Going to Stonefang Pass

I’m trying something different in the campaign: adding a published adventure to the mix. It wasn’t really planned, I just happened to be browsing the D&D shelf and spotted “Orcs of Stonefang Pass” on the shelf. It claimed to be an adventure for 5th level characters, which happened to be where the party was.

There are minor spoilers in the following material. Nothing my players don’t already know (we’re a couple of encounters in so far), but if you’ve never played Orcs of Stonefang Pass and would like to some day, you should stop reading now.

There were more reasons, why I ended up using this adventure. First of all, it actually fits very well into my campaign. In Stonefang Pass, the party is asked to enter an old mountain pass carved by giants, taken over by dwarves and now, infested with Orcs. The dwarves that ask the heroes for help had to seal off the pass, leaving many of their own at the mercy of the orcs. Can the heroes re-open the pass and help the dwarves make it safe again?

From a campaign perspective, a re-opened Stonefang Pass would mean an alternate route to Mortimer, which is where the heroes were heading anyway, in their quest to track down The Divine Order (TDO).

The Glintshield clan (the dwarves) would make an excellent ally for the party as friendly neighbors. Since the fighter of the group, Winston Mortimer, is actually the rightful heir to the lands that bear his family name. With recent rumors of curses, terrible monsters and the presence of TDO, having a bunch of dwarven allies close by could come in handy.

It was pure luck that the party was already heading towards a mountain pass, though I still had to make a few changes to fully incorporate the Stonefang Pass adventure. I decided that Winston knew about the Glintshield castle on the far side of the pass, having grown up not too far from it, he had always heard of the place as an abandoned ruin, located too far up the mountain side for anyone to wander into by accident. Winston did not know about the pass through nearby Stonefang mountain, because it had been unused for so long, the people of Mortimer had forgotten about its existence.