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Geld Seekingstone, the Dwarven Loremaster in Hammerfast, summons the party to discuss the state of things.

He has been trying to keep a tight lid on the details of the conflict with “The Puppetmaster” – but when major supernatural activity occurs inside the city walls, it's hard to stop people from asking questions. As a result, he is going to have to reveal some of what has been going on to the Town Council – and wanted to give the party a heads up.

In addition, he tells them that he's been pursuing a separate line of investigation over the past few weeks. An organization such as Azêllay's requires significant resources to operate. Threats and evil magic alone are not enough – he would need a significant amount of cash. And while Azêllay, as a major businessman in Idus, clearly has lots of cash, Geld believes that it is not enough. There must be another source of treasure funding this operation.

So, Geld has been trying to “follow the money” and has recently uncovered a possible source that would explain it all: An abandoned mine out in the desert may have been reopened. It is called “Karak” and was abandoned some 250 years ago because of an encounter with some great evil. Unfortunately, the location of the mine is not precisely known – however a nearby Dwarven output is known.

The party prepares for an overland trek and heads out east toward the desert…

After a few days of travel, they arrive at the location of the original Dwarven outpost. There they discover a human settlement called “Dunesend”. More importantly, they stumble into a fight when they find a group of Gnolls threatening the villagers.

After ridding the village of the Gnolls (and their pet Behir), the villagers tell them that somebody called “Queen Shephatiah” now resides at the “Karak” mines. Only by killing her will the village truly be safe.

After a night's rest, the party heads south into the desert, following the (fairly vague) directions that the villagers are able to provide. On the way, they are ambushed by a group of Razorclaw Shifters and a Howling Hag.

Surprisingly, after defeating the Hag and Shifters, the party discovers they were carrying the following loot:

• 1 Level 10 Magic Item: Boots of the Mighty Charge (Ibiza)
• 2,300 gp (most of which in the form of freshly mined platinum)

This adventure was included in Dungeon Magazine issue #159 (pages 56-93) and is part of the “Scales of War” adventure path. Here, I used it as a standalone adventure by excising the sub-plot with Bram Ironfell's ulterior motive. In this version, clan Ironfell is included only as background color. Because of this edit, I skipped the first encounter with a rival group of Dwarves.

As published, this adventure was designed for a group of five sixth-level characters. Since the party consists of six seventh-level characters, each encounter was (and will be) augmented by roughly 50%. (DMG p.57: A 6th level encounter for 5 PCs is 1,250 XP; A 7th level encounter for 6 PCs is 1,800 XP).

Since I had quite recently used Satyrs (at "Glimmer Lake"), I removed the 3 Satyr Rakes (Skirmisher/7, 300 XP) in this encounter and replaced them with 5 Gnoll Gorgers (Brute/7, 300 XP) – changing this from 1,750 total XP to 2,350 XP.

The party started in the brambles just off the edge of the map and tried to sneak into the village by crawling and using stealth. This worked for awhile, but a few rounds in, they were spotted. The Behir and three of the Gnoll Gorgers moved to engage – while the Warden remained behind and tried to cow the party by threatening the villagers.

The second encounter was augmented by adding two additional Razorclaw Stalkers. Even with this addition, though, the encounter turned out to be underpowered and the party tore through the enemies in six quick rounds.

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