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, where a stream of spring water bubbles up from a crack in the floor and hisses as it descends 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 out of geomancy and stubbornness and years of listening to what the mountain was saying. An altar of living wood holds a leather-bound journal. A modest yurt of animal hides stands at the back. The runestones near the entrance are dark.

When the party arrived, a small muddy creature had declared itself Guardian and set up a trading post in the shaman’s absence. It had also stolen Durok’s runestones. Dr. Medicine traded a regular dagger — rebranded as the Dragonlord’s Dagger, Guardian of That Mountain Over There — for the Guardian’s one magical item, a sending stone. The Guardian departed to guard its new mountain. A bone necklace and some medicinal herbs also disappeared from the yurt while Kaarsk wasn’t watching.

Durok’s journal described a man who had found something in a nearby rockslide, started hearing voices, named a great beast Rimetalon, and begun sharing power with the local wildlife. The standing stones he had set to keep the voices at bay had failed. The last entry mentioned a stolen runestone and a lesson that needed to be taught.

The spring is still warm. Time spent here is equivalent to a long rest.