Barin's Stonehold

Barin's Stonehold

Cut into the southeast side of Barin’s Mesa (once called Kaffur Mesa before the coming of the dwarves), this small dwarven fortress was built by Barin and his kin – last survivors of the EarthShip Delmorak III. The EarthShip itself (by which they arrived in this world) was mortally damaged in the crossing through the centre of the worlds; and the remnants of it remain stuck in the deep caves far beneath the hold. Of the crew of the Delmorak III, only 17 survived the great war. Lacking the skills among them to repair the ship, they salvaged what they could and eventually destroyed the rest and built this hold above it.

The stonehold is built into the mesa starting at the base and climbing the thirty feet to the top, where it resembles a more traditional fortification. Two bastions jut out from the south side of the hold, and are used for travelling between the ground level and mesa-top levels of the hold. Stairs descend from the mesa level to the inside of the bastion – the floor on this mid-level is angled downwards to the south, so any rain that comes down the uncovered stairs continues to flow southwards and pours out of small waterspouts built into the south wall at floor level. The upper structure also has a solitary tree from the dwarven homeworld, a very slow-growing leafless “tree” that produces the occasional hard fruit that is poisonous to non-dwarves but provides two full days of food to a dwarf that takes the time to break it up into smaller meals.

In addition to the humanoid-scaled stairs leading up and down through the structure, there is a small set of tunnels that are used by some pets and familiars. The small tunnels emerge from the wall of the mesa near the top, and almost exactly below at the bottom of the mesa – and between these points they loop around and connect to several chambers within the structure proper. These tunnels were patrolled by two pairs of giant ferrets to keep small invaders out of the stonehold. The ferrets also hunted other vermin around the stonehold. With the dwarves now gone from the Stonehold, the ferrets have multiplied and can be a true hazard to low-level adventurers.

There are two access points from the Stonehold to the dungeons beneath it. The main on is a flight of stairs near the centre of the hold, and the second is a secret trap door that leads down from the western bastion “tower”. The dungeons will be explored in our next mpa

*The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 14,400 x 9,600 pixels (48 x 32 squares). To use this with most VTTs you would need to resize the squares to either 100 pixels (for 5′ squares) or 200 pixels (for the 10‘ foot squares that work with the furnishings as shown) – so resizing the image to 4,800 x 3,200 or 9,600 x 6,400 pixels, respectively.*

[https://dysonlogos.blog/2026/07/20/barins-stonehold/](https://dysonlogos.blog/2026/07/20/barins-stonehold/)