Durok's Sacred Spring
Warm. That is the first thing: impossibly, defiantly warm. A tunnel through frozen rock opens into a cave where green moss covers the walls, and a stream of spring water bubbles up from a crack in the floor and hisses as it runs down toward lava far below. In Icewind Dale, in a winter that does not end, this place should not exist.
Durok made it. That is what the spring is: proof that the cold can be pushed back. He built it from geomancy, stubbornness and years of listening to the land. Around it is his oasis, hot ground where pembelon from Chult grow, dense round melons that radiate heat when cut. He brings bags of them to Coldpeak by wolf sled. Getting them to survive open snow is the problem he hasn’t solved yet. The oasis and his cold-hardy vegetables are a large part of the reason the Coldpeak still eat.
He lives out here, away from the camp, and comes in when he’s needed. Time spent at the spring is equivalent to a long rest.
The oasis is part of the shared camp now, but it’s Durok’s, and he runs it. See The Camp.
Before the Reweave — In the unwoven, the party found the spring empty. Durok was missing, and his runestones had gone dark. A mud mephit, Clod, had set up a trading post in his absence, and Dr. Medicine traded him a dagger and a title, Guardian of That Mountain Over There. Durok’s journal told of something found in a rockslide, voices, a beast he named Rimetalon, and a last entry about a lesson that needed teaching. The Reweave rewrote this. Memories of it surface as half-rumor, not error.