Caer Poenedigaeth



Somewhere in the hinterlands of the Dreaming, where the Forest of Milderwood gives way to rotting stumps and stagnant pools, where the Bullydale Wastes sink into pestilent fenland, where the River of Sorrows bleeds its waters out into brackish, slimy channels between noisome mud flats and seething quagmires, amisdt the deceiving fogs and stunted bracken rises an ancient, brooding keep -- a menacing shadow oppressing the vision.

The Twilight Road is faint here -- a thin, wan mockery of a trodway which can hardly be said to lead to the gatehouse, so difficult is it to follow. The foolhardy, persistent or unfortunate who make it this far receive a cold welcome from mute ogre sentinels and are bid wait while a message is sent to the lord of the fortress. Those whom he welcomes are ushered inside. Those whom he does not must flee quickly or be subject to the ogre guardsmen's sense of sport.

The fortress comprises an ancient wall of cyclopean, time-gnawed stone surrounding an unpaved yard of stinking black mud. Thin grey wreaths of smoke, made acrid by the dried dung which fuels cheerless cook-fires, rise from squalid huts of wattle and thatch where the lord's thralls eke out a wretched life no better than that of their sickly beasts. Amidmost a twisted narrow keep of leprous white stone rises from a high, weedy mound. The sharp pinnacle of its highest tower stabs at the overhanging clouds, and its bulging lower walls are stained where its drains and gutters spill into the fetid moat below.

Within, Caer Poenedigaeth is scarcely more hospitable than its environs or its gatekeepers. The walls are hewn from some waxy-looking stone, seamed with veins that pulse faintly with unwholesome light where they floresce under the disquieting glow of the Balefire pit's black flames. The only other illumination is that which is permitted by the hall's tall, narrow windows which look out through thick, yellowish panes onto the cheerless landscape beyond, as often as not obscured by torrential rain.

Around the balefire's sunken hearth and in conversational pairs by the windows are a few chairs richly upholstered in leather. These and a few low tables are the only furnishings. The sole ornament in the hall is a banner of House Ailil which hangs opposite the main entrance. A stair, its balustrade supported by grotesques of carven stone, ascends to a narrow gallery which gives access to those few spartan rooms that Lord Clay alots to his guests. Other doors lead from the hall into the spires and dungeons of Caer Poenedigaeth, but they are locked, guadred, and Weaver-Warded against intrusion.





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