A player handout from my long-running D&D campaign set in my world of Altrion.

Although Fengarod is now deep beneath the ice that is now the Diamond Wastes, yet it is not entirely lost, for I have found a way that a man might enter the fallen city. Atop the northernmost end of the Grey Mountains, there is the ruins of a watch tower, and down from it, steps cut in the cliff face, down to the plains where once Fengarod the fallen stood, where now is ice. At the very foot of the cliff, I looked to my left as I faced it, and through the power of the talisman, saw a faint tracery of silver lines laid into the rock, in the form of an arched doorway, and thereon a warding glyph of Fire. Naming the glyph, I spoke a word of opening, and before my eyes the very cliff face opened to reveal a flight of stone stairs down into the heart of the rock.

I took upon me the form of man, and set foot upon the stairs. Down they went, for some thousand steps, past windows blocked by ice, until I came to a door that stood open. Beyond that door I beheld a sight that will live in my memory for as long as the gods grant me life: Fengarod the fallen, preserved, timeless and desolate, beneath a great dome of ice. I made to step over the threshold, but of a sudden a single high note sounded, like to the ringing of a bell, and a woman stood before me, clad in black mail, grim of countenance, her gauntleted hands resting on a great hammer. In a voice cold as death she spoke to me, saying, “Look now, Azar, on what your sons have brought to be. I tell you, never shall you pass the threshold, nor your sons, nor their heirs. But the day will come when the forgotten knowledge of these times will once again be needful, and two will again be born, twins and skilled in sorcery, and to their line shall fall the right to walk the streets of Fengarod.” Still she stood, and grim, and at length I took myself from that place, yet her words still echo in my mind.

These events of the fourth day of the eighth month of the year 4861, which is five hundred and eight years since the Binding of Time, I record for those who will tread these steps after me, and to this I set my name and sigil.

Azar