A history by Mnar Akurion
Castle Anwyn, a dark keep lying deep in the Lyserian Hills, was re-discovered
just 8 months ago, after lying dormant for millennia and being populated
only by the undead. The path leading to this ancient abode was shown to us
by none other than Terate himself, during one of his desperate searches for
the Stones of Virtue. As it happened, one of the Stones was found in the
castle later that eve, in the deepest part of the dudgeon, inside a massive
chest with equally massive traps and locks.
After the Stone was removed from the premises, Anwyn fell again into obscurity,
though now populated by daring adventurers seeking to release the undead
from their torment, and perhaps earn a bit of cash doing so. It wasn't until
almost half a year had passed that the castle again received attention.
Terate had just died, and in doing so sealed the Veil shut, locking the Vvrael
from our world. As he lay dying, he gave his sword to his beloved, Rayyne
Gold. It was a powerful sword, and in it lay the tale of Terate's past, which
it revealed to us when sung to by Krackenstar.
The tale it told was of an ancient castle and the royal family that dwelt
therein. For years the family ruled over the surrounding lands with a just
hand, until one day a stranger arrived at their door, weak from travel and
asking to spend the night. He was admitted, and given a room in the guest
quarters of the castle. However, during that night the stranger died in his
sleep, leaving the family with a confusing set of belongings, including a
satchel full of scrolls, some recently penned, along with others obviously
far more ancient in nature. The Prince, knowing more about the mystical arts
than the rest of his family, set to deciphering the scrolls. Most were of
mundane use, containing cantrips already known to the young man. One, however,
was different. Unlike the others, it seemed almost alive; the words changing
each time he read them. It held far more than a single spell, it held mysteries
that he desired to unlock, one after another, until the last of the scroll's
secrets lay open to him. But the scroll was not satisfied with being discovered
and understood, it wanted more. It wanted to be used; it wanted the fell
power that had created it to again be unleashed upon the world. And thus
was Terate, the young prince, drawn into using the scroll to breach the Veil,
and unleash the Vvrael on the world.
An uneventful month passed as the lands recovered from the onslaught of the
Vvrael. Occasionally people would tour the ancient castle, wondering what
secrets it still held. It was on one of these tours that Anwyn again became
a point of interest to the lands.
A small group of sightseers-Neq, Icefox, Shalli, and Norandar-were wandering
through the ruins, and eventually came to the room deep beneath the castle
where the first Stone of Virtue had been found, locked in its massive chest.
Also in this room-more of a niche-was a large mirror, framed with wood carved
in the image of writhing serpents. The mirror was more than it seemed; when
looked into, it showed not one's own reflection, but rather the image of
a cruel yet beautiful woman, laughing out at you.
The group of questers stood in front of the mirror for a time, conversing
with each other over its secrets, and occasionally prodding it with their
weapons in hope of eliciting a response. They received none from the mirror,
but their reverie was broken when their newest member, Norandar, opened the
previously locked chest, pulled out an ancient scroll, and disappeared with
it. The remaining three were, of course, confused by this, and elected to
return to town for the night, rather than risk further oddities in the castle.
The next eve the author of this text happened to encounter Norandar outside
of Hearthstone, and believing him to be a fellow researcher, asked him about
the castle, and the scroll he had found. Norandar appeared nervous, and led
us to a secluded section of the Manor, where he pulled the scroll out of
his cloak and offered it to me for inspection.
It was obviously much more than a simple rune; the entire paper was covered
with an ancient elven script that writhed and danced across the paper,
confounding my attempts to read them. Seeing that I was unable to invoke
the scroll, I handed it back to Norandar, who explained that he was able
to understand only snippets of it. Noting that he was a bard, we (several
people had congregated by this point) asked him to sing to it, hoping that
we might learn more that way.
Norandar agreed, and attempted to sing to it. But rather than learn of the
scroll, he was struck down by an unseen force, and lay stunned at our feet.
When he recovered, he explained that the scroll was to powerful to be learned
of through song.
We were at a loss for what to do when someone suggested that an elderly wizard
attempt to use the scroll. As Dartaghan happened to be in the Manor with
us, he took the scroll and attempted to read it. Rather than invoke, as it
should have, dark tendrils of anti-mana snaked their way out of the scroll
and along Dartaghan's arms, stunning him. When he recovered he attempted
to detect the scroll. However, as with singing, the scroll proved too powerful,
and Dartaghan dropped dead at our feet.
When Dartaghan was once again on his feet, he handed the scroll back to Norandar,
professing that it was beyond his ability to read. Norandar then, against
our wishes, attempted to sing to the scroll again. As before, it resisted
his efforts, this time striking him dead.
As we stood arguing over what had happened, a fog appeared in the room,
concealing Norandar's body from us. A few minutes later, when the fog cleared,
Norandar was gone.
The next day, I again encountered Norandar outside of Hearthstone. Concerned
for his health and safety, I took us to a table in my House, and we spoke
for a bit about what happened the previous eve.
He claimed to be unable to remember what had happened, and that he had woken
up in the forest that morning, the scroll in his hand. I related to him what
had happened, and our conversation turned to more inconsequential things.
It turned out that he was quite smitten by the lady Rayyne, whom he had met
just once before. As I was a friend of Rayyne's, I promised him that I would
introduce them, when next I had the chance.
As it happened, that chance was to happen soon. Norandar and I ran into Rayyne
not an hour later, as well as Neq and Icefox. Everyone was concerned about
the scroll and its connection to Anwyn, so we headed out to the Castle for
an evening of stories, serenading, and drinking.
However, as the evening was winding down, talk again returned to the scroll,
which Norandar produced. Against our warnings, Norandar again sang to the
scroll, and again died. We were discussing the best way to return him to
the living when, with no warning or sign of arrival, an Ahrani Witch attacked
Icefox. Fortunately, the witch was weak, and quickly dispatched. However,
it was only the first of dozens of creatures to gate into the cellar with
us. Unable to leave Norandar's body to them, we fought off waves after wave
of undead, until at last a Vvrael Witch gated in.
The creatures we had fought up to that point were relatively small and presented
little challenge. The Witch, however, was far beyond our ability to destroy,
and slew Rayyne almost instantly. Having managed to hide from the Witch,
I decided that it would be best to leave Norandar's body for the moment,
and fog the rest of us out of there.
When I had returned a few minutes later, Norandar was still dead, and several
Vvrael witches were rampaging throughout the castle. Norandar was dragged
to a safer part of the castle, where we raised him, hoping that he could
shed some light upon what had happened. However, something had changed in
him while he lay dead. The lure of power from the scroll had proved too powerful,
and like Terate before he was consumed with the need to unlock and understand
it. His last words of the night were to me, swearing that he would unlock
the secrets of the scroll and lay them at Rayyne's feet.
The next evening found Norandar again with us, but much more subdued. Claiming
to have lost the scroll, he had decided to embark on a journey to his homeland,
for a period of rest and seclusion, where he could be sure no one else would
be harmed by his studies of the scroll (despite having claimed to have lost
it).
Days passed, and things seemed to have returned to normal (such as it is).
However, the peacefulness was broken at Anwyn later that week when a series
of small invasions occurred, consisting of Ghosts and Sorcerous Acolytes.
These creatures proved to be extremely powerful and resistant to nearly all
magical attacks directed against them. It was only through the determined
application of a blade and the use of Voln's symbols that these creatures
were finally released.
For almost a month these invasions occurred with increasing regularity, sometimes
lasting hours before the last of the hiding creatures was rooted out and
released. Throughout this time, Norandar would occasionally return to us,
and one night spoke a bit of the history of Anwyn.
His tale was sparse, but he related to us a story of the Castle, and the
Queen that lived therein. A powerful sorcerer, she went insane after her
son, Terate, was consumed by the Vvrael and turned to their uses. For years
she ruled tyrannically over an ever shrinking populous, until finally the
kingdom itself collapsed and the castle became an abode of the undead, with
the spirit of the Queen trapped inside.
Approximately two weeks after the invasions began at Anwyn, the Queen began
to make her presence known, by stealing the Lady Rayyne from us. Much like
Norandar had vanished from us before, odd mists congealed around Rayyne,
and when they lifted, she was gone. At that point our business in Anwyn ceased
its exploratory nature, and took on a desperate tone as we repeatedly scoured
the castle for any hint of Rayyne.
Following kidnapping, the invasions continued almost daily. However, occasionally
not all of the spirits would attempt to destroy us; a few seemed interested
in speaking to the living once more. From these creatures we learned more
of the castle's history, of how the Queen once ate her cook after deciding
his food wasn't good enough, and the mass executions that took place in the
village during Anwyn's final days. One ghostly bard by the name of Keat told
us a sad story of his love, who had been slaughtered in the village thousands
of years before, and now lay in a mass grave south of the town. From Keat
we learned that most of the castle and surrounding village had worshiped
Onar, who the Queen spurned in her final days of mortality. A shrine to Onar
supposedly still existed somewhere beneath the castle, buried by the Queen
in one of her fits of madness.
Most interesting, though, was a scruffy female halfling that appeared to
us after a particularly vicious invasion. She seemed to exist halfway between
the world of the living and the dead, the result of a spell cast upon her
by the Queen. Most of us who'd experienced the final days of the Vvrael saga
in Pinefar recognized the halfling as Belle, the former proprietor of the
Pinefar Trading Post, who had been missing for months and was believed dead.
The halfling acted as a go-between for us and Rayyne, who she was somehow
able to reach without the Queen's knowledge. Over the next few days the halfling
would reassure us that Rayyne was still alive, but needing our help.
Over a month passed in this chaotic fashion, with nightly forays to the Castle
in an attempt to find Rayyne, with no success. The invasions became fiercer
and fiercer, until it came to pass that only the eldest of the Landing's
citizens could enter the castle with even a hope of surviving.
It was in that dark hour, when many had begun to despair of ever seeing the
Lady Rayyne again, that Norandar appeared to us with the news that he had
learned all he needed from the scroll, and felt able to breech the defenses
the Queen had erected around the castle, allowing us access to Rayyne. His
words fell upon our weary and deaf ears, but we decided to trust the bard
one final time, if only for Rayyne's sake. The Queen was especially active
that eve, occasionally snatching members of our party away from us and dragging
them through the stone walls of the castle, where she tormented them with
pointless riddles before releasing them back to us.
Realizing that by breaching the Queen's magical barriers, we would be unleashing
her might upon the world, many of us decided to bring in a contingent of
the local militia, to help combat the inevitable swarm of horrifying demons
that would pour forth from the castle to feed upon the world. Although most
of the militia was slaughtered instantly, they proved to be invaluable in
distracting the queen from the main thrust of the night's mission; getting
Norandar to the mystical pentagram room located deep beneath the castle,
where he could work the scroll's magic.
Deep beneath the castle, things were much quieter. Norandar had just begun
the incantation that would open the way to Rayyne and the Queen, and those
of us with him had taken to praying to our various Gods for aid and mercy.
Norandar's ceremony consisted of a quiet magical phrase spoken at each of
the pentagram's five points. As he completed the first two points, all assembled
could feel the air begin to charge with power, as if great beings were watching
and anticipating. However, on the third point, Norandar began to falter,
and had to hastily fortify his magic to prevent it from collapsing. When
he reached the fourth point of the pentagram, something went catastrophically
wrong, and his magicks collapsed entirely, the runes upon the scroll and
pentagram falling suddenly dead. A look of horror appeared on Norandar's
face as he realized how truly powerful the Queen was, and we heard her laughing
contemptuously at us from beyond the stone walls of the castle.
Several things happened simultaneously at that point. The first that we noticed
was a sudden inundation of the pentagram room by various creatures representing
all levels of the demonic, which began cutting into the crowd with ease.
The second thing we experienced-as we were scrambling to our feet and grabbing
weapons-was a searing, horrible pain on the back of our necks, as if we were
all being branded by an unseen force. This shocked us all for a moment, and
we didn't realize for a few seconds that the Lady Rayyne had appeared in
the room with us, seemingly as confused by her situation as we were. With
Rayyne appeared the scruffy little halfling we had encountered earlier, now
apparently free of her bonds. Finally, as we were collecting our wits and
trying to hold of the undead which had arrived in the room, the castle itself
began to weaken and fade from existence, as if it no longer had the power
to manifest itself any longer. Realizing that being stuck in a disappearing
castle with a swarm of demonic was a poor idea, we gathered ourselves into
a group and returned to town, with the Lady Rayyne and the halfling in tow.
Later that eve, with a relieved Norandar, we attempted to piece together
what had occurred in those final minutes. The branding sensation we had all
felt turned out to be exactly that; on the back of the neck of everyone who
had been in the castle at the time was branded a tattoo of a white skull
on a field of black, the symbol of Onar. Without being told anything by the
deities, we could only assume that as Norandar's spell began to fail, Onar
himself intervened and released Rayyne, perhaps because the Queen had killed
many of his faithful millennia ago. However, Onar apparently wished us to
all know that we owed him our lives, so he set upon us his mark, the tattoo
on our necks.
It was an odd way to end events at Anwyn, but since the Queen's power was
broken and Rayyne returned to us, none of us were inclined to disparage it.
Onar's mark still rests upon our necks, signifying our debt to him, and waiting
for the day that he calls us to pay it. Castle Anwyn is a mere shell now,
inhabited only by minor undead, with no hint of the Queen's power.
And up in Pinefar, a scruffy little halfling returned home.
-Mnar Akurion
House Phoenix Research Department.
All terms are copyrighted by their respective authors, be they ICE, Simutronics,
or the sources mentioned in the reference section
