Amber Temple

A secret society of good-aligned wizards built Amber Temple in the Rubygold Mountains more than two thousand years ago. They needed a vault in which to contain the evil vestiges (remnants of dead, malevolent entities) they had captured and the hoard of forbidden knowledge they had amassed. They dedicated the temple to a god of secrets, whom they trusted to keep it hidden from the rest of the world until the end of time. Unfortunately for the wizards, even the will of a god couldn't prevent other evil creatures from learning the temple's location. The wizards were forced to guard the temple themselves, to keep its secrets from falling into villainous hands. The evil forces that were imprisoned within the temple eventually corrupted the wizards, turning them against one another. Amber Temple then fell to the Abyss, eventually falling to Narrian's layer. The wizards were dead and gone and Old Barovia already being used as a means to torture Count Strahd von Zarovich by the time an evil artificer named Cain arrived at the temple with the Arcane Relic of Time. He breached the temple's wards, spoke to a vestige trapped in amber, and discovered the secret to becoming a lich. After his transformation, the lich Cain took over the temple and turned the skulls of it previous defenders into flameskulls under his command. Cain then took it upon himself to watch over the temple, not to hoard its evil secrets but to share them openly. Meanwhile, the evils within the temple fed on each other, growing in power. Strahd had returned to the temple several times to learn new magic and to find a means of escaping his fate, but neither Narrian nor the Dark Powers have intention of giving him up. The years since his entrapment had taken their toll on Cain, whose body and mind had been falling apart. The lich had grown weak and forgetful. He no longer remembered his name or his spells. He knew only that the Dark Powers that created Strahd's domain had a connection to the temple, and that these entities fed on the evil that Strahd represented. People who visited the temple could sense the presence of great evil. The dark vestiges imprisoned within the temple would try to corrupt them, offering them secrets and gifts in exchange for a taste of the evil that lurked within their true hearts. They still would, if Narrian allowed access to them. After the destruction of Old Barovia, Amber Temple was kept by Narrian in his layer, along with the decaying body of Cain and the Relic of Time. Amber Temple is a cold, dark place carved out of the snowy slope of Mount Ghakis. The temperature throughout the complex is -23 degrees Celsius. Those who don't have heat sources, cold weather gear, or magic to protect them are subject to the effects of extreme cold.