Vraath Keep

Formerly a fortress held and manned by a powerful family of soldiers known as the Vraaths, this keep survived the fall of Rhestilor but later succumbed to a senseless feud with the local forest giants. For many years the keep has stood in ruins.
Looming out of the shadowy woods ahead is a haunting sight – a ruined keep. The old castle sits on a small rocky hillock, and you can catch glimpses of a broken tower between the trees. A moss-covered stone at the side of the road you’re following marks a footpath that looks like it leads up to the keep.
The old keep is in very poor repair. The gatehouse is partially collapsed, as is a section of wall to the south. A small wooden building sits next to the remains of a long-abandoned garden in front of the structure. The walls surrounding the keep are about fifteen feet high, with a two-story tower looming in the southwest corner of the courtyard within. Large boulders lie strewn amid the ruins of the two watch towers, and a massive humanoid skeleton slumps amid the ruins of the northern one. This skeleton still wears tattered fragments of hide armor, and a large club lies next to one of its bony arms.

Vraath Keep has a tragic history, as the ruins and skeletal remains attest. For centuries, trade through the Witchwood used the Dawn Way, and the soldiers stationed at Vraath Keep were the primary defenders of the region. Their presence kept the road sage for merchants to travel.
A few years before the fall of Rhest, an ambitious young man named Amery Vraath inherited control of the keep. After the Rhestilor kingdom dissolved, Amery laid claim to the entire Witchwood and sought to rid his new domain of its evil reputation. Chief among his targets was a tribe of forest giants that dwelt deep in the woods. Knows as the Twisttusks, these forest giants generally kept to themselves but raided merchants on the Dawn Way from time to time.
The brash young lord gathered together an impressive group of mercenaries and adventurers, and early one summer day led his force against the Twisttusks. The battle was furious, but in the end Amery’s men won the day and forced the Twisttusks to flee into the mountains. The soldiers burned the giants’ steading to the ground and returned to Vraath, victorious.
Yet their victory was short-lived. One week later, the surviving Twisttusks returned and attacked Vraath Keep during a tremendous thunderstorm. The giants bombarded the keep all night with hurled boulders and massive poisoned arrows. When the sun rose, four of the Twistusks lay dead amid the ruined keep, but none of the keep’s soldiers or residents remained. Those who had survived the battle were taken away to be eaten by the giants in their own victory feats – all except for Amery Vraath. The young lordling retreated into the vault below his keep after he was hot by a forest giant’s poisoned arrow, hoping to elude death, only to perish slowly of his poisoned wound. Rumors persist that Amery’s ghost haunts the ruins, and that those who dare to travel the Dawn Way at night say they sometimes hear the sounds of his anguished cries coming from somewhere deep underground.

RUINED STRUCTURE
200 ago

Type

Keep

Parent Location

Varenia Province

Characters in Location

• Wrymlord Koth