We continue on through the Black Crags, moving west toward the Desert of Spectres. We arrive at Din Borim, an abandoned dwarven stronghold. The front of it is a giant stone dwarven face with a drawbridge. It is currently sealed shut.

We search around for the mechanism to get inside but it takes a very long time. Brokk finally finds it, which is a small rock to push and there is a loud grinding sound as the dwarven face slides into the ground to reveal the opening.

We head inside and it features the standard dwarven architecture, and it smells terrible here. There braziers along the walls and empty weapon racks. Apparently nothing has come through here in quite some time. At the far end there is another stone door.

We head through the door and see flickering light like firelight up ahead. Vedasi heads up the stairs to take a look and he sees a room with a large table in the center. Two huge creatures are here, and they look like centaurs with the torso of a dwarf instead of a human on them.

Tobruk and Brokk realize that these things are called Bull Centaurs, they are a form of Chaos Dwarf. We defeat them after a brief combat and check the room. Jean looks at some of the tapestries and sees that the ones honoring the god Grugny have been defaced.

We head through the rest of the lair and see a kitchen, barracks, a forge, and finally a bedroom. Here we see a box here labeled “Feldbar  Grimhammer, Forgemaster of Din Borim.” Inside are mastercraft forging tools. Clearly this dwarf was a runemaster.

Jean finds a loose brick and behind it is a key. There is a metal door nearby that the key opens and this is the armory. Some weapons are in here which we take. A switch opens and a breastplate of gromril (star-metal) is revealed. A rune is inscribed on it, which says “fortitude.” Brokk dons the armor which increases his toughness quite a bit.

We continue looking through the lair and find a barracks with three beds that were slept in, so we think that we have gotten all of them. We head back to the main room and suddenly see the tapestries moving. From behind them pop out four chaos dwarves — clearly we didn’t think to look behind! Some of them have blunderbuses. One runs up and fires off toward everyone except Tobruk. A rain of metal shards and old chicken bones strike them but no one is seriously injured.

Brokk comes forward and throws a bola at the man which wraps him up. Another dwarf comes out of the tapestry and he is wearing a pointy hat like the pope. He starts muttering a spell but it backfires on him.

After defeating the dwarves, we check out the space where they came out of. It is a secret door and there is a huge amount of treasure here. There are 14,000 gold crowns and gems worth between 22-25,000 crowns. We also find three weapons – a hammer of returning, a bow and a sword.

Decked out in our new vestments, we spend the night in the stronghold.