The Pentress Castles

These identically-designed castles were the bulwarks of Tenh's defenses against the Troll Fens. Each castle was built with a curtain wall defense, inner castle walls, and a castle keep. In addition, mages with wands of fire defended them and great stone chutes were mounted along all walls to shower oil on attacking trolls which was then set ablaze with fiery arrows from the expert longbowmen of Pentress. High Pentress was home to the paladin Henschel Pentress, great-grandson of the noble who paid for these castles to be built. Dour Pentress was so named because of a spectacular siege-battle there in 511 CY when over two thousand trolls surrounded the castle, cutting it off from supplies in a Troll Winter, for a period of over three months before it was relieved.

The men of Stonefist never conquered these castles and they have no living occupants now. The Fists have no desire to meet the ferocious fen trolls and the eastern lands are virtually unpatrolled by them. All that is known for certain is that madness and plague broke out among the thousands of defenders of these castles as the Fists stormed into Atherstone. Of course, Iuz had a hand in this. Some of the survivors say that fiends stalked the battlements and that black stinking fogs drifted across the walls for a week of unremitting horror. The defenders fled, some insane enough to flee even into the fens, and others from Dour Pentress went across the border to the Brilliant Castles where a few score now serve the Theocracy. The defenders left much behind such as wands, scrolls, magical weapons, magical arrows, and other valuables. Whether the minds and bodies of those entering could survive the ordeal they would face is most uncertain. To be sure, the Fists are wiser than to try.