The beautiful and mostly conical stratovolcano known as Droskar’s Crag stands at the northwestern corner of Darkmoon Vale and anchors both the wide valley and the Five Kings Mountains. At 28,822 feet, Droskar’s Crag is the highest peak in Andoran and the highest known active volcano in the world. Although it continues to emit intermittent puffs of smoke from its two craters, dwarven volcanologists assure concerned Andoren citizens that a major eruption is not imminent.
Basic Statistics: Droskar Crag’s South Peak (sometimes called the Hammer) rises to 28,822 feet. Its North Peak (also called the Anvil) stands at 28,305 feet, with a prominence of 404 feet. The South Peak is comprised of the remnants of Droskar Crag’s pre-3980 elevation, while the North Peak rises by roughly 1-1/2 feet each year and caps the volcano’s main active crater (called Rovagug’s Caldera). The low area between the two peaks—Softiron Saddle—forms the high, southern rim of Rovagug’s Caldera (the low, northern rim having been subsumed by the growth of the Anvil). In addition to the immense main crater, Droskar’s Crag also has a smaller active crater on its southwest face—Torag’s Mouth—which still occasionally belches forth puffs of steam and ash and which acts as the “headwater” of Torag’s Breath (see Five Kings Mountains).
Geologic History: Droskar’s Crag (then known as Torag’s Crag) last erupted in any meaningful way in 3980, when a powerful eruption (which either caused or was caused by a powerful earthquake) began a series of blasts and quakes known as the Rending. Since the Rending, the volcano has calmed and begun rebuilding its sloughed-off northern face. The mountain almost constantly belches forth ash and steam, acting as a constant reminder of the continentaffecting power it can unleash.
Prior to the Rending, Droskar’s Crag existed in a state of dormancy lasting since the beginning of written history in the area. Some evidence exists that suggests that prior to its eruption, the volcano constantly added to its height by pushing up magma into a reservoir of slowly cooling rock just below its peak (prior to the Rending the volcano had only one true peak). This presence of magma provided additional warmth to the dwarves living beneath it in their city of Jernashall.
Settlement History: Dwarves first settled Droskar’s Crag at the height of their racial power during the Age of Darkness. A small army of spelunkers, miners, and soldiers exploring the Five Kings Mountains came upon the impressive peak and decided to explore its possibilities. As is their way, the dwarves first delved into the side of the mountain to get a feel for its mining value, volcanic stability, and geologic history. After declaring the mountain relatively safe and worth mining, they expanded their initial diggings to establish the dwarven plug of Jernashall. Using Jernashall as a defensive point and cultural hub, the dwarves explored the surrounding area. They established the surface city of Raseri Kanton just down slope from Jernashall as a trading post and outlying strongpoint.
For more than five centuries, the dwarves toiled to expand Jernashall and draw on the rich veins of mithral, gold, iron, and copper deep within the mountain’s interior. In 3332, Jernashall engineers became famous among all the dwarven empires when they created the Magmafall in the middle of the city. The Magmafall tapped into the vast underground magma reservoir near the top of Droskar’s Crag, allowing the molten rock to drop through the center of the city into a specially formed channel that then sent the magma into deeper reservoirs several miles beneath the city.
As Jernashall engineers predicted, the city survived the massive, continent-shaking eruption that signaled the beginning of the Rending. Most of the visible damage in the city occurred near the drop of the Magmafall, as pressure from the eruption burst open the narrow tubes that carried the molten rock and caused a sudden surge of the stuff to exceed the safety basin around the drainage channel. Unfortunately for the engineers and the dwarves living in Jernashall, either that initial eruption or the earthquake associated with it compromised most of the city’s safety structures. When a second eruption nearly as powerful as the first shook the mountain again, magma flooded the city in a matter of seconds, killing every dwarf inside. Since the tragedy of the Rending, no dwarf has lived on or under Droskar’s Crag, and almost all other intelligent creatures similarly avoid it.
Caves: Hundreds of miles of natural caves exist beneath the surface of Droskar’s Crag. Dwarven spelunkers and mine-scouts occasionally return to the mountain in which so many of their brethren remain sealed. The spelunkers enjoy the natural caves for what they are and contribute the most to mapping out the twisting lava tubes and occasional remnant mineshaft. The mine-scouts explore the caves looking for veins of valuable metals or other excuses for returning to the mountain. To date, the mine-scouts have turned up nothing of interest.
While intelligent humanoids avoid the lava tubes and dwarf-cave remnants on Droskar’s Crag, other creatures are far less picky about where they live or haunt. As such, many of the lava tubes crawl with various menaces, from creatures drawn to the mountain’s elemental fury to those simply seeking a quiet place to live and hunt. The many caves of Droskar’s Crag house creatures as diverse as delvers and azers, thoqquas and grimlocks, and mephits and fire oozes.
The Crags: This series of stepped cliffs extends roughly 6 miles along the southeastern slope of Droskar’s Crag. The Crags drop elevation by roughly 400 feet, with no individual cliff face greater than 200 feet. When the mountain split to form the Crags, it revealed dozens of lava tubes running down the side of Droskar’s Crag just below the surface. During the subsequent eruptions that continued to wrack the volcano, some of these lava tubes once again carried molten stone, resulting in impressive lavafalls that dumped large amounts of rock at the base of the Crags. Many of these tubes sealed themselves when the lava they carried congealed within. Others, and those that did not carry lava during the Rending, remain open and act as homes to those creatures that can reach them.
Ruins of Raseri Kanton: At the bottom of the Crags lay the tumbled ruins of a once-massive city. At the height of the dwarven kingdom of Tar Khadurrm, the city of Raseri Kanton acted as a merchant’s haven, connecting the wealth and craftsmanship of the dwarves with the humans who sought them. When the earth collapsed during the Rending, it did so right beneath the center of Raseri Kanton. The doomed city crashed down the side of the mountain, killing almost all of its residents. A fraction of the city’s buildings still stand at the top of the Crags, and those abandoned structures give homes to a variety of creatures. Most of the buildings, however, lay tumbled, cracked, and shattered at the base of the cliffs. For the most part, only undead live among those buildings—the restless spirits and shambling bodies of the residents who perished in the Rending. In the last several centuries, though, the fey of Darkmoon Wood have taken an interest in clearing the ruins of undead, fearful that the horrors therein might spread or—worse still— fall under the command of a truly maleficent being. To that end, bands of fey (especially satyrs) frequently patrol the ruins, looking for mortals to drive off and undead to put to rest. While they are suspicious of outsiders, they occasionally work with mortals that come to the ruins and prove their good intentions (usually by performing a series of tasks for the fey).
Ruins of Jernashall: Most of Jernashall lies entombed within thousands of cubic feet of solid stone. Two exceptions exist, however. The massive Gates of Jernashall, marking the city’s only above-ground entrance, still stand tall upon the mountain. Lava from the eruption that destroyed Jernashall blasted forth from the gateway like beer from a freshly breached keg, and as that eruption wound down, the molten rock cooled and sealed the entrance, leaving the barbican, gatehouse, and open stone doors to guard a flow of jagged volcanic rock. Further up the slope, above and to the south of the gates, the great Casements of Torag open onto lavafilled chambers once rich with plantlife and the tombs of non-dwarves who earned burial within the city. The mechanisms for opening and closing the immense stone slabs that form the casements are forever sealed by tens of thousands of tons of cooled lava, leaving the three barriers opened at varying angles.
Droskar’s Crucible: Squatting at the foot of Droskar’s Crag, this ruined monastery sits among ancient, gnarled trees. Made of simple stone blocks, worn smooth with the passage of time, the stout building is falling apart. This slow crumbling alone points to the unusually poor construction of dwarves no longer interested in excelling at their toils, but merely toiling.
Just prior to their withdrawal from the region to nearby dwarven holds, the dwarves of the Five Kings Mountains turned to the worship of the Dark Smith: Droskar, god of toil and labor. As the decades passed, fidelity to Droskar no longer inspired great works, only works, and the quality of dwarven craftsmanship plummeted as the stoutfolk attempted to ceaselessly churn out monuments, temples, and armories in his honor. Droskar’s Crucible is a hallmark of this decline in imagination and spirit. Its spartan interior is a testament to the joyless final days of the dwarves. Smooth halls, many of which are filled with ironblood mushrooms, stretch between cold-stoned chambers. Crudely hewn tunnels connect the underground monastery directly to dreary mines and the thundering forges that long ago hammered out steel day and night.
In the centuries since its abandonment, predators and worse have taken up residence in the ruined building and the tunnels and mines beneath it. On the surface, within the crumbling building of the monastery itself, lives a powerful worg named Graypelt.
