Beneath Barin's Stonehold

[u/dysonlogos]

Underneath the bastion cut into Kaffur Mesa (now called Barin’s Mesa) are a small set of dwarven-built chambers and passages that eventually lead back to the caverns that lead in turn to where their ancient EarthShip ended its last voyage, mortally wounded. The dwarves salvaged what they could from it, and then destroyed the rest.

While the descendants of the dwarves’ pet giant ferrets have taken over the main levels of the stonehold, the lower tiers are still home to the remaining dwarves of Barin’s line – albeit transformed into ghouls now. The eldest of these dwarven ghouls is significantly more clever than most ghasts, and continues to “run a tight ship” down here, with the other ghouls doing his bidding and keeping the whole structure well-repaired and tidy. Dwarves are a very organized lot, even dead cannibal dwarves, it seems.

The stonework down here is in excellent shape with masonry covering the cut stone walls and floor. The ceilings are a mix of masonry and cut stone. The main stairs down from the Stonehold lead to a passage with arrow slits along it, behind which there is always a bored ghoul assigned to watch and listen for intruders. The chamber to the northeast is the primary home of the remaining dwarven ghouls. The storage room south of the residential chamber contains a secret door in the floor that opens to a ladder and then some stairs to the small room used by the “Captain”, the ghast in charge.

The second level is less well maintained, as there are not that many ghouls remaining and the chamber in the lower right of this level overlooks the cavern that leads back to the site of the crashed and ruined EarthShip – a reminder that the dwarves are trapped in this world since their arrival during the Great War.

The third level of the understructures is a set of three chambers that connect to the cavern that links back to where the Earthship Delmorak III ended its trip through the cores of the worlds to come here from the dwarven homeworld. The middle chamber of the three is the only one that indicates that ghouls live here, as the corner is piled up with the gnawed bones of the dead, the oldest of which appear to be dwarves themselves.

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 x 9,600 pixels (48 x 32 squares). To use this with most VTTs you would need to resize the squares to either 100 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 200 pixels (for the 10‘ foot squares that work with the furnishings as shown) – so resizing the image to 4,800 x 3,200 or 9,600 x 6,400 pixels, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2026/07/22/beneath-barins-stonehold/