Surrounded by giants of granite and folded stone, the Hollow Mountain is a Dungeoneer’s myth, a folk tale, a fantasy. According to the legend, it was once the lair of a dragon, and the beast heaped it’s loot there. But the dragon wasn’t immortal. Dwarves tell the tale of Oin Hammerhand, a dwarf whose company of iron draped and filthy dwarven companions managed to find the lair of this dragon, hack it to bloody gibbets and then roast the creature the gnaw the red meat from it’s dead bones. Oin Hammerhand would later go on to found the ill-fated Clan Hammerhand of the Hollow Mountain. They delved into the core of the mountain, hewing out great halls, armories and all sorts of devices. In a show of arrogance, towers balconies and halls rose from the side of the mountain, growing on top as the burrowed within.

This wealth and excess was not to last. With the next round of Goblin wars, Hammerhand Holt would suffer great losses in the campaign, and when a new dragon appeared, the holt was lost, and all of its defenders slain when the beast collapsed the outer defences. Some whisper that the death scream of hundreds of dwarves was what gave rise to the winds that batter the Hollow Mountain but I says they was there all along. The dragon inhabited the halls, filling them with great wealth and spawning is scaly kin in the feasting halls of the King of the Mountain.

The Soaring Dungeon
At well over 12,000 feet in elevation, reaching the mouth og the Hollow Mountain should be an adventure in and of itself. Crawling across the broken terrain at the feet of the mountain could reveal that some of the debris is acrually worked stone, such as the PCs sheltering under what is in fact an inverted stone staircase that survived the tumble down. The cold and the driving wind that batter the mountain are constant enemies more remorseless than any goblin warband more more heartless than the most flint-hearted dragon.

Inside is little better. The inisde of the ruins is littered with debris, and the ejecta produced by an active dragon. (This is assuming that like an owl, a dragon will cough up a pellet of undigestable material, rather than digesting everything it eats) Much of the stonework is damaged by the presence of a multi-ton lizard, doorways broken, floors weakened, and smaller rooms blasted to cinders to make sure no pesky dwarves were hiding within. Some of these rooms may be haunted by the ghosts of the dwarves who were indeed hiding in the room when the dragon flamed it.

The general feeling of the Hollow Mountain should be one of loss, sadness, and the inevitable passage of time. The dwarves are gone, and the stone splendor of their home has been sullied and despoiled by a dragon. Deeper in the ruins, evinced by a trail of massive doors that have been crushed open and collapsed walls is the corpse of the dragon itself perished by some unknown means. Surrounded by its gold, the mummy (not bandaged wrapped, but more freeze-dried) of the dragon lies dead on its pile of wealth.

Inspired by a blank spot, and The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

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