Once a sworn barony of Rowan-Oak, the cantrev of Iron Mountain has long refused the Countess Rosamund its fealty. Sparsely populated and devoid of freeholds or any noteworthy concentration of Dreamers, the western marches have not proven worth the cost of subduing. The rumored stronghold of Clay ap Ailil has never been found, much less besieged. Other matters closer to the county's heart have taken precedence instead. But with an increase in the numbers of hostile chimerae entering Rowan-Oak over its western borders, attention is again being drawn to the rebellious barony and its secretive lord.
Hidden away in these woods is a dilapidated cabin roofed in tarpaper and corrugated metal,
its windows blocked with dirty cardboard and yellowed newspapers.
A rutted, weedy logging road leads past the front stoop. A rusty barbed-wire fence encloses a
small yard. The woods here are grim and unfriendly, and oddly silent.
The closer one gets to the shack, the greater one's unease grows. One thinks of the tales of backwoods blockaders, and the lengths to which they will go to protect their stills. One has the sense of being watched, but there is nothing to be seen. Enchanted eyes see nothing to indicate that this is a Freehold, but notice unfriendly chimerae watching from the branches or slithering closer on the edge of sight, only to vanish when confronted. Those who enter find an empty moonshiner's cabin, and feel a suffocating dread.
Those who locate the hidden Rath into the Dreaming here, find themselves upon a trod without any hint of a Silver Path, in a forest darker and more grim than they have just left. This is an upland arm of the Forest of Lies, and if they can follow the trod through it, they may just wish they hadn't.
