The Sea Keeps

The four keeps and northern tower (a weather-signalling beacon and mage's tower of old) protect the coastline, with each keep overlooking a small bay or inlet where military vessels could drop anchor and provision before sailing off to keep barbarians and pirates and bay. Each keep also has a lighthouse cupola atop it. Well over half of the troops here have fled, headed to Atirr or Winetha or even to the Sea Barons. There are not enough of Nerull's priests to control all these keeps, and the south ernmost one is occupied solely by zombies with a vampire-mage as overseer. The result is that barbarian raids along the coast have escalated, and the barbarians have become aware of the presence of undead defenders, which they detest. If they raid here, they often bring one or more of the rare barbarian priests of Pelor with them, since such men are powerful in the art of turning undead. The coastline and the farmlands west have been largely depopulated here, people fearing the twin menaces of marauding barbarians and undead. And there are many abandoned farmsteads and ghost town hamlets here. Some of them have been occupied by men fleeing the wrath or evil of their liege, and they have become increas ingly desperate bandits. These are dangerous and forlorn lands.