Sarbreenar – Guardian of The Elvenblood Pass

ARBREENAR still guards the Elvenblood Pass – a scene of many a bloody slaughter and rumoured to be the repository of many a treasure hoard.

This rugged mountain pass carries the High Trail through the mountains between Ravens Bluff and Sarbreenar. It has always had a reputation for danger because of its frequent rockfalls, hunting stirges, wyverns, and other mountain-dwelling predators. More than a dozen narrow ravines branch away from the main pass. All of these are thickly cloaked in trees and undergrowth. Bandits and many flightless monsters make their lairs in the ravines. Rumour insists that treasures looted from unfortunate travellers are buried in the ravines or just stuffed into fissures in the rocks. Legends also tell of at least two great caches.

One is the Coffin of Naer Tlarra, a long-dead human wizard. The sepulchre is said to contain his spell books, wands, a staff and a twelve-pointed magical crown that allows the wearer to use the powers of all magical rings placed on its spires as if they were worn directly, overcoming the usual limit of wearing only two rings at one time. The tales say that a ring rests on each point, and at least two of them possess rare and unusual powers.

No tale hints that Naer is undead. He lived almost a thousand years ago in what is now Chessenta. His 10-foot-long stone coffin is said to be guarded by several layers of spells and guardian creatures. It is probably also buried or overgrown.

The other great treasure reputed to be hidden in or near the Elvenblood Pass is the Royal Treasury of Westgate, stolen from King Glaurauth ‘the Great’ in the days when that city was the northernmost human settlement in the western Inner Sea lands.

The Glaurauth’s wizards traced the thieves and gave hot pursuit. The thieves fled by ship to an anchorage at what is now Procampur. From there, they hastily took their spoils north into the mountains, but the court wizards of Westgate slew them one by one with their spells.

Troops from Westgate also followed the thieves and caught up with them somewhere in the pass. The thieves set off avalanches and mounted ambushes, but their pursuers outnumbered them 30 to 1, and the wizards’ spell attacks made the outcome inevitable.

The thieves perished, but the spells and the clash of arms did not go unnoticed. A thousand orcs streamed out of the ravines and from caves high above the pass.

The orcs fell upon the victors, and the pass ran red with blood. To this day, travellers can see a grisly relic of one wizard’s last stand: He sacrificed his life to power a mighty spell that whirled a dozen orcs 40 feet up into the air and spun them in a circle. The orcs died, and their bodies have long-since crumbled to bone fragments and powder. This debris, however, still circles endlessly above a ledge overlooking the midpoint of the pass.

The forces of Westgate were doomed, but they held out long enough to hide their riches. There were said to be six large strongchests and almost 20 smaller coffers and caskets containing necklaces and gems; a collection of fanciful, filigreed, and jewelled masks; at least four gem-laden crowns, a ceremonial chalice; and a sceptre said to have magical powers as well as displaying three rubies all as large as a man’s fist.

A wizard found dead at a party thrown by a visiting Cormyrean noble in Ravens Bluff six winters ago was wearing a gem-encrusted mask that sages agree is probably from the court of Westgate. But they all stress that it might not have been part of the stolen royal regalia; many nobles of Westgate had their own impressive masks made. With the changing themes and fashions of the festivals, craftsmen were forever tearing apart masks to make up new ones from the same materials.

Credit: This history has been re-written from a Sarbreenar perspective but great deal of the material comes from the wisdom of the well travelled mage – Elminster, as passed on to his friend, Ed Greenwood to be recorded in Polyhedron, the Forgotten Realms boxed set and other publications by TSR and Wizards of the Coast.

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