The Icewind Dale Trilogy

The Icewind Dale Trilogy is a fantasy work by R. A. Salvatore, set in the Dungeons & Dragons-based Forgotten Realms setting.

Works included

 * 1) The Crystal Shard — This book tells the story of the battle between the Ten Towns (located in Icewind Dale) and Akar Kessel, a mage aided by the crystal shard named Crenshinibon. It also explains how Drizzt, Bruenor, Cattie-Brie, and Regis met Wulfgar.
 * 2) Streams of Silver — Tells the story of the journey that Drizzt, Bruenor, Regis, and Wulfgar set upon to search for Mithral Hall, Bruenor's boyhood home. This is the first novel in which Artemis Entreri appears.
 * 3) The Halfling's Gem — This is the story of Wulfgar and Drizzt's journey to rescue Regis, who was captured by the hired assassin Artemis Entreri. Entreri's employer was Pasha Pook, a very powerful Pasha in Calimport (the capital of the empire of Calimshan), who wants revenge for an enchanted ruby that Regis stole.

The Crystal Shard
Even in Icewind Dale, Drizzt was not fully accepted, except by the dwarfs whom he had eventually befriended. He roamed the tundra, hunting down yeti and giants that threatened the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale. When the barbarians that were the native people of the Dale banded together to slaughter the people of Ten Towns, whom they viewed as invaders, Drizzt, with his drow stealth and ranger's knowledge of the terrain, was able to discern their plans and relay the information to his friends Regis and Bruenor. Regis, on the council of Ten Towns, used persuasion and a magical ruby pendant to convince the stubborn leaders of the towns to work together to thwart the barbarian attack. Even with the aid of his magical pendant, Regis only barely managed to sway the stubborn Kemp of Targos, one of the greatest military commanders of Ten Towns.

Because of the warning and their unified efforts, Ten Towns and the dwarfs successfully repelled the barbarian attackers, decimating the proud warriors. Drizzt fought in the battle, personally meeting the barbarian king, Heafstagg, in combat. Drizzt wounded Heafstagg many times, including a stab to the stomach and a slash across the abdomen that should have been fatal. But Drizzt himself was wounded, and Heafstagg escaped and survived. During this same battle, Bruenor met a young barbarian standard bearer, who broke the shaft of his banner over the dwarf's head. Bruenor, unfazed, slammed the youth with his shield, rendering him unconscious. After the battle, Bruenor saved this same youth from being killed in cold blood by the townspeople, taking the young man, Wulfgar, son of (the late) Beornegar into his care. Bruenor also defended the wounded and unconscious Drizzt, slamming Kemp to the ground and breaking the nose of his Lieutenant when he found them kicking the injured drow. Bruenor told the people of Ten Towns, quite truthfully, that if not for Drizzt Do'Urden, they would even now be lying dead. After this, Drizzt found more acceptance in Icewind Dale, even respect.

Five years passed, with Wulfgar indentured to the dwarves. Bruenor taught him to smith and mine, and came to love him like a son. Though Wulfgar originally resented the dwarves and his indenture, he came to respect and even love Bruenor, like the father that had died years past.

During this same time, the failed wizard Akar Kessel, left to die in the Spine of the World, found Crenshinibon, the Crystal Shard, a magical, sentient crystal with the ability to lend power to its wielder, make tower sanctuaries in the likeness of itself, and insinuate itself into the minds of others, including that of its wielder. Crenshinibon, obsessed with gaining power, twisted Akar Kessel's mind to get him to do its will. Kessel, with no idea that he was being controlled, decided to conquer Icewind Dale for his own. He enslaved the goblins and orcs of the nearby mountains, building them into his own army, their wills completely destroyed by Crenshinibon. He even managed to gain control of Heafstagg, and through him the tribes of barbarians. He also acquired the services of a balor named Errtu to be his general, though it was far more interested in sticking around long enough to get his hands on Crenshinibon than anything else.

Near the end of Wulfgar's indenture, Bruenor forged Aegis-fang, the magical warhammer, for his adopted son. He then took Wulfgar to be trained in the ways of battle, choosing Drizzt as the young man's instructor. Wulfgar was ambivalent when he saw that his teacher was a drow, but quickly came to respect and admire the dark elf. Drizzt turned the young man into a formidable warrior. The two of them took out an entire lair of verbeeg (the least of the giant species, around a height of ten feet), led by a frost giant named Biggrin with only the help of Guenhwyvar. Wulfgar then left to hunt down a white dragon, Icingdeath. Drizzt tracked him, and the two of them killed the dragon. Drizzt found a scimitar in the treasure hoard, and took it for his own, naming it after the dragon.

As Akar Kessel moved in on Ten Towns, his armies sweeping aside the disorganized defense with little trouble, Wulfgar took the horns of Icingdeath and challanged Heafstagg for kingship. He won the challenge, killing the old king. Drizzt, sensing the demon Errtu, and recognizing the balor from his days in Menzoberannzan, called the demon and faced it alone with Guenhwyvar. After a battle, and the aid of the fire-banishing properties of the scimitar Icingdeath, he managed to defeat the demon, banishing it to the abyss for one hundred years.

After defeating the demon, Drizzt used his stealth and Guen's unnatural eyes to find his way into the Crystal Tower, Cryshal-Tirith, where he fought his way past Akar Kessel's orcs and trolls to face the wizard himself. The wizard, sure of victory, imprisoned the drow in a cage of magical light, and taunted him with images of the barbarians joining the battle for Ten Towns, thinking that Heafstagg sill led them. However, Wulfgar led his people not against Ten Towns, but against Kessel. With the help of Regis, a halfling prisoner in the tower, Drizzt escaped his cage, and followed Kessel through a portal to the top of a mountain. There, after a short battle, the magical heat of Crenshinibon destabilized the snow cap, and an avalanche killed Kessel and took Drizzt back down the mountain. Crenshinibon, buried under the avalanche and blocked from the light of the sun (it's power source) and weakened by Regis' destruction of Cryshal-Tirth lost it's control over the orcs and goblins, who lost cohesion and were slaughtered. Bruenor, faking mortal injury, tricked Drizzt into agreeing to search for Mithral Hall, Bruenor's boyhood home.