“I brought you something to eat”. A dwarven flesh cultist brings a young man to the dwarves with the boars. Mesto Firestorm, a dwarf of Sif captured by the reavers and brought here to die. He’s not alone.
Scenes
The dwarf with the snack.
The feasting pits
The entryway
The boar chamber
The chamber of All Flesh
Journey to Wolfheim
Dwarves facing two ‣ Hilith Bearspear and the Bear Spear tribe getting their asses kicked.
Feast at Wolfheim with the dwarves.
Journey across the straights to the shores near Huldramose.
Travel to Wolfheim and then a boat to Huldramose
Meet with the queen of Huldramose
Downtime in Huldramose
Travel by Valkerye to Nordheim
Secret and Clues
The Flesh Reaver Dwarves were invited to the Blood Marriage. They burned the map to the Midnight Temple in Nordheim.
The dwarven city of Wolfheim is nearby to the north. Boats regularly travel to Huldramose. The queen of Huldramose knows of Nordheim, how to get there, and how to find one’s way to the Midnight Temple.
Outside of family and clan, felag is the strongest bond in society. It means “fellowship” and “partnership” and is linked to the power of the Fé rune, which represents division of wealth.
There is no central authority of the northlands. A host of Jarls, kings, and chieftans rule independently. The people of the north swear allegiance to these jarls in return for community and protection.
Humans can travel to a trollkin steading or a goblin hall with reasonable expectations of proper etiquette.
The democratic traditions of the North surprise many an outlander. Families and neighbors sort out local matters among themselves, but every region also has a regular meeting called a Þing (pronounced “thing”) that combines court and trade fair. Northlanders meet to settle quarrels, make vows of peace or war, forge new alliances, celebrate great deeds, and invoke ancient laws. A council of wise law-speakers and jarls oversees debates and attempts to broker satisfactory settlements, but all the discussions are public and all free people can have their say.
Most Þings take place at a traditional spot: a sacred glade, blessed rock, World Tree, or other hallowed location. Borders are a common locale, allowing rival regions to remain separate between debates.
Wolfheim is an isolated dwarf hold guarding an uncompromising locale in wild country near Huldramose and Trollheim. Other races would consider settling there to be a suicidal mistake, but the dwarves of Wolfheim think of it as a worthy challenge.
The Wolfheim hall is famous for its wild winter revels, when enormous brewing barrels of ale are drained in a single night, with fire magic presented by the forge- priests and rune magic by the one-eyed priests of Wotan. The Wolfheim reavers are keen to take grain and hops as plunder or in trade.
The cult of Ragnarok rises in the north, seeming to call for the end of the world before it's time.
The giants are its most well-known inhabitants, claiming Jotunheim, a land that bubbles with primal energies. This is the last remnant of a much greater land (so they claim), destroyed by the gods shortly after the First War, when the Aesir and Vanir joined forces to crush their dreams of glory.
An offshoot of the giant race, trolls and trollkin are so prevalent that a whole region, Trollheim, is named after them.
Located in a lowland between two wide rivers that frequently flood, the swampy and soggy land of Huldramose is ruled not by a king, but by two elfmarked queens. Here the old ways of the Vanir remain strong and fey are common. The people live in a bountiful but treacherous marshland: punts and rowboats replace roads and horses.
The queens of Huldramose are Thorgerd and Dark Irpa, elfmarked sorceresses claiming descent from the vanished nobility of Thorn.
The queens of Huldramose conceal the presence of a World Tree sapling, the Two Queens’ Tree, said to be cut from the World Tree the dwarves once attacked in Thorn. Few know of the tree outside the royal household, but its growth is swift—soon it will be too tall to keep the secret of its existence.
At one time, the North was the home of culture and wisdom. It held the Rainbow Bridge Bifrost, a road to the Godshall of Valhalla, the battleground of the Plane of Spears, the Storm Court of Perun, and other far-flung realms of great magic and strong warriors. Those gateways were first stolen by the elves and moved—some say Bifrost once opened on Valera or near it—and then shut entirely.
The greatness of the North remains because her people are stout and true—but many of her kings and cities are no more. The most famous are Aurvang, Issedon, and Nordheim.
On the shores of the Tearstain River stands the remains of Aurvang, once a dwarfhold of deep ring magic and a site of pilgrimage, for the eye of Wotan and the holy shield of the dwarf maiden Grajvar were both kept there
Long ago the dwarf citadels of Aurvang and Nordheim allied with the humans of Issedon, a stronghold populated by Trollheim warriors and powerful wizards from the legendary polar realm of Hyperborea.
Tired of defeat, Boreas unleashed a new weapon on the North: living glaciers. Unstoppable masses of ice larger than the small kingdoms, these rivers of living ice moved slowly but inexorably south from the Bleak Expanse, crushing everything in their path. They destroyed Aurvang and swallowed Issedon, sundering both the Wall and the alliance that defended it.
The greatest of the reaver kingdoms was the first to fall, the shame compounded by the dwarves not knowing exactly how it came to pass.
During a terrible winter in which the overland routes to Nordheim were blocked, something crept up from the depths of the earth to extinguish its hearths and forge fires, destroying the dwarven capital from within.
