Glorming Pass

HE wild mountain pass between Dragon Falls and Sevenecho is less used than Elvenblood Pass further to the west. Named for a local orc chieftain – a hero to his kind – who fell fighting in the pass, it is still a dangerous place today. Still, it sees a good deal of traffic, as it carries the North Road through the broken land between Dragon Falls and Sevenecho.

Glorming Pass is haunted by ‘The Phantom Knights’ ghostly horsemen in full plate armour who gallop spectral mounts the length of the pass, lances lowered. They sound solid and look real, turning their closed helms to face nearby living beings as they pass. They ride right through any that bar their way or simply fail to get out of the path in time but do no harm to those they pass through, except to confer a momentary chill and a longer period in which the touched being glows with a pale blue faerie fire radiance. No one knows who the Knights are or were, and they ignore all magic and attempts to influence or control undeath. Their touch causes all magical dweomers to glow a flickering ruby-red (revealing hidden or disguised magical items), and this has on occasion drawn attention to magic fallen by the roadside – usually on the corpse of someone orcs have slain.

Orcs are numerous in the mountains around the pass; merchants are advised not to attempt passage without numbers sufficient to give battle if need be. Sites for ambushes and deliberate rockfalls may be far fewer than in Elvenblood Pass, but the orc patrols are heavy and monsters of all sorts are frequent. At least one authority (Riliyyn Scantshar of Sevenecho) believes some evil power, perhaps a wizard, lich, or even an alhoon (illithilich) dwells in the peaks near the pass and has placed a deepspawn in the area to generate monsters and discourage intruders. This hidden lair, if it exists, may have powerful magic among its treasures. Other sages believe the deepspawn guards a fortress built around a gate leading to the demiplane of Ravenloft or another world entirely.

Whatever the truth about Glorming Pass, the orcs who swarm in the mountains around it have taken a considerable amount of treasure from unfortunate travellers over the years. Some at least must remain in the orc cavern-lairs in the vicinity. 

From The Everwinking Eye: Treasures of the Vast, Part Two by Ed Greenwood (Polyhedron #89, November 1993) as revised in The City of Ravens Bluff.

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