Further exploration of The Smoking Ruins *spoilers*

[Puckohue]

My adventurers are eager to return to Korolstead. There are three obvious targets of exploration they've expressed interest in:

1. The Ernalda temple. I'm considering using the Ernalda temple design from Temples and Towers. But what opposition would they encounter? Spirits obviously? What if they don't bring an Ernalda cultist? Would temple defenses still be active? Would associate cults' initiates be welcome or seen as intruders? Could there be something down there that's dug up from below?

2. The tomb of Korol. Is his spirit still there? What would it look like? Where could I look for inspiration on design, encounters, and treasures? There's some grave with "loot" in the GM Screen Pack I could look at, even though those graves feel too simple. IIRC there's a few tomb designs in Griffin Mountain, but I'm not sure they're appropriate. Again: maybe something came from below? Finding Orgorvale's trapped spirit started a cult - what if the same is possible here?

3. The unfinished temple of Zorak Zoran. Are the troll spirits still there? What does his temples look like?

Any other ideas for interesting locations in The Smoking Ruins?

[Rodney Dangerduck]

The Griffin Mountain troll tomb has good ideas but beware, it is vicious - used one of my few D.I.s there.  You may need to tone it down.

[dumuzid]

The group I play in gathered a good old-fashioned Unity Army to purge and resettle the Smoking Ruins.  Here are the answers to those points from that campaign:

1) We had an Ernalda noble in the party, and an apparition of Ernalda welcomed her into mastery of the temple personally.  Its guardians were two Snake Daughters, and its temple defenses were treated as being dormant until our Ernaldan took the mantle of high priestess.

2) His spirit was still there in our game.  His tomb held grave goods, but since we hoped to integrate him into the new community we left those untouched.  We'd already been resident in the ruins for a few seasons before we approached Korol directly, and had already done considerable work in renovating and repopulating them.  He was sufficiently pleased with developments that he only needed the oath of the town ring's chieftain to refurbish and maintain a dragonewt site in the ruins before he gave the new community his blessing.

3) The Unity Army our group led was raised specifically to free all the spirits trapped in the Smoking Ruins, including those in the eye-necklace, and using a combination of approaches (including my troll character eating the eye-necklace) this was accomplished.  A Zorak Zoran berserker purified the temple by devouring all Vamargic's accouterments, and a Kyger Litor/Korasting shaman-priestess re-sanctified the space to the troll gods.

As for other places of interest, consider the stream that flows through the Ernalda temple gardens and over the cliff.  That stream joins the southernmost reaches of the great Oslir River down on the valley floor.  My GM is a big afficionado of Solar mythology, so he made that stream the daughter of the dragon-river Oslira and Shargash.  She woke up in Sea or Fire of 1627, and we had a nice tense time managing that situation.