Urmon the Architect

Dwarf mage · Builder of the Forge of Spells

First met	His temple, after the mists took Phandalin
Found in	Diamabel's Domain of Dread
In life	Wave Echo Cave
Fate	Defeated by Mormesk. Imprisoned. Still here.

The dwarf who built the Forge of Spells, and never once got to use it.

Urmon lived and worked in Wave Echo Cave generations ago, when it was a working mine and not a tomb. He was a mage of real skill and real ambition, and that combination is what Diamabel came looking for.

The vision

An angel came to Urmon in a vision. It brought plans for a forge that could create magic items — power on a scale nobody on the Sword Coast had ever held — and it asked for nothing in return.

No price. No bargain. No strings attached.

Urmon believed it, and started building.

Mormesk, a fellow wizard in the cave, did not. He had no counter-evidence and no vision of his own; he simply did not accept that something offering that much would want nothing. The more Urmon built, the louder Mormesk got.

Urmon built anyway.

The lair under Tresendar Manor

The Forge's construction produced magical byproducts that had to go somewhere. Urmon dug a lair beneath Tresendar Manor in Phandalin to serve as a vent.

The party found it in Session 5 — by accident. Having taken the deed to the manor after clearing out Glasstaff and the Redbrands, they were building a brewery when something broke in through a forgotten tunnel. The minotaur had been sealed in that lair since construction. Alongside it stood a helmed horror — a construct carrying a fragment of Urmon's own spirit, left behind to guard the work.

The battle he lost

Mormesk eventually stopped arguing. He raised an army of orcs and brought it into the cave, and the battle that followed killed the dwarves, the orcs, and both wizards. Urmon died with the Forge unlit and unfinished.

Death was not the punishment. Diamabel took him, and has kept him ever since, sealed in a temple inside the Domain of Dread — an architect locked in a room, with nothing to build.

Mormesk was bound too, in a different way. He rose as a zombie lord in the cave, tasked with keeping the Forge dark. He managed it for generations.

What he told the party

When the party activated the Forge of Spells, the mists came for Phandalin and folded it into the Domain. Urmon's temple surfaced with it, and he was waiting.

He told them plainly that they had made a grave mistake. He also told them it could be undone.

The three anchors

Over long years of imprisonment, Urmon learned how Diamabel holds this place together: three anchors, one behind each of the three realms reflected in the swirling mirrors of his temple.

Destroy all three, and the bonds between Phandalin and the Domain of Dread break.

The Three Anchors

Realm	Anchor	Status
Bellhollow	—	[In progress]{.pill .warm}
Emberdale	—	[Unknown]{.pill .unknown}
Fetchford	—	[Unknown]{.pill .unknown}

Emberdale and Fetchford were only names until recently — the party turned up vague references to both on tablets in the Surveyor's Sepulcher. Nobody has been through those mirrors yet.

Open threads

• Urmon has been in that temple a very long time. He wants out, and he has not said what he expects in return for the map he's drawing.
• Mormesk was right about the consequences, and the party killed him for saying so.
• The helmed horror carried part of Urmon's spirit. There is no reason to assume it was the only piece he left lying around.