In the Frostblade Mountains along the Tundra–Maleeri frontier, the remains of a tall tower jut up from the sheer face of fractured black cliffs. The tower’s round walls appear to have once been unbroken stone, melded with the mountain face as if they had been pushed up from the rock itself.
The tower marks the entrance to Gornath’s lair, a descending expanse of caverns and chambers hewn from the rock. The yuan-ti cultists named these ruins the Black Vault. Whoever built the tower and the complex beneath it did so in a past lost even to memory. However, Gornath has long since made this place his own, and every room and chamber now reflects the dragon’s avarice and madness.
The walls and ceilings of the complex have been repeatedly blasted by dragonfire. Coins and gems are strewn along every corridor, often fused into pools of expensive slag. Across the soot-caked stones, Gornath scribes long, rambling manifestos in Draconic, detailing his own twisted version of the history and destiny of his race. When what he wrote a day or a year before no longer suits him, he blasts it from existence and begins again.
Both Gornath and the yuan-ti have explored the complex to its lowest level, including the mysterious dead-end corridor found there. However, what neither the dragon nor his minions know is that this place was a shulassakar outpost in the dying days of the Age of Demons. During that conflict, it was the site of a fearsome battle between the minions of dragon and fiend— and a terror has remained trapped here ever since.
Deadly Guardians
Characters traveling through the mountains can make a DC 30 Spot check to note shadowy creatures soaring high overhead. Four phrenic manticores serve Gornath as bodyguards. When the dragon is in residence, all four take up perches in the crags above the ruined tower, attacking trespassers on sight. When the Madwyrm is abroad, two manticores travel at his side while the other two remain behind to deal with unwelcome visitors.
Keyed Locations
The following features correspond to numbered areas on the map.
- The Tower: The shattered tower rises like a spike from the steep slope of the mountainside. Ascending the cliff face requires Climb checks (DC 20 along the narrow switchback trail the yuan-ti have cut into the rock, DC 30 elsewhere). The 40-foot-wide tower is smooth stone from its slanted base to the top of its shattered walls, and it gleams with an obsidian sheen. The walls climb some 60 feet before they fracture, sheared off to points like jagged teeth.
The yuan-ti trail passes through an irregular arch cut in the tower’s base. Gornath and his dragon minions enter and leave through the tower’s open top. The interior is empty. No features, no upper floors, no fallen rubble offers any hint as to its original purpose. Around the inside base of the wall, a 3-foot-wide lip of stone circles the edge of a pit plunging into darkness. The walls of the pit have been gouged by the claws of climbing dragons, making descent relatively easy (Climb DC 15). After 60 feet, the pit opens up into a worked stone passageway leading away to the southeast. - Empty Bridge: A deep chasm is bisected by a series of white marble discs floating in midair. The 5-foot-wide discs are set 10 feet apart, but anyone investigating the edge of the chasm can note that whatever magical force holds the discs up also connects them with an invisible bridge that seems to run to the chasm’s far edge.
A successful DC 20 Spellcraft check reveals that strong conjuration magic fills this area; a result of 25 or more on the check determines that the aura fluctuates in a strange way. After countless centuries, the magical force has begun to fail. Creatures crossing the bridge must make DC 15 Balance checks every 10 feet in the open space between discs (jumping from disc to disc avoids any check). On a failed check, the faltering force gives way, pitching the traveler 80 feet to the chasm floor. A DC 25 Reflex save allows a creature to catch the edge of a disc, though a DC 20 Climb check is necessary to clamber back on.
Gornath and his draconic allies simply fly across the open space, but the dark floor of the rift is littered with the bodies of yuan-ti who were not light-footed enough to successfully make the crossing. - Empty Elevators: A 10-foot-wide hole in the floor of this high arched chamber drops 100 feet down a black stone shaft into an identical chamber below. Force-effect elevators in all these shafts once carried shulassakar between levels, but the magic here has long since faded. Gornath can easily climb up and down by squeezing through the shaft. The yuan-ti use the deep gouges of the dragon’s claws as handholds (Climb DC 15).
- Yuan-Ti Encampment: The main complex of the ruins has become a semipermanent camp for the yuan-ti sect led by Zrayanu. Between forty and one hundred yuan-ti lair here, depending on whether Gornath is in residence or not. A massive firepit fills a central great chamber, with various living quarters, kitchens, and shrines splitting off from there.
Zrayanu’s chambers are set above the main encampment atop a wide obsidian staircase. In a secret chamber beyond it, the yuan-ti leader keeps a choice selection of Gornath’s treasure. The dragon’s insanity prevents him from properly keeping track of his hoard, and Zrayanu has been stealthily pilfering from it for some time, even before he took over from his unfortunate predecessor. - Flame Bath: A flight of stairs leads down to a room whose floor is slick with oily ash—a flame bath chamber of Gornath’s own design. A 3-foot-wide chimney at the apex of the ceiling leads up to the open mountainside (Climb DC 20 to ascend the chimney; Climb DC 30 to descend the cliffs outside). On each wall, fixed decanters of oil (variant decanters of endless water) pour out geysers of lamp oil on the dragon’s command. When set alight, the oil bursts into an inferno that deals 10d6 points of fire damage to everything in the area. A scattering of charred bones within the ash hints that Gornath is less than cautious about which of his allies or minions he chooses to bathe with.
- Hoard Chamber: Gornath is consumed by a thirst for psionic power, and his hoard reflects that dark passion. Though coins, gems, and magic items can all be found here, the bulk of his hoard consists of spent psicrystals, fragments of deep crystal, and psionic weapons and relics. Gornath’s treasure pile appears exceedingly large for a dragon of his age, but close examination reveals most of it to be worthless crystal and stones that the dragon believes to have some sort of psionic resonance.
Gornath is unaware of the secret door in the far wall of the chamber. The dangerously steep staircase beyond (DMG 63) connects two ancient guardrooms that contain magic weapons, armor, or other treasure (DM’s choice). The secret door at the top of the stairs opens up into an unused chamber in the yuan-ti section of the complex.
Unlike many of the rogue dragons of Sarlona and Argonnessen, Gornath keeps no dragonshards in his lair. He claims that even the Khyber shards found in Sarlona reek of an “old magic” that burns him. He particularly hates Siberys shards, exploding in deadly anger when dragons sworn to his service are found to be secretly hoarding them. Gornath has been known to seek out and destroy Riedran merchant ships carrying Siberys shards from Xen’drik to Dar Jin. - Rakshasa Tomb: Behind 5 feet of magically strengthened stone (hardness 16, 1,800 hp, break DC 85), a maze of passageways hides a mighty rakshasa sorcerer entombed here since the Age of Demons. The walls, ceiling, and floors of the dead-end corridor are covered in glyphs resembling dragonmarks, but their meaning cannot be discerned even with magic. Because the walls are solid, a search for secret doors reveals no hint of the passageways beyond. However, a dwarf’s stonecunning ability can detect the magical strengthening of the walls in the corridor (Search DC 30).
Within the maze, 9-foot-tall statues of shulassakar stand in each intersection, requiring Medium creatures to squeeze past them. The halls are imbued with powerful magic designed to prevent anyone from seeking and rescuing the fiend. Each round, anyone in the maze must succeed on a Will save (DC 20 + 1 per previous check) or suffer an insanity effect as the spell. Affected creatures who would attack or flee from the caster of the spell attack or flee from the nearest statue instead. Any statue that is attacked immediately animates and responds in kind (treat as a stone golem, MM 136).
The maze is also filled with potent magic traps, many of which have weakened over the hundred millennia since they were cast. Such traps function erratically (activating only when disabled, producing a different magical effect than intended, and so on, at the DM’s discretion). Alternatively, spell traps might have mutated into animated magical forces akin to living spells.
Formidable draconic magic binds the rakshasa behind another 5 feet of magically treated stone, but this too has begun to fail. Although the creature remains tied to this place, it is far from powerless. Since Gornath’s arrival here, the fiend has been whispering to the dragon, subtly directing his madness. If its prison walls are breached, the rakshasa will have a powerful agent under its control, and an expanding cult behind which to conceal its own plots.