1452 DR
Mount Hotenow erupted in Gauntlgrym, book one of The Neverwinter Saga by R.A. Salvatore.
In early chapters, Drizzt and Bruenor are in Icewind Dale in the autumn of 1451 DR.
Chapter 1 - The Damned
The Year of Knowledge Unearthed (1451 DR)
Chapter 2 - An Old Dwarf’s Last Road
The air was unseasonably chilly, and storm clouds had gathered off in the northwest on the morning Drizzt walked back out of Caer-Dineval, a reminder that the season was soon to turn. He looked to the distant peak of Kelvin’s Cairn and thought that perhaps he should spend another day in town and let the storm pass.
Drizzt laughed at himself, at his cowardice, and not for anything to do with the weather. He didn’t want to tell Bruenor that he’d found not a sign, not a tease. He knew he shouldn’t tarry, of course. Autumn was falling, and in a matter of tendays, the first snows would come sweeping down upon Icewind Dale, sealing the one pass through the mountains to the south.
By chapter 6, they're south of the mountains, and it's summer again, not autumn.
Chapter 6 - Another Drow and His Dwarf
They came out of the cave under a perfect blue sky, with the rolling hillocks of the Crags tightening the horizon around them. It was late summer, almost fall, and the cool winds had been fairly comfortable of late. They figured they had about three more months of easy exploring before them until they had to retreat to a town for the winter
It's probably late summer 1452 DR because they've spent a lot of time searching for signs of Gauntlgrym, the ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves, 'across the North.'
several ancient coins minted in the days of Delzoun, a very old smith hammer’s head, and some other suspicious and obviously ancient artifacts tumbled out as well. All had been procured across the North, from barbarian tribesmen or small villages, and the coins had come from Luskan.
Then the mountain begins smoking, and the volcanic eruption happens in chapter 9.
He continued on a southerly route, not going straight for the plume. He knew the ground fairly well, and noted that the smoke was coming from Mount Hotenow—one of the few hills in the Crags tall enough to rightfully be called a mountain. It had two peaks, the lower one to the north, the taller south-southeast of that, and both of bald stone the result of some long-ago fire that had burned the trees away, and had allowed erosion to wash away most of the soil.
It seemed as if the smoke poured out of the top of the lower, northern peak.
The fall of the mountain seemed perfectly aimed at the city of Neverwinter—and indeed it was. Mount Hotenow had not simply erupted. The angry primordial sought carnage as hungrily as did Szass Tam.
After a timeskip, the eruption is said to be 'ten years' in the past in 1462 DR. Nobody once describes it as, say, 'more than ten years' or 'over a decade.'
Chapter 10 - Battling the Darkness
The Year of the Elves’ Weeping (1462 DR)
Drizzt had traveled to that mountain soon after the destruction of Neverwinter, seeking some clue as to what had happened, but had found nothing beyond the cooling crater of Mount Hotenow. Bruenor’s observation was undeniable, though. The quakes were beginning again, though the ground had been silent soon after the eruption for ten years.
Maybe the guilt of the last ten years had finally broken him, putting ghosts before his delusional eyes, their words in his head.
“Makes no sense, elf,” the dwarf replied. “Why would Dahlia walk into Luskan like that?”
“It’s been a decade.”
“To be sure, but who’d forget that one, even after ten years? She comes walkin’ into the city in that hat and with that staff o’ hers? How would we not know?”
So the sleeping primordial beneath the northern peak of Mount Hotenow erupted in 1452 DR.
The 4e book Neverwinter Campaign Setting (2011) includes Drizzt as an NPC and indirectly reiterates that the year of the eruption was 1452 DR (with one contradictory mention of 'twenty-six years ago').
The current year is 1479 DR.
Twenty-seven years ago, before you were even born,
the city of Neverwinter perished in a great conflagration that slew its people and scattered survivors
across the north. Since then, the angry earth has
calmed, inviting people to return to the ruins of
this once-great settlement.
An ostensibly unbroken line of
succession traces from Alagondar to the last king and
queen of Neverwinter, who vanished twenty-seven
years ago in the cataclysm that claimed the city.
Although the mortal realm’s volcano stirs only fitfully
now, the Mount Hotenow reflected in the Shadowfell has been steadily spewing magma for years.
In the minds of many, this constant slow eruption
threatens to trigger a similar eruption in Toril. If that
were to happen, the devastation in the Neverwinter
region would make the events of twenty-seven years
ago seem paltry in comparison.
At that time, twenty-seven years ago, Maegera
stirred in its slumber, and its dream of ruination
was enough to destroy the city. In the years that followed, Maegera groggily awoke, causing earthquakes
throughout the region. When the primordial was
again put to slumber by Drizzt Do’Urden, Bruenor
Battlehammer, Jarlaxle, and others, a crucial part
of its prison had been left unfettered.
When the primordial Maegera erupted from its prison
twenty-six years ago, the resulting volcanic destruction
tore a deep chasm in the earth that sliced through a
quarter of Neverwinter. This rift reached the depths of
the Underdark, opening wide to an underground sea
where a branch of the Abolethic Sovereignty was busy
manipulating a pocket of Spellplague and covertly
experimenting on creatures in and near Neverwinter.
The eruption of Mount Hotenow and the resulting hordes of undead also serve as the backstory of the 2013 video game Neverwinter.
