SKARN-DUUM

The Watch-Hold · Abandoned dwarven forward outpost · Western foothills, Spina Ferri Magna · Status as of 1200 A.P.: ruined, unclaimed, quietly avoided

Bera Khar-Thul sent me a fragment of the Kharak-Bel Chronicle concerning Skarn-Duum in 1183 A.P., with a note attached that read only: 'We do not go there. It is not forbidden. We simply do not.' I have found, in twenty years of asking, that this is the fullest explanation any dwarf has ever offered me.

— G.C.P.S.A., private notes, 1183 A.P.

Skarn-Duum, the Watch-Hold, was a small forward garrison outpost of the Khazadum, built into the western foothills roughly fifty kilometres from Kharak-Bel Hold to give early warning of any approach through the highland passes. It fell in a single night during the season of black snow, the same assault that produced the six-day breach at Kharak-Bel itself, and unlike Kharak-Bel it was never retaken, never rebuilt, and never formally resettled. Everything Plinius knows of it comes at several removes: fragments of the Kharak-Bel Chronicle shared through his correspondence with Bera Khar-Thul, and the plain fact, confirmed independently by more than one dwarven source, that the hold considers the site a matter best left alone.

Show Spoiler

Thane Grimnir Vel-Bel VII has, within the last eight months, commissioned an investigation into a new cave breach in the rebuilt outer defensive works of Kharak-Bel Hold itself, in a section that failed from within in exactly the location that failed during the original -880 A.P. assault. The hold has not released its findings. Skarn-Duum's abandoned tunnel network, never fully mapped even in dwarven records, is a plausible physical connection to whatever the investigation has found, though no source available to Plinius confirms this directly.

Purpose / Function

Skarn-Duum's original purpose was narrow and specific: a standing watch over the western foothill approach, small enough to be sustained by a modest rotating garrison rather than a full hold population, its entire function bound up in seeing danger coming before it reached Kharak-Bel. It has had no function at all since -880 A.P. beyond whatever unofficial purpose the hold's continued avoidance of the site now serves, which Plinius suspects is closer to a quiet act of memory than to any practical consideration.

Design

By the Chronicle fragment's description, the outpost was organised simply: a single sealed gate opening onto a modest garrison hall, sleeping quarters for a rotating watch numbering perhaps thirty at full strength, and a signal chamber positioned to relay warning toward Kharak-Bel by a method the fragment does not specify in enough detail for Plinius to reconstruct with confidence. Nothing in the surviving description suggests the layered defensive complexity of a full hold; Skarn-Duum was built to see and to warn, not to withstand a sustained siege in its own right.

Entries

The single sealed gate, broken open since the night of the assault, remains the only entrance any surviving account describes. Whether Skarn-Duum's tunnel network connects to any part of Kharak-Bel Hold's own workings is not confirmed in any source available to Plinius, though the outpost's purpose as a forward watch makes some connecting passage plausible on its face.

DM ONLY

If a connecting passage exists, it does not appear on any map the hold has shared through diplomatic channels, and the current Thane's closed investigation into the recent Kharak-Bel breach is the most likely place such a connection would first surface, should it exist at all.

Sensory & Appearance

Plinius has not stood inside Skarn-Duum and will not claim otherwise. What the Chronicle fragment and Bera Khar-Thul's own account agree on is a persistent, almost complete silence, broken by nothing the dwarven patrols who have approached the outer gate across the centuries have ever been able to identify as wind, water, or settling stone, and a cold that several accounts independently describe as sitting somewhat below what the depth and season would ordinarily produce.

Denizens

None, by every account available to Plinius. No dwarven patrol maintains a regular presence, and no other people, Roman or otherwise, are documented as having occupied or investigated the site in the three centuries since its fall.

Contents & Furnishings

The Chronicle fragment notes that a Khazadum search conducted in the years immediately following the assault recovered the garrison's dead but left most fittings and equipment in place, judging the site not worth the resources of a full salvage. What remains, by that same account, is largely furniture and equipment left exactly where the garrison's final night left it.

Valuables

Nothing of significant material value is documented as remaining. The outpost's genuine value, if it has any left to offer, is informational: a watch-post's records, if any survived the assault and the subsequent centuries, would be the only first-hand account of Skarn-Duum's final night to exist anywhere outside secondhand Chronicle summary.

DM ONLY

No search of Skarn-Duum since the immediate post-assault recovery is documented in any source available to Plinius. Whether a watch-log or similar record survives intact is, so far as he can determine, genuinely unknown rather than merely undocumented.

Hazards & Traps

Three centuries of abandonment in foothill terrain make structural collapse the most immediate and well-attested hazard; the Chronicle fragment notes at least one recorded section failure in the intervening centuries, unconnected to any known cause. No deliberate ward or trap is documented, consistent with a modest forward post rather than a treasury or archive.

DM ONLY

Given the newly discovered failure at Kharak-Bel Hold in a section matching the original -880 A.P. breach point, a DM may reasonably treat Skarn-Duum's own structural condition as connected to, or diagnostic of, whatever the Thane's closed investigation has found, without any source available to Plinius confirming this link exists.

Special Properties

Plinius records the site's reputation for being avoided without endorsing any specific supernatural explanation for it. The dwarven sources he has consulted decline to characterise the avoidance as superstition, but decline equally to offer any alternative account, a silence he has learned, across a long career of asking dwarves about things they do not wish to discuss, not to mistake for absence of a reason.

Alterations

None recorded since the assault. Skarn-Duum's abandonment appears, so far as the Chronicle fragment and Bera Khar-Thul's own knowledge extend, to be genuinely total: no subsequent renovation, resettlement, or even routine maintenance in three centuries.

Architecture

Carved directly into the foothill rock in the severe, functional style the Khazadum apply even to their smallest structures, Skarn-Duum was built without the ornamental geometric precision the Chronicle associates with Kharak-Bel's principal halls, a modesty Plinius reads as consistent with a forward post never intended to be looked at, only to look outward from.

Defenses

Whatever defensive works Skarn-Duum once maintained failed comprehensively on the night of the assault and have not been repaired or replaced. The site currently has no defences of any kind beyond what structural collapse and general inaccessibility provide by accident.

History

Founded approximately seventy years before the Keth'dural Grak, Skarn-Duum served without major incident as Kharak-Bel's western early-warning post until the season of black snow, when it fell in a single night during the same assault wave that produced the six-day breach at the main hold. Kharak-Bel itself held, was rebuilt, and remains an active hold to this day; Skarn-Duum was not reoccupied, a decision the Chronicle fragment records without explaining, and the site has stood empty ever since. See Annales Mundi for full chronological detail on the Keth'dural Grak.

DM ONLY

Whether the decision not to reoccupy Skarn-Duum was made for straightforward strategic reasons, resource constraints, or something the Chronicle's surviving fragments simply do not record, is not something any source available to Plinius resolves. The consistency of the modern hold's continued avoidance of the site, three centuries after any practical military reason would still apply, suggests the decision may have had a component the official record never captured.

RUINED STRUCTURE
-880 A.P., season of black snow

Founding Date

Approximately -950 A.P.

Alternative Names

Skarn-Duum (dwarven, "Watch-Hold" no Roman cartographic name assigned

Type

Military base / complex

Parent Location

Western foothills

Environmental Effects

None confirmed; unverified reports of unusual cold and persistent silence