Wurtbad
Large city in the northwest of Sollen and capital of the province of Wurtland.
Many say this city is cursed. Once the home of a prominent vampiric dynasty, the city has since had the taint of undeath burned from it by countless priestly rituals. Nonetheless, none could walk the streets of Wurtbad and deny a deep sense of unease, nearing dread the closer one wanders to the castle keep at its heart, The Marshlight, once home the fearsome vampire Elisabeta Von Hart.
The grey mist that envelopes the city and the surrounding bog rarely breaks and the people are pallid and sunken of skin. The oppressive nature of the city is worsened by the strange gargoyles leering down from decorative lintels and above doorways that, despite the carving of gargoyles being made illegal in 841, spring up all over the city, as if they push themselves out of the stone in the dead of night when none are looking. After long nights of lightness skies, often the palisade walls that divide the city from the surrounding bog will find sections carefully dismantled. No evidence of what or why this happens is left behind.
Over the past hundred years there have been many storiess of cults worshipping vampiric presences. When these cults are uncovered by the constabulary or the witch hunters it is not long until all their members are hanging from the gallows outside The Marshlight. Despite their lingering influence, no Vampires have been sighted in the city in over half a century. In the brief time I was given with Fergus Marre, Count of Wurtland and Castellan of the city, he told me that whilst the troubled past of the city cannot be ignored it is the righteousness and vigilance of the pious that burns away any remaining taint that the unliving ones left behind.
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