Lurin's Keep

Lurin’s Keep, nestled deep within the White Hills, is a place of contradiction and controversy. Once the seat of a reclusive wizard obsessed with unearthing the relics of the ancient Dharo, the keep’s ruins have since become home to a strange and unsettling religious community. Isolated and far from the main north-south road - roughly 35 miles from the closest thoroughfare - the keep attracts those seeking solitude, secrecy, or something far more obscure.
The community currently occupying Lurin’s Keep is a breakaway cult that has diverged sharply from the traditions of Irnassa in the south, a city renowned for its healers and followers of Mavani, goddess of rain and renewal. While Irnassa’s healers practice time-honoured methods of curing ailments and soothing pain, the cultists of Lurin’s Keep have taken a darker path. They believe that true understanding of disease and suffering can only be achieved by confronting it head-on, and to that end, they offer prayers not to Mavani, but to Tirax, the god of disease.
These worshippers, who call themselves the White Hands are led by a charismatic healer-turned-priestess named Sorrel Vonnath. Sorrel, once a respected figure in Irnassa’s circles of healing, became disillusioned with the perceived limitations of traditional practices. She believes that invoking Tirax, despite his dark domain, can reveal deeper truths about illness and suffering - truths that may one day unlock new ways of healing the most grievous afflictions.
The rituals practiced within Lurin’s Keep are unsettling, involving exposure to controlled diseases and the ingestion of bitter herbs said to be blessed by Tirax. These methods have attracted suspicion and fear, and the cult’s presence has stirred unease throughout the region. Yet some whisper that Sorrel’s followers have experienced miraculous recoveries from ailments previously thought incurable, lending a dangerous allure to their faith.
The ruins of the keep have taken on an almost sacred air for the cult, their crumbling halls and shattered towers transformed into places of prayer and experimentation. The cultists have repaired parts of the keep, erecting crude altars adorned with symbols of Tirax: a withered tree, a broken chain, and a blackened sun.

Type

Ruins