Vath and the liberation of Dwarfhold

Into Dwarfhold

Snowbeard has escaped Dwarfhold, but most of his people remain enslaved. Wounded during his flight from Vath’s occupation, he survived because seven sisters found him and cared for him at the inn. He is comfortable there and has no wish to return. The hero offers to confront Vath, but getting through Dwarfhold’s gates requires something Snowbeard possesses: a weapon made by dwarven hands at the Heartstone Forge. He will lend his battleaxe in exchange for a few favors.

Those favors lead through the inn and Pinewood Forest: meeting his rescuers, collecting bear skins and turtle shells, and defeating the chaorrupted bear Twistedtooth. Snowbeard then sends the hero to collect a gambling debt from Donna Charmer. The llama farmer has chores of her own. Turtle-shell spittoons, dentures made from bear teeth, feather-stuffed pillows and an air freshener occupy the hero before Donna parts with the gold. Snowbeard finally supplies the promised axe, and the route into Dwarfhold opens.

Elder Ironfist wants freedom as much as the hero does, but warns against attacking an enemy they do not understand. He directs the hero to the Stone of Memory, which preserves a record of the city. Through it, the hero sees Vath arriving on Stalagbite and overwhelming Dwarfhold. The dragon gives substance to Ironfist’s warning: defeating the occupier will require more than finding a way through the gates.

Ironfist also has people to keep alive. The dwarves are being forced to mine the gold and gems that sustain Vath’s power, while hunger and illness weaken them. Before helping the hero reach the Upper City, the elder asks for water stones, medicine, food taken from the occupiers, material for lamps, and blasting supplies. He also has the hero gather weapons to hide for the moment when the dwarves can fight back. These preparations turn a journey toward Vath into work that gives the prisoners a chance to survive and resist him.

Beyond them stands Geopetal, guardian of the Heartstone Forge. Vath’s threat to the forge compels her obedience, but she wants him stopped. She agrees to reproduce the key taken from her, using materials the hero gathers from the mines. The replica breaks in the Upper City’s lock. Geopetal then directs the hero to Amadeus, a monster deeper in the mountain. Defeating him yields a key mold, from which she can make a key that finally opens the gates.

There, the hero finds an unlikely ally in the assassin Jorxlol. Ironfist has paid him better than Vath, and a united drow realm would be bad for his assassination business. He lends the hero an invisibility cloak to spy on the Dragonlord. The conversation they overhear reveals the occupation’s purpose: the Heartstone Forge is producing Chaos-infused weapons for Drakath, and the dwarves are being worked for Chaos Gemeralds. Vath demands more stones and withholds food when production disappoints him. A soldier who protests is threatened and dismissed in disgrace.

Jorxlol helps weaken Vath’s forces before arranging entry to the keep. The hero attacks assassins and chaorrupted draconians, breaks the chaorrupted eggs being used to grow more soldiers, and defeats the enraged King Terradactyl before it can raise an alarm. Ingredients gathered from local creatures replenish the assassin’s potion. When that work is finished, Jorxlol provides a drow disguise, and the hero slips inside to confront Vath.

The waiting figure is a decoy. A cage drops around the hero, and the real Vath reveals that he expected an attempt to stop him from summoning the Rock Roc. Worse, Snowbeard appears to accept gold for betraying the would-be liberator. Vath orders the hero’s possessions taken and sends them into the prison. Yet Jorxlol soon returns those possessions and directs the hero to Mick Guyver. The apparent betrayal has not ended the resistance; it has delivered the hero into the place where the other dwarves need help escaping.

Chains of the Dragon

Mick Guyver turns materials gathered in the prison into a means of escape. The hero melts the barred entrance’s lock, defeats Warden Elfis for his keys, and helps prepare the blast that opens a route through the rock. The prisoners break free. Back at the inn, Snowbeard explains his performance before Vath: he, Ironfist and Mick needed the hero imprisoned alongside the dwarves so that they could be rescued. What looked like a sale of his people’s last hope was part of their escape plan.

Freedom for the dwarves has not stopped the Dragonlord’s other work. When the hero returns, Vath is ready to use the Chaos Gemeralds to hatch the Rock Roc. The beast emerges before the hero can prevent it. Taking the Chaos Dragon Amulet, the hero leaps from the heights and takes flight on Stalagbite. The dragon-riding battle brings the Roc out of the sky, but the fight is not yet over.

Vath has retained the more decisive instrument of control. The amulet alone cannot command Stalagbite, he explains; Drakath also gave him the Legendary Sword of Dragon Control. At Vath’s order, the dragon throws the hero off. The Rock Roc is commanded to finish the fallen rider. The stolen amulet has not freed the dragon from its master.

The hero defeats the Roc without the dragon. Drakath acknowledges both the Chaos Beast’s awakening and its loss, regretting the destruction it could have spread. He leaves Vath to enjoy his rule over Dwarfhold for as long as the hero permits it. Vath tries to claim credit for the victory through Stalagbite, but the hero rejects that claim and challenges him directly.

The final confrontation takes place at the mountain’s summit, after an undignified pause for the hero to catch their breath. Vath boasts that he treats his dragon as a weapon, enslaved through the amulet and sword just as he enslaved the dwarves. The hero answers that the dwarves are already free and fighting his army. Below them, the rebellion is underway. Vath threatens to destroy the hero and cast the body down as a warning to everyone who has resisted him.

Vath and Stalagbite are defeated, but the Dragonlord still orders the exhausted dragon to attack. The hero throws Vath’s sword, striking the amulet and breaking his control. The result is partly accidental: the hero later admits that Vath was the intended target. Stalagbite recognizes the freedom it has been given and thanks the hero for liberating it as well as the dwarves. It seizes Vath and carries him away, ignoring his demands to be released.

Dwarfhold is free of its Dragonlord. Snowbeard thanks the hero, while warning that Vath’s army has not simply vanished and their damaged home still needs repair. Geopetal can once again look toward the forge’s protection without Vath’s threat hanging over it. The victory has released a people and a dragon from the same master; reclaiming the city is work that must continue after he is gone.