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questing gm
Master of Realmslore
Malaysia
1921 Posts |
 Posted - 27 Feb 2026 : 17:14:58
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On image of Hundelstone in Magic: The Gathering
The Kobold Bard Role icon, Patron of The Realms — 23/2/2026 11:15 PM
Howdy Ed. I was ecstatic to see ‘Lost Lore of the Realms #41’ last week as it filled in a lot of the blanks as to what I was looking for in defining Hundelstone and what it looks like in the present day. The answer was thorough enough to paint a clear image the community, some of its standout features, locations adventurers can pass through, and even a few potential quest prompts.
I did have one more Hundelstone related question though. In 2021 Wizards of the coast released the ‘Adventures in the Forgotten Realms’ deck for M:TG. Card #274 was called Mountain and had a caption referring to Hundelstone. It read: “You meant to simply rest in Hundelstone, but the miners have told you stories of whispers in the dark below.”
The picture of this card features on the FR wiki as being Hundelstone and it depicts a long causeway well over the ground that leads into a mountain. Much further up the mountain is a series of buildings that seem carved out of the mountainside itself. There also appear to be ramps (or maybe aqueducts?) that protrude from the sides of the mountain.
The image I get from Volo’s Guide to the North, Storm King’s Thunder, and your posts both about the 1360s DR and 1501 DR paint a very different picture than that from what I can tell. Do you think that image is supposed to be Hundelstone? Just the mines? Or do you think the caption and the actual image are unrelated?
If unrelated do you think it better suits another area or hold in the Realms?
Ed Greenwood Role icon, Father of the Realms — 25/2/2026 1:22 PM
The image on the Magic card is Mount Hundelstone, the “Haunted Mountain,” and must depict that peak as it was before 1041 DR (when it was abandoned), as there are “evertorches” (actually oil-fed, lit braziers) burning all along the causeway.
The mountain was greatly hollowed out, and hosted a gnome city with rich mines (and forges, clustered around a magma flow) beneath it, and a deep lake of oil not far away below, that was abandoned after the second orc horde invaded it in 1041 DR. This befell only six years after a first orc horde had slaughtered more than sixteen thousand gnomes, leaving a paltry four thousand to carry on. When the second horde came, the Hundel gnomes chose a fighting withdrawal, and survival, over certain annihilation if they stayed and tried to hold on; the horde numbered upwards of thirty thousand.
The gnomes lost their home, but got their revenge: one of their greatest sorcerers, Rithfaund Ohlvarth, sacrificed his family heirloom, the Ring of Orauntar—and summoned the ancient white dragon Orauntarlivorerauntarr to fight for him. The Great White Wyrm waited until the orcs had pillaged the mountain and flooded forth to stream south down out of the mountains, then fell upon them to bite and rake and breathe, until that horde was no more. Orauntar crashed down out of the skies on its way back to its lair (far to the east along the Spine of the World), and died of its fall, and its plunge happened because of the wounds the orcs had given it—but it had slaughtered twenty-eight thousand orcs earlier that day.
Today, Orauntar’s Bones is a legendary site, in a remote, frozen mountain gorge, and Mount Hundelstone is reputedly haunted—by the undead remains of dragons, wyverns, nagas, and other fearsome creatures; some fell magic within it, perhaps wielded by someone or something sentient (a lich?) is creating undead.
The peak stands well east of the settlement of Hundelstone in its mountain pass (that carries the Ten Trail through the Spine of the World), and although the orcs reportedly ate everything edible and carried away all finished tools and weapons, the riches of the gnome city still lie in vaults and small family coffers inside the mountain, left behind as the Hundel gnomes fled in haste.
The dwarf adventurer Belargarr Stonejack disappeared in 1486 DR, while on an expedition to find the forges of Hundelstone, and shortly thereafter the undead of the mountain started to venture forth; some dwarves and gnomes believe they proliferated until—like many orc hordes—the mountain could no longer hold them, and they “leaked forth across the peaks.” Their presence these days keeps orcs, and raiding and forgaging bands of bugbears, hobgoblins, and goblins, too, well away from the area—which is why the settlement of Hundelstone, well to the west in its mountain pass, has been able to flourish.
If you stand in that settlement today and look east, you can JUST see the top of Mount Hundelstone, between the summits of three nearer, looming-larger peaks, but there’s nothing remarkable about the view. The buildings carved out of the southern face of the mountain are hidden from you behind the great bulk of Skorlfang, the Giant’s Forefinger (you can see some of the other Giant’s Finger peaks in the background of the Magic card painting). |
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Ed Greenwood from Greenwood's Grotto
