Ankangwedh

Purpose / Function

Ankangwedh is a burial barrow of the extinct Mannil humans brought to the Sylvarilion region in ancient times, originally constructed as a place to memorialise and honour the dead. Mourners, especially family, would bury the dead and memorialise them with a funerary statue, and to assist them in dealing with their grief, mourners would enter the barrow during the night to visit the departed, often becoming lost in the tunnels.

Alterations

Later descendants of the families interred here would construct larger chambers, held up by masoned stone and columns, where religious and magical rituals would be held, along with bodies of the recently deceased for ease of viewing and interring.
Later still, early Mannil necromancers, guldir and guldi, would begin to pervert these places of worship towards their obsessions, culminating in the guldir Guruthos, who is credited with creating the first vampire by performing rituals on his wife Llithgwaloth. Eventually, he would be slain by the elves of the forest and his wife and adherents committed to a shameful death by isolation and starvation. Iron cages, heavy sacrophagi and other esoteric constructions were added to the barrow during this time, but it is difficult to determine which were added by elven crusaders and which were added by human iconoclasts.

Architecture

The structure of the barrow is indicative of middle era Mannil custom, with simple tunnels and hollows filled with crude homemade stonework, modified with elements of more expensive stonework and necromancy from the end of that period.

Alternative Names

Ernbledd Barrow

Type

Barrow / Burial ground