Black Dwarf Mine

The Black Dwarf Mine was a mining and smelting operation run by Aldurghen Stormhammer and four of his dwarven associates circa the Year of Wild Magic, 1372 DR. They also had a lucrative side business in storing items that people wanted quickly hidden.

Location
The Black Dwarf Mine was located on and in a ridge in the low hills about 7 mi (11 km) east of Waterdeep. It was accessed by a gravel path that connected to the Run (a spur of the Trade Way that bypassed the big city and connected to the Long Road). Another path ran west over some hills to a limestone quarry.

Structure
The mine proper consisted of many tunnels dug into the western side of the ridge about mid-height or above. Mine tailings were used as gravel to pave paths from these tunnels down to the furnace or the tailings dump. The furnace was a circular shaft lined with firebrick topped by a chimney that stuck up out of the hillside. The chimney had an opening (the "maw") in the side where cartloads of ore, charcoal, and limestone were tipped in. A nearby spring drove a waterwheel bellows system with two keg-sized pistons that blasted air down into the furnace via tapering copper pipes. Down the hill was a large wooden shed that covered the entrance to the furnace's "hearth" where a few different-sized taps (made from clay plugs) were opened (about twice a day) to allow the molten iron to flow into small clay molds for making pots and pans or into a large half-cylinder trench (the "sow") in the sand that fed smaller molds (the "pigs"). The shed also supported a hook-and-pulley system for lifting the pigs and sows out once they cooled.

The only other building in the Black Dwarf Mine was another large shed that kept the charcoal dry and provided storage for a few carts and any other raw materials they needed. There were no living quarters as most civilized folk defined them&mdash;the dwarves slept with the products of their labor in one of the abandoned tunnels.