Most of this was taken directly from the guide in the Hammerfast supplement.  I just want to paint a picture of the town that this campaign will start in.

History walks the streets of Hammerfast in the form of the dead, the dwarves and orcs who died in this place more than a century ago. They are now ghosts consigned to wander Hammerfast’s streets until the end of days. Hammerfast was once a necropolis, a collection of tombs where the dwarf lords interred their people. As the dwarves’ wealth grew, their burial chambers changed from simple stone sepulchers to lavish treasure vaults filled with the material wealth garnered over a lifetime.

Hammerfast transformed from a graveyard into a storehouse for treasure, and thus it became a target. A hundred years ago, the Bloodspear orc tribe conquered the necropolis but gained little from it.  The orcs killed the priests and warriors tasked with guarding Hammerfast and started looting the place, but the dwarves; burial chambers yielded their treasures grudgingly. The necropolis held street after street of unmarked tombs, some riddles with traps, many empty, and only a few containing great treasure. The orcs suffered great losses to the defenses of Hammerfast and, after butchering its guards and capturing a few of its treasures, they turned their attention to easier targets and other locations.

In time, the dwarves returned to Hammerfast. Due to the fall of the Nerath Empire, the citadels of the dwarves were broken, famine and plague grew thick across the land, and monsters and raiders prowled freely. In the face of such chaos, the dwarves made a fateful decision. Why waste fortifications on the dead? They had no use for it. Thus, Hammerfast was transformed into a town of the living. It has since grown into te largest and richest settlement in the eastern portion of the Nentir Vale.

Yet although Hammerfast has changed, its past lingers on. The remaining sealed tombs stand untouched on pain of death by decree of the Town Council. Ghosts still walk the streets, some of them orc warriors slain in the Bloodspears’s attack, others priests of Moradin or the necropolis’s doomed guardians, and even a few of them dwarves laid to rest here long ago.  Such creatures enjoy full citizenship in Hammerfast, as long as they observe its laws. In a sacred compact with Moradin and Gruumsh, the town’s founders agreed to respect the dead and defend their resting places in return for the right to settle here.

Welcome to Hammerfast!

• Hammerfast is a town where the living dwell among the dead. The buildings are tombs and sepulchers, cleared of rubble and refurbished to serve as homes and businesses.
• Some of the tombs remain sealed. Their treasures are a powerful lure for adventures, but raiding such a tomb is punishable by death. In some of the inhabited tombs, secret doors to forgotten passages and chambers await discovery.
• The dwarves must endure the presence of orcs. As part of the divine compact that created the town, Gruumsh demanded that his dead be honored, too, by a temple devoted to his power.

• Worshipers of Gruumsh are not to be attacked or detained within the town as long as they do not commit acts of violence against Hammerfast’s residents.
• Any priest of Gruumsh in the own must aid in its defense it it comes under attack.
• The ghosts that dwell in Hammerfast are to be left alone, as long as they do not attack the living.
• The temples of Moradin and Gruumsh are sacred ground. If either is attacked by the other, the gods will intervene.

Feb 29, 2012 -- 5:34AM, Cailte wrote:

I notice under your avatar the DDI icon, is this incorrect? Do you not have a subscription anymore?

Your races coment confuses me a little, there are something like 35 standard races in 4E now, 7 variations on those races (mostly of elves and dwarves) and 8 monster manual races. What exactly do you mean by standard?

I do still have an insider subscription, I just mainly use the physical books that I have on hand.

I guess that standard may have been the wrong word to use.  I'm fine with all the variations of elves, dwarfs, humans, tieflings, dragonborn, eladrin, genasi, hafling, half-elf, half-orc, mul, orc and shadar-kai.

I think that I would allow duregar since it will be focused on dwarfs and I'm planning a small excursion into the underdark at some point.  This is also the reason that I won't allow drow since the PC will be fighting them eventually.

I do not want bladelings, bugbears, bullywug, changeling, deva, drow (even though we are in FR), githyanki, githzerai, gnoll, goblin, goliath, hamadryad, hobgoblin, kalashtar, kenku, kobold, longtooth shifter, minotaur, pixie, razorclaw shifter, revenant, satyr, shade, shardmind, thir-kreen, vrykola, warforged and wilden.

Feb 29, 2012 -- 6:52AM, EDTA wrote:

Looks interesting.

Do have a quick question about the character generation regarding ability scores. We are to use Array 1, and then you said that the +2 bonus goes anywhere. Does this replace the normal ability score adjustments for race?

As in, rather than an elf getting +2 to Dexterity and their choice of Wisdom or Intelligence, they only get a single +2 bonus to apply anywhere, like a human?

No, they would get both.  I just ment to apply the array, and then apply the racial bonuses like normal.