[Norkari Mountains] Karak Karam-Az, the Dragon's Lair.

Deep in the Norkari Mountains, among the misty peaks and forested slopes, sit the ruins of a hundred dwarven holds, laid to waste centuries ago. Their existence is largely forgotten to time, any knowledge of them lost during the cataclysm that ravaged the world a century before. Only a select few know what vast cities, treasures, and tombs lay beneath the cold, expressionless mountain faces.

Behind their forested facade and collapsed arches sit tremendous cities, carved into the rock by the talented hands and tools of the ancient dwarves that once ruled over the mountains as kings, looking down on all of the surface-kin, with their little towns and villages, nothing that could hold a candle to the dwarves themselves.

These cities bore deep into the mountains, colonising more and more as they mined deeper, and deeper, soon connecting each hold and city in a vast series of underground tunnels. Little did they know this would be their downfall. Each of these cities now lays in ruin, with mere dusty echoes of ancient ghosts to fill them. Rubble clogs the vast stone doors, and charred wood supports have long since collapsed, leaving the tunnels that once lead from ale house to home, and mine to armoury, buried under rock and stone.

Meeting halls that once housed hundreds of cheery dwarves, hollering and singing of triumphs, tales, and tribulations, where the hold lords would declare war and peace, new grudges, and the settling of old, are now occupied only by the charred bones and mangled weapons of the once brave defenders, their ghosts now silently raging in their forgotten tomb.

The vast vaults that once held the riches the Dwarves so greedily hoarded used to gleam and glow with piles of gold, jewels, and other valuables dug up from the deep or plundered from the dwarves’ enemies, all carefully sorted and valued by a team of the most honourable, trustworthy, and noble dwarves, are all but empty, with only dust to occupy their place.

Only one vault remains true to its golden reputation. The Vault of Karak Karam-Az, the mountain capital that once housed the golden throne of the dwarven high King. Deep within the once grand city, now a craterous ruin, houses a vault teeming with gold, far beyond its former peak in the glory years of Dwarven rule. The precious contents coming from not only Karak Karam-Az, but every other dwarven ruin that dot the mountain side, all piled into one vast chamber. Many an adventurer dreams of such a place, the lost city of dwarven gold, but nobody has ever found it. At least, nobody who lived to tell the tale.

Not everything in these ruins is dead, for among the bones and under the vast golden hoard, lays the creature that laid waste to the glorious dwarves, taking their home and hoard, and leaving their people without a king. The dragon known in the dwarven runes of old as Grundesdyg.

Anyone who finds and dares enter the ruins should be warned. They will not find the glory nor riches they seek. They will find only death at the claws of the Scourge of Dwarves.