Gnomengarde

The caves of Gnomengarde are carved into the base of a mountain southeast of Phandalin, around a narrow waterfall. The rock gnome wizards who occupy these caves form strategic alliances with their human and dwarf neighbors as needs warrant. Reclusive and secretive, the gnomes craft minor magic items and useful, nonmagical inventions to pass the time. In these endeavors, their failures outnumber their successes. They seldom stray far from home, subsisting largely on the mushrooms that grow on misty islands outside their caves.

Gnomengarde has two married kings who rule in tandem — Gnerkli and Korboz. Korboz recently lost his mind and is keeping Gnerkli as his prisoner. Their subjects don’t understand the nature of Korboz’s affliction, and are at a loss as to what to do. They wish no harm to befall either king, but they acknowledge that Korboz has become a danger to himself and others.

In addition to the danger posed by the mad king, two gnomes have mysteriously vanished within the last ten-day. No one except King Korboz knows that a shape-changing monster (a mimic) has crept into Gnomengarde and is feeding on the gnomes, changing its appearance as it makes its way through the complex. Korboz was attacked and almost killed by the creature, with that event inspiring his madness. He has sequestered himself and his beloved Gnerkli in their quarters because he doesn’t want the monstrous shape-changer to devour them. Korboz hopes the creature will tire of eating gnomes and leave. Providing Korboz with evidence of the mimic’s demise restores his sanity.

Gnomengarde Features
Gnomengarde’s caves are hewn from solid rock and share the following features.

Ceilings. Ceilings throughout are 7 feet high and flat.

Doors. Normal doors are made of wood fitted with rusty iron handles and hinges. Secret doors are made of stone and blend in with the surrounding stonework.

Light. All caves are illuminated by hanging oil lanterns attached to rope-and-pulley mechanisms that make it easy for the gnomes to lower the lanterns and refill them with oil.

Waterfall. The caves of Gnomengarde echo with the roar of the nearby waterfall. The sound is so loud that gnomes and visitors must shout to be heard unless there’s a closed door between them and the waterfall.

Quest Goals
To complete the Gnomengarde Quest, the characters must obtain at least one magic item from the gnomes. Of the items they can secure, only the hat of wizardry interests Townmaster Harbin Wester, who offers to buy it for 50 gp even though he knows no one who can attune to it. However, the gnomes won’t hand over any magic items until the characters speak to Fibblestib and Dabbledob in area G11.

Gnome-Made Magic Items
If the characters rescue Gnerkli and end Korboz’s madness, the grateful gnomes give them a clockwork amulet and pole of collapsing (from area G13). The characters also receive a gift from each king: a wand of pyrotechnics from Gnerkli and a hat of wizardry from Korboz. Give the players the Clockwork Amulet, Hat of Wizardry, Pole of Collapsing, and Wand of Pyrotechnics cards as their characters obtain and identify each item or they can reference them in the Magic Items Listing.

Arrival
A stream leads the characters to a pool fed by a waterfall that tumbles down the mountainside.

''You follow a stream uphill to the base of the mountain, where waterfall erosion has carved out a natural concavity. The roaring waterfall creates a cloud of mist as it plunges into a shallow pool of water, within which rise two small islands covered with two-foot-tall red, green, and purple mushrooms. Several cave openings overlook the pool from rocky ledges twenty to thirty feet above. The mountain blocks any sunlight from reaching this place.''

Gnomengarde has five cave entrances perched atop ledges with sheer, rocky slopes. A narrow footpath ascends the northeast slope, making it an easy climb to that cave entrance without a check.

Gnomengarde Roster
Twenty rock gnome recluses dwell in Gnomengarde, including King Gnerkli and King Korboz. The gnomes’ names and locations are described in the “Gnomengarde Locations” section.

Mystery Monster
There used to be twenty-two gnomes living in the caves, but a mimic devoured two gnomes — named Orryn and Warryn — in the past ten-day. The creature is currently disguised as a barrel in area G8, but it will devour more gnomes once its hunger returns unless it is dealt with. It can move around and adopt other disguises as needed, though its forms are limited to Medium objects such as chairs, large chests, lecterns, and weird gnomish inventions of the mimic’s size and mass. The mimic can also disguise itself as a door, a false section of wall, or a rocky bulge on the floor.

After speaking to Korboz and learning about the presence of a shape-changing monster, the characters’ primary goal should be to find and slay the creature. When it attacked Korboz, it looked like a 10-foot-square rug in the throne room (area G14), but it has since moved elsewhere and changed its appearance.

If pressed, the rock gnomes help the characters find the mimic by poking objects with nonmagical wands to see if they fight back. The gnomes aren’t adventurers, however, and they flee at the first sign of danger (real or imagined).

The mimic completely devours and dissolves its victims, leaving no trace behind and relocating after each kill. It won’t leave Gnomengarde of its own accord, as it’s taken a liking to the taste of gnome flesh.

If you want a more interesting antagonist, make the mimic one of the rare varieties that can carry on simple conversations in Common.

Wild Magic
Wild magic is a kind of magic that can’t be controlled, and Gnomengarde has long been a source of it. When a creature anywhere on the Gnomengarde map expends a spell slot to cast a spell of 1st level or higher, an additional effect might occur.

G1. Misty Pool and Mushroom Islands
The gnomes subsist on 2-foot-tall mushrooms that grow atop two small islands in the middle of this 3-foot-deep pool. The islands are perpetually shrouded in mist from the waterfall. Magic bestowed upon the islands by Gnomengarde’s first settlers causes the mushrooms to grow to abnormally large size. This same magic is the source of Gnomengarde’s wild magic.

The mushrooms come in three colors. Red mushrooms provide oil that the gnomes use to fuel their lanterns and other mechanical devices. Green mushrooms are ground into flour and used to make a tasty green bread. Purple mushrooms are crushed and fermented to make mushroom wine, which tastes as good as it sounds.

G2. Waterfall and Rope Bridge
The waterfall plunges 60 feet, its mist lightly obscuring a 35-foot-long rope bridge firmly anchored to 20-foot-high ledges. The bridge is difficult terrain (see the rulebook), and sags so that its midpoint is only 15 feet above the water. A creature that falls or jumps from the bridge takes no damage if it lands in the water, which is 5 feet deep in the area below the bridge. The barrel crab contraptions in area G6 are too clumsy to cross the bridge without getting tangled in its ropes.

G3. Dining Room
This room contains several dining tables and chairs sized for Small folk. A stout wooden cabinet against the east wall holds tin dishware and utensils.

G4. Kitchen
This kitchen is furnished with gnomes in mind, so everything is either close to the floor or readily reachable by tugging on an overly complicated rope-and-pulley mechanism. Five rock gnome recluses busy themselves here:


 * Joybell (female) uses a poker to stoke the fire of a hot iron stove standing against the east wall.
 * Dimble (male) uses a complicated press-like contraption to squeeze oil out of a big red mushroom and filter the liquid into four oil flasks.
 * Panana (female) stands atop a low table and uses a mechanical rolling pin contraption to kneed green bread dough. The severed caps of several big green mushrooms are set around her.
 * Uppendown (male) forms the dough into loaves of green bread, his tongue sticking out as he carefully shapes each loaf like a master sculptor.
 * Tervaround (female) teeters on a stool as she stuffs a big purple mushroom into a barrel, so that it can ferment and be turned into mushroom wine.

Characters who question the gnomes are urged to speak to Fibblestib or Dabbledob in the workshop (area G11), as they know more about what’s going on than any other gnomes in the complex. These gnomes won’t leave the kitchen, but they can point characters in the right direction. The gnomes avoid talking about the missing gnomes or Mad King Korboz.

G5. Pantry
This room is piled high with small wooden crates. Each contains loaves of green mushroom bread and other foodstuffs collected and kept by the gnomes.

G6. Barrel Crabs
Parked in alcoves in this otherwise empty room are two gnomish contraptions. Each resembles a crab with a barrel for a shell, six articulated metal legs, and a pair of forward-facing pincer claws. A hatch on the top of each barrel opens to reveal an interior compartment equipped with a small, leather-padded seat surrounded by levers, pedals, and gears. The barrels are not airtight.

The gnomes built these crablike contraptions to grip and move other objects, rather like crude forklifts. However, the contraptions are so clumsy that they are useless for delicate work. They are just small enough to navigate Gnomengarde’s 5-foot-wide passageways.

Each barrel crab is designed to hold a single Small humanoid, though a Medium humanoid can fit inside with some discomfort. While in the barrel with the hatch closed, a creature has total cover against attacks from outside the contraption. It can use its action to make the contraption scuttle across the ground at a walking speed of 15 feet or make one attack with its pincer claws.

G7. Autoloading Crossbow Platform
Bolted to the floor of this room is a rotating platform equipped with four heavy crossbows that reload automatically. Each crossbow comes with twenty bolts. Mounted above the crossbows at a height of 6 feet is a chair equipped with pedals that causes the entire contraption to spin counterclockwise, and with levers that reload and fire the crossbows.

A creature sitting in the chair can use an action to rotate the device up to 360 degrees counterclockwise and fire up to two of its crossbows in any direction.

Sitting in the chair when the characters first enter this area is the device’s inventor, a rock gnome recluse named Facktoré. When she sees strangers, Facktoré decides to test out the contraption on them. She stands down only when she or her contraption cease to function, or when she can no longer see any targets. Being deranged and utterly consumed by her work, she can barely string together a cohesive sentence, let alone advise visitors on where to go or whom to talk to.

G8. Mimic and Mushroom Wine
This room contains twelve forty-gallon barrels set into wide alcoves. Each barrel is secured by a wooden brace. The barrels in the south alcove have been tapped with wooden spigots. Two of those barrels are half full, and two are nearly empty.

Seven of the eight barrels in the north and east alcoves are untapped and full of mushroom wine. The eighth barrel is the mimic.

G9. Gnome Guard Post
Mist from the waterfall dampens this empty cave, which has a 10-foot-high ledge overlooking it to the south. The ledge can be reached by following the curved tunnel to the east, or by scaling the slick rock wall.

Two rock gnome recluses stand on the ledge — a female named Ulla and a male named Pog. When anyone enters the cave, Ulla calls out, “Who goes there?” in Gnomish, then Pog repeats the question in Common. Their orders are to “attack shape-changers on sight.” Since anyone might be a shape-changer, they attack anyone who can’t prove they are who they claim to be.

G10. Spinning Blades
This area is lightly obscured by mist from the waterfall. The larger eastern part of the room contains two rapidly spinning devices that look like turnstiles fitted with stacks of long, sharp blades spaced 1 foot apart. The northern turnstile spins counterclockwise, while the southern one spins clockwise.

Set into the south wall of the smaller western part of the room is a brass lever in the down position. Pulling the lever up causes the turnstiles to stop spinning, allowing safe passage through the chamber. The rock gnomes bypass this trap by using the mage hand cantrip to move the lever from the east doorway.

G11. Inventors’ Workshop
As the characters approach this area, they overhear an argument in Gnomish between two rock gnome recluses — a male named Fibblestib and a female named Dabbledob. As Gnomengarde’s foremost inventors, they are trying to dream up an invention that will cure King Korboz’s madness. Fibblestib’s proposal is a “sanity ray.” Dabbledob thinks that’s dumb, and wants to build something called a “straitjacket” instead. If the characters interrupt them, the gnomes realize that the new arrivals might have another solution, so they fill in what’s been happening and ask for any advice on how they might help cure Korboz and rescue King Gnerkli.

Fibblestib and Dabbledob consider the mystery of the vanishing gnomes of secondary importance to their mission of aiding their kings. They focus on Korboz and Gnerkli to the exclusion of all else, promising magical rewards in exchange for aid.

The workshop is cluttered with half-completed gnomish inventions that serve no purpose, as well as worktables strewn with tinker’s tools. A 10-foot-high ledge overlooks the room, set with a wooden pedestal on which sits a leather-bound book.

G12. Gnome Domiciles
The floor of this cave is strewn with the remnants of old campfires. Four side caves serve as sleeping areas, with five small wooden cots crammed into each one. Eight rock gnome recluses sleep soundly here when the characters first arrive, with two gnomes in each side cave — Caramip, Jabby, Nyx, and Quippy (females), and Anverth, Delebean, Pallabar, and Zook (males). Characters can move through the area without waking the sleeping gnomes, who defend themselves if attacked but pose no danger otherwise. They avoid talking about the recent troubles, but advise visitors to speak with Fibblestib and Dabbledob (see area G11), Gnomengarde’s two most gifted rock gnome inventors.

G13. Treasury
The door to this room is locked, and Fibblestib and Dabbledob (see area G11) carry the keys. The room contains a jumble of nonfunctional gnomish gizmos, as well as loose gears, twisted bits of metal, and other scraps that the gnomes use to cobble together new inventions.

G14. Throne Room
Situated atop a stone dais are two squat thrones made of scrap metal and sized for gnomes. A secret door in the north wall conceals a short tunnel leading to area G15. Only the gnome kings know of this secret passage.

G15. Gnome Kings’ Bedroom
King Korboz has locked himself and King Gnerkli in their bedroom, forgetting that there’s a secret door that others could find and use to gain entry. Only Korboz and Gnerkli have keys to the locked main door. If the characters knock on the door or otherwise announce their arrival, Korboz speaks to them from inside the room and warns of a “shape-changer” in their midst. Korboz doesn’t regain his senses until the characters assure him that the monster has been found and killed.

Korboz and Gnerkli are rock gnome recluses, each wearing a jagged metal crown and a patchwork cloak. Gnerkli is glued to a chair and restrained. Korboz carries a flask of solvent that dissolves the glue on contact. Their room contains all the trappings of a nicely appointed gnome bedroom.