War of the Dwarves (Penny Blood Adventures) Hardcover – February 12, 2026

You cannot save everyone. The gods are watching to see who you try to save first.War of the Dwarves is a 5e-compatible campaign for 4–6 players, levels 5–11, designed to run in 10–14 sessions across three acts. It is the sequel to The Shattered Pact, published by Penny Blood Adventures.The heroes sealed the fissures beneath Durharthal. The physical prison holds. But the shockwave woke something older than kings, older than law, older than stone itself. Three Primordial Old Gods—Maelrith the Wind, Zuldred the Fire, and Thraenor the Stone—felt the prison shudder and saw their chance. They accuse the dwarves of breaking the ancient Pact of Stewardship: truth twisted into propaganda, sacred craft corrupted by industrial greed, load-bearing stone carved hollow for short-term profit. If the dwarves cannot prove they are still worthy stewards of the deep, the Primordials will crack the ice-seal and free Núrgrim, the Old Winter, to wipe the slate clean.This is the prelude to a God-War. Your players are the only thing standing between civilization and an eternal, corrective winter.King Durnor issues a Royal Charter naming the party Wardens of the Pact—not soldiers, but auditors, diplomats, and negotiators sent to argue with the raw forces of nature. Their mandate takes them to three great loci of power, each built around a specific dwarven failure. The Skybridge Spires, where Maelrith's storm chorus turns spoken oaths into weapons and a memetic contagion rewrites charters mid-sentence. The Glass Sunfield, a blinding desert of mirror arrays and combustion wells where Zuldred wakes as forges overproduce and the party must choose between saving caravans or saving the infrastructure that keeps a kingdom running. And the Crown of Spores, bioluminescent fungal mines where stone heals shut behind you, tunnels remember old paths, and Thraenor reclaims every vein the dwarves carved too deep.The moral engine is simple and cruel: you cannot save everyone. The adventure presents more crises than the party has time, spells, or supplies to solve. Save the workers or save the forge. Protect the caravan or stabilize the array. Collapse the shaft now and trap miners below, or keep it open and let the spores spread deeper. Every choice echoes forward. Every sacrifice is remembered—by the clans, by the Primordials, and by Núrgrim himself.The campaign uses a hidden Strain system tracked behind the screen. Players never see the number—they see the wind drowning out orders, furnace heat punching through wards, and tunnels sealing shut behind them. Strain climbs when they fail, when they choose greed, when they disrespect the domain. It drops only through genuine sacrifice. By the finale, the pattern of their choices determines which of three verdicts Núrgrim delivers: the Stewards, who chose life over profit and earn a sustainable golden age; the Bargainers, who cut messy deals and inherit a fragile, guilty prosperity; or the Breakers, who solved everything with force and survive in a world that resents their existence.Inside you'll find seven fully realized dwarven clans with competing interests, mottos, and breaking points. A triage system that ties humanitarian choices directly to political and divine consequences. Three acts with branching states—what you choose in the Spires reshapes the Sunfield, and what you sacrifice in the Sunfield determines your resources in the Crown. A narrative epilogue where Núrgrim judges the party not through combat but through the weight of every decision they made. Detailed encounter menus, DC guidelines, scaling options for Tier 2 and Tier 3 play, session maps, and safety tools.The finale is not a boss fight. It is a reckoning.Your players don't get to kill the Old Winter. They get to decide whether dwarven civilization deserves to survive it. Read more