Hunter's Down (DM Only)
The dead of both sides, the Hlarr and the Yhendorn, lie buried here together, watched over by a dozen baelnorn who sit unsleeping in the dark passages arguing over what the elves should have done. These undying ones are desperate for news of what has befallen since the Searing. They often freely give minor magical items to folk who find a way into the heart of the hill and try to answer their questions or recount events in Toril without offering any violence. They can also provide healing for the diseased and wounded and recharge most magical items. (This last is their preferred payment for information.) Everyone who has met the baelnorn has reached them by diving into the depths of the pool. A great hole in its limestone walls that swimmers can readily find opens into the tomb. A magical barrier holds back the waters from flooding the tomb passages, but living things can freely pass through in both directions.
The baelnorn can use their spells and the magical items stored in the tomb. The tomb contains many magical staffs and
rods, some of which unleash powers normally found in rings and wands in todays magic. The spell the baelnorn most often employ is cast whenever non-elves dig, burn, or use magic to scry or penetrate into the hill. It is a specialized summoning that instantly brings a crimson death mist from the nearby Glaun Bog to Hunters Down to attack the offenders.
The baelnorn can also enact a curse on all who defeat the mist and persist in disturbing the Down: a year-long ironguard effect that cannot be dispelled. Like the curse placed on those who disturb Grave Hollow in Archenbridge, the elves use this magic to keep their dead unmolested. Few adventurers dare risk a year of the inability to wear armor or use most tools or weapons, and fewer still can carry away metallic riches from a tomb if they cannot touch metal.
