Editing Stonehell Campaign (section)

== Setting ==

=== Stonehell History ===
A century ago, the Sterling Potentate ruled the Westerlands with an iron fist. Through dint of military strength he manage to unite the various petty kingdoms and squabbling tribes from the shores of the Shallow Sea to the Redpeak Mountains. Neither a charismatic nor gentle leader, before long the Potentate's prisons were overflowing, his executioners unable to keep pace with the work the secret police brought them. And so, the "Stonehell" dungeon was born, in a remote western corner of the empire, a vast prison excavated by the prisoners themselves, who were told that in order to eat they must work. For years the population of the dungeon swelled as the Potentate eliminated political threats; it became its own ecology, one into which the guards of the prison were loathe to tread.


The subsequent coup d'etat came as a surprise to the Potentate, who fled east across the Swollen Sea with a few trusted advisors. The Potentate's palace was stormed, his police apparatus dismantled, and the doors to his prisons and torture chambers flung open, including the gates to Stonehell. What the victors found within the bowels of Stonehell they could barely speak of -- communities of prisoners turned cannibal, adapted to a life underground, the worship of blabbering, blasphemous deities. Only a mere handful of prisoners left willingly, and for nearly one hundred years the place has festered a half-days walk from the town of Concord, in the foothills of the Redpeaks. Since the fall of the Potentate the dungeon has been used as a base for orcs and bandits, as hidden laboratories for mad mages, as shrines for those who worship the squat, unsavory gods lurking in the shadows and dank caves that honeycomb the hills.


The prison itself is a half-days walk west of Concord, reportedly nestled in box canyon on the fringes of the Madifent Mire, a large swamp hugging the base of the mountains. Concord itself has a population of nearly three thousand souls, much shrunk from its heydey, when the prison was in operation and trade flowing through the Redpeak Pass. Now only a dozen or so caravans a year make the journey either way, the residents of Concord scratch out a living raising horses and cattle on the grasses of the foothills, or from small mines in the mountains, and, drawn inexplicably, as if by magic, parties of adventurers arrive looking to plumb the depths of the Stonehell dungeon.