a guardian. Its outer halls preserve barracks, cells, libraries, and shrines, while the deeper chambers have been reshaped into a living nest of stone, bone, and warm seepwater.
The air grows warmer and wetter below, thick with musk, lamp oil, and the copper scent of old blood. Light comes from blue fungus, guttering braziers, and pale veins beneath the stone. Somewhere far below, something large breathes, and every few minutes the walls answer with a slow, hollow thump.
☠ Threat
At the heart of the dungeon sleeps Grawk, called the Unfed Crown by its surviving cult. It is an immense, many-limbed predator whose psychic hunger leaks through stone, causing nightmares, compulsive obedience, and violent mutations. Its servants are preparing a mass feeding, believing that enough blood will let Grawk shed its underground body and emerge beneath the nearest town.
History
The complex was raised by the Drommen Wardens, immigrants from a dry northern coast who used imported basalt and named their first watch-post Keltar Hold, a boast that meant “the last wall.” They built it to imprison a wounded subterranean predator beneath the hill. Centuries of isolation turned duty into worship, and the wardens expanded the prison into a temple, archive, and breeding ground for the thing below.
Encounter Table
CRA pack of pale, long-legged scavengers with humanlike eyes and mouths full of soft black teeth.
A crawling mass of masks, claws, and stitched hides that moves through cracks too narrow for a humanoid.
A blind cult patrol carrying hooked lanterns and chains marked with the three-notch sign.
A section of Grawk's shed outer hide animated by psychic hunger, dragging bones and weapons behind it.
Rumours & Whispers
Miners say the hill drinks blood through its roots, and anyone who sleeps nearby dreams of being buried alive.
A peddler claims a lost warden's vault still contains a blade that can kill the thing beneath the hill.
The village healer insists voices from the old well call people by names they have never used.
Hunters report seeing masked figures carrying cages into the hillside after every new moon.
An old road song says Keltar Hold was built as the last wall, but never says what it was meant to keep out.
Quest Hooks
Quest giver: Bruk Tait, a one-eyed quarry foreman
Several miners vanished after finding a warm shaft beneath the hill. Their foreman begs the party to recover the missing workers before the next feeding bell.
A sealed deed to the quarry and 900 gold pieces
Quest giver: Edda Kett, an anxious antiquarian
A scholar wants the Drommen Wardens' records from rooms 10, 11, and 19, but every page copied from the hold has developed the same three-notch mark.
A rare spell scroll and access to a private collection
Quest giver: Teg of the Salt Road, a restrained cult courier
A captured cultist claims the creature below can be killed only while it is drinking from the silvered basin in room 24.
A star-metal weapon coating and the courier's hidden map
Quest giver: Nim Gault, a village healer
A village healer has begun hearing a voice beneath her well and asks the party to find the source before she leads the villagers into the hill.
Three doses of superior healing draught and lasting village support
Corridor Notes
Clusters of blue shelf fungus shed dim light but release a soporific dust when disturbed.
Narrow channels carry warm, pinkish water toward the lower chambers. Teeth, coins, and finger bones collect in their grates.
Old iron hooks hold scraps of cured hide marked with guard rotations, prisoner tallies, and fresh claw scores.
The masonry is webbed with hairline cracks through which muffled purring and wet clicking can sometimes be heard.
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