Vaal'Dunak¶
"You are interrupting important work. Why are you here?" — the engineer-demon of the Mint (S360)
Vaal'Dunak was the Imperial Mint town of the Amarin Empire, "Amarin Market Town, Vaults", "destroyed in the Second Demon War". It lies six hundred miles from Marshford in the Kingdom of Arnyr, the last hundred and twenty of them off any road across orc-ridden plains. What remains is a "Sinkhole City" of green mist and green ghosts, hunted by hellhounds, in whose Mint the demonlord Daennelgin keeps an outpost "building a host machine for him". Sixty miles beyond it lie the Pits of Turis, a dark volcanic pit of drifting spores, fungus cultists and Aurumite ore. The party of the Marshford Campaign came here on the trail of the Amarin Trade Ledger.
Also spelled Vaal'dunak and Vaaldunak.
Gap
No source says what region Vaal'Dunak lies in. It is reached overland from Arnyr and stamped with Amarin's name; whether it stood in the Westmarches, on the island of Amarin or elsewhere in the old empire's north-western lands is not stated. Nothing records what the Mint struck, when the town was founded, or what Vaal'Dunak means.
The road from Marshford¶
The Marshford party's reckoning gives the journey in stages. Five hundred of the six hundred miles are on roads: four days and two hundred and forty miles "inside Kingdom of Arnyr" on a "decent muddy track", then four days on the main trade route through the city of Irystwaite. The last hundred and twenty miles are cross-country at twenty miles a day. On the third morning out, with sixty miles to go, the party met "Orc Hunting Party - 30 Orcs on Wargs. Feldrak Hunters", led by Mok'Thorn, and fought them off with a warhorn sounded at three hundred yards and an ice storm at twenty. On the sixth day they "arrived at VAAL'DUNAK - Imperial Mint Town".
The plains belong to the orcs. The Krag'Durn, "Orcs of the Plains", the Stonesplitter tribe of the chieftain Mokkar'gul, "Voice of the Plain", and the shaman Khargol "Storm-Skull", sent the party "south … Haunted ruins" to "recover Orc Bone Headdress from corpse of previous chieftain", and made them honorary members of the tribe with a Krag'Durn pendant. Their new chieftain Grish'nak, "HUGE. 10' tall", "wants a message delivered to the King of Arnyr .. Orcs want Western Provinces." Whether Mok'Thorn's Feldrak Hunters are Krag'Durn the notes do not say.
The ruined town¶
Vaal'Dunak is a "Sinkhole City". Green mist hangs over it and "green ghosts" go about their old business: "Cabbage cart, merchants." Three districts are named, the Upper District, the Market District and the Trade District. Its living inhabitants are demons in the shapes of "Rabid Wolves (Hellhounds)"; the party fought three hellhounds, three plague spitters and a greater hellhound, and found "a bone carved orcish headdress", "looking slightly out of place", on the head of a demon in the Mint below.
The Mint¶
The Imperial Mint is the heart of the ruin and no longer empty. It is "a Daennelgin Outpost … building a host machine for him (he is not there yet)": the kind of machine the demonlord needs, since to leave the Demonlands he must "create a rift … and a new machine to transfer to outside Amarin".
The way in is "a steep chasm drop. Many ropes, cut and frayed here", where six demonic vultures nest and cut the ropes of climbers, or knock them into "the spiked cages below … counterweighed so as to drop into the water and drown their occupants". At the bottom a doorway opens onto "an opaque green mist (poison+acid) … a cleaning solution to make sure no creeping flesh escapes the main machine area". Beyond is "a tall and very wide diameter circular hall around the machine", which "covers the machine like a dome". Its inner wall is green metal, Felcore, and white tubes of Aetherium connect inner wall and outer. A ramp spirals up the outside of the dome, with a single groove along the centre of floor and roof.
The groove is the machine's defence. Intruders hear "loud clicking and scraping noises coming from high in the machine for approximately 1 minute" while it builds "a green metallic sphere connected by poles at top and bottom" with eight holes, "for 8 tentacles for holding/pulling a singular enemy or friend up the ramp to the feeder", or for blades that "can spin like a blender", and an essence-ward bomb inside against demons. Against many enemies it self-destructs, "expelling felfire and corrupting demonic green blood everywhere", and is "retracted and rebuilt/reloaded". Halfway up the ramp a white-metal hatch seals a feeding tube in which "a pinkish green pulsating flesh" waits ten feet down; what crawls in is consumed "for Bond and Mortiquery". The outer ring of the machine is "extreme noise, moving gears with blades, dangerous walkways. Magic is reflected, drawn in or nullified here", and "a bin of recycling organic matter here: bones, flesh, blood, etc."
In the control room at the bottom, a small domed chamber, three demons keep the work going. The Bladereaver is "a towering, lean humanoid demon with a plated rib-cage exposed like armor ribs, etched with faint geometric runes", hornless, "with ember-dim eyes and 4 long arms, each ending in curved, twisted white blades", wearing the orcish headdress. The Flamethrower is "shorter and heavier", "patched together from older injuries", its left hand "replaced by a blackened metal cap, with a small flame sprouting from it", its wings "vestigial, torn". The Engineer is "a spindly impish demon that resembles a four-armed, yellow skinned goblin" with "four large yellow glowing eyes", "suspended in a harness which pivots around the green metal pillar traced with intricate white lines". It is not interested in visitors: "I can't really be bothered to kill you. Waste of time and energy. Yet, you made it here still alive. Stronger than you look, yes?" Of the headdress: "Kozzal-gun likes his new hat, he wonders why should he give it to you?"
The Mint's metals are the notes' only description of several Mithis metals. Aetherium is "Soul-metal: white and light grey flat metal (looks like wispy living clouds). No glow, but seems to twist when you look at it and feels like it moves to the touch." Felcore, "Felcore Mithril, Felcore Admant, Felcore Aurumite", is "fel-infused mithis metals. Common/slang name is Demonite. Green-tinted metal with a slight glow." Umbrachalcum, "cursed-metal, made from Cuprium", "absorbs all light", and Infernaxum is "a fiery, molten metal, made from Cuprium".
The Pits of Turis¶
Sixty miles beyond Vaal'Dunak are the Pits of Turis, the destination the Amarin Trade Ledger named, and one stop in a network of teleportation circles the Marshford notes list alongside Marshford, a dragon's lair, an orc camp and the tower of the Acadian High Wizard Tserrerak. They are a "Dark, Volcanic Stone Pit", and they are full of spores:
Quote
The Pits of Turis are perpetually filled with fine white fungal spores, drifting slowly through the air like falling snow. They never settle for long. They circulate, drawn by breath, warmth, and motion. (S362)
The spores are "cold to the touch, dry as ash", "glow faintly when disturbed", and "accumulate more densely the deeper one descends". Cold repels them. "Anyone who inhales them for more than a few minutes begins to hear music." Deeper chambers hold pink spores and red. Tserrerak's gift against them is the Amulets of Fungal Protection.
The music has a congregation. The Children of the Choir, "Choir-people", have held the Pits for twenty years, some two hundred and fifty of them under a middle-aged High Chorister, and perform an Ascension Ceremony. They "consulted the Orb for info related to Thraazul", the Black Gem that holds Tserrerak's imprisoned spirit. Vograg, "6'4" … Dark green, pretty skin", waits beside a teleportation circle for his son Zek'roh, who "went to join the cultists". Irbod is "Keeper of this Grove". Deepest in the Pits is Thraazul, the Fungal Titan, a "Titan-essence. Fungal Abomination" the notes also call the Fungal Giant, with "crazy regeneration" channelled from inactive myconid thralls that "feed the Fungal Giant to regenerate", a possessed geologist spellcaster, demonic dogs, and lake jellyfish "with fungal tendrils and nasty stinger". The giant draws its strength from "the titan's bones": veins of magical metal in the walls and the old mine infrastructure, and it is cut off from them on the lake or open ground.
That metal is Aurumite, "Titan's Blood", at "1,000g per 1 oz". The Marshford party hauled out sixty-nine ten-pound rocks of ore and refined sixty-two ounces, enough for Aurumitic Steel daggers at two ounces and a greatsword at eight. The metal itself, its alloys and its smelting are on the Aurumite and materials pages.
The Pits of Turin¶
The reference article on Aurumite lists two known deposits. One is the Thessoli Mine in the Dragon Wastes. The other is the "Pits of Turin Mine, attached to the dwarf-hold of Thar'koresk in a plains caldera, ancestral home of the Bryn'Grong Clan (Golden Anvils). Diaurumite Trioxide. Mines and hold overrun with demons and sealed." Diaurumite Trioxide is the "red-gold colored mineral, often found near non-volcanic related sites closer to the surface", formed where titan blood leached through gold.
Gap
The sources do not say whether the Pits of Turin at Thar'koresk and the Pits of Turis beyond Vaal'Dunak are one place. Both are Aurumite pits on plains overrun by demons, and the Marshford notes speak of "mine infrastructure" and veins of metal in the walls, but the campaign never names Thar'koresk or the Bryn'Grong, and the article never names Turis. The identification is a likelihood, not a fact.
In Play¶
Travellers from Arnyr should reckon on thirteen days' rations, orc hunting parties on the plains, and demons in the ruins: hellhounds and plague spitters above, the Mint's machine and its three keepers below, where magic is "reflected, drawn in or nullified". In the Pits, cold drives the spores back and amulets hold off the fungus; dispelling magic "destroyed spores" and a cold fire shield pushed them away. Teleportation circles connect the Pits to Marshford, a dragon's lair, an orcish village and Tserrerak's tower.