The Temple of Abbathor

A ruined dwarven settlement and temple southwest of Phandalin, behind a broken black-stone gate in a canyon — until Session 6, the dig site of prospectors Norbus Ithermel and Dazlyn Grayshard, who walked off it after the party lied to them about the haul. Dazlyn was dead on the road north within days; Norbus is in Phandalin, and nobody is digging here now.

The history: Abbathor, dwarven god of greed, grew displeased with his priests’ sacrifices. He buried the settlement in an avalanche — and transformed the surviving priests into the ochre jellies that blocked the dig. There was no known way to change them back. All three are dead now.

The layout

The temple loops back on itself. Every hidden passage the dwarves built here eventually comes home to the main chamber — Dax proved it by opening a seamless stretch of wall at the end of a black corridor and stepping straight back out beside the altars.

• Main chamber — four pillars and the altars. One pillar base hid the gemstone coffer.
• The rubble hallway (north secret door) — where the last jelly died, and where a third secret door sits in the wall beyond it. Rut, in rat form, found it and could not shift it; it opens easily for anyone with a shoulder.
• The eastern passage — beyond that third door, running straight to a cave-in floor to ceiling, with a plain door on either side.
  • The crypt: a skeleton half-buried under fallen stone, wearing Abbathor’s holy symbol. Hamish took it.
  • The vestry: two dwarves laid out in red vestments (rotted armor, spider-filled robes), an empty stone font dry for centuries, and a secret door behind it onto the sleeping chamber — three bed frames, a body crushed under collapsed ceiling, and a longsword that never rotted.
• The south passage (south secret door) — dead-ends in rubble. A dead dwarf lies off to one side with a few coins scattered around him, and the temple ledger half-buried beside the body.
• The hidden chamber — behind the rubble at the end of a dead branch, reached in Session 7 by Rut in the shape of a giant badger. See below.

The hidden chamber

Opened in Session 7. It is round, and holds two pedestals, each of which once carried a statue cradling a large gem.

Two pedestals, two statues: it fits the sacrifice chamber the ledger describes, and the party has been treating it as that room. Nothing in the chamber says so outright — no inscription, no name, no altar — so the match is inference, not proof.

• Lifting a gem detonates its statue. Thom took the emerald off the left-hand statue with a Mage Hand and it burst — 20 piercing to Rut, 10 to Barnaby. The gem itself was untouched.
• It had happened before. The right-hand statue was already in pieces when the party crawled in, scattered in a wide radius. After the blast, the fresh rubble lay in exactly the same pattern. Somebody tried this centuries ago and nobody learned anything from it.
• The pedestals are the lock. Under the base of each, sunk into the floor, is gearing — Hamish found it in the wreckage and worked both mechanisms until they clicked.
• Behind the wall is an alcove the size of a closet, vented to the surface (which is where the draft that gave it away comes from), holding a pedestal, a small locked chest, and two miniature idols of the temple’s door-statues bent in prayer toward it. Bean picked the lock.

Inside the chest: 150 gp, 70 tarnished silver, and the final offering note — written in Common, which nobody has explained.

What is still missing

The chamber has been found and emptied, and it does not answer the question. A hundred and fifty gold in a collection box is not generations of offerings — that was the last of the takings, not the treasury. Nowhere in the ledger does it say where the hoard actually went; the entries only insist it was invested.

Two cave-ins in the eastern passage remain unexcavated, packed tight and too large to shift by hand, and the prospectors who might have dug them out are one dead and one grieving in Phandalin.

Field notes

• Slashing damage splits the jellies into more jellies — and so does lightning. Barnaby’s breath weapon made a second one out of the last. Thrown weapons and bludgeoning work. Ask Dax’s longsword.
• A gold necklace pulled from a dead jelly’s remains bears an inscription in ancient Dwarvish over an illegible nameplate: “This is what happens to those who displease me.” Rut carries it.
• A holy symbol taken from the crypt skeleton — a small jeweled dagger on a silver chain — reads, in Dwarvish runes, “Greed is good.” Hamish carries it.
• A coffer of rubies, emeralds, and topaz was hidden in a pillar base. Was.
• The entrance hall is a funnel: attackers come through one and two at a time, and the pillars inside give archers full cover. Seven orcs learned this in Session 6.