The Dunder Bridge Fort

“Once an ambitious king decided to expand his realm across the Dunder river into the untamed lands beyond. A bridge was built and a keep to protect it. Settlers were sent and new villages erected on the other side of the stream. But the Ork tribes beyond did not respond well to theft of their land.
The king’s colonies are all lost now and the keep was given up, when the guards tasked with defending it with their lives, commited mutiny and destroyed the bridge instead.”

This is one of my early Talespire builds. There’s a lot of room for improvement, but I learned a lot from making it. As so often it depicts a specific place from my homebrew D&D game world. This fort was given up about 200 years ago, after the bridge across the river was destroyed to avert an invasion. Which probably was for the best: The fort was never really designed to be a proper fortress. It was more like guarded toll station than anything else. Which is one reason why the guards opted for destroying the bridge instead of dealing with an army of orks. Their brutal commander had different plans, but had to barricade himself in his own office, when his underlings decided his pride was not worth dying for.

Now a group of adventurers may stumble upon the lost place or may have to fulfill a quest to retrieve something from it. In my own adventure there is a valuable bell made from a rare material at the top of the tower, which they have to get. Unfortunately a small warband of orks has secretly crossed the river and begun to repair the bridge with the help of several mistreated goblin underlings.

There are many possible solutions for this situation. The heroes could …

• … fight their way directly through (should be near impossibly hard)
• … resort to guerrilla tactics and use the ruins to their advantage
• … they could convince the mistreated goblins to aid them against the orcs or at least not to interfere when they fight them
• … they could just sneak past (difficult to get a heavy bell out of there unseen and unheard though)
• … they could make the occupants believe the place is haunted (it might actually be)
• … and besides all this explore the entire ruin, discover the lost treasury of the commander or encounter some other creatures.

And I am sure you’ll come up with more ideas of your own. If you use this map in your game, please let me know what went down.