Xenophon Tor
Ruler: None
Economy: None
Militia: None
Points of interest: Ruins of Xenophon Tor Castle
Over the years, Xenophon Tor Castle has become a name equated with great evil and dread. Once the proud castle of Daeros Xenophon, a famous adventurer of the North, Xenophon Tor has become a ruin inhabited by wave after wave of evil creatures. Many colorful legends have grown up around the Castle. As best as can be considered true, Xenophon Tor’s tale begins with Daeros, a story told to children throughout the North.
Daeros was a bearded half-dwarf, a magical and rare half-breed of human and dwarf as tall as a man, but with the burly physique and affinity to the stone of a dwarf. He rescued and befriended a copper dragon early in his adventures and after he seized a fabulous fortune in gems, used by a beholder in an abandoned dwarf delve to lure prey, Daeros decided to retire. He chose the site of the dragon’s lair: three low hillocks at the western edge of the Fells of the Forgotten, some 200 miles south of Longforge. The dragon, Harrachdarastrix, had grown tired of constantly fighting off thieving orcs and goblins, but was loath to leave its home. Daeros gathered humans and dwarves loyal to him and built his castle around the dragon. It was a large and splendid structure, composed of a massive central keep surrounded by a strong ring of four towers called the inner ward. Around the keep was a spearhead-shaped outer wall of nine great towers. Dwarves were welcomed at the Castle, and a city of small stone cottages and delvings beneath them grew rapidly within the walls. Dwarven fighting prowess made Xenophon Tor a secure fortress and a place of growing influence.
Daeros was often seen flying over the Fells of the Forgotten on the dragon’s back in those days. He wielded a long spear, some say 40 feet or longer, against foes on the ground and summoned his troops with a horn. His energetic raids hurled the orcs and trolls back, scouring the moor until it seemed clear of them.
Unfortunately, Harrachdarastrix was old and grew weak. More than one wizard coveted the dragon’s hoard and used shape-shifting magics to spy on what was there and how it was guarded. One Calishite mage, Ithtaerus, created a spell that allowed him to teleport the sleeping dragon away to the wastes. He then revealed what he had done to Daeros by means of a magically sent vision that falsely showed the wizard creating a gate through which the dragon was taken.
The gate was actually a portal to Avernus, uppermost of the nine layers of Hell, a portal that would only be activated by the death-blood of a mortal. The enraged Daeros plunged through it, weapons ready, and was slain by the wizard’s spells. The gate opened, and several devils came through it. While the alarmed dwarves of Xenophon Tor battled them, the wizard looted the Dragon’s hoard at will and then returned Harrachdarastrix to the inner ward, bound in magical slumber.
Then the evil mage called upon several dragons he knew, telling them that the copper dragon of Xenophon Tor slept, near death, and it and its hoard were easy prey. Three young and ambitious dragons heeded and took wing to Xenophon Tor. They met over the fortress and fought, destroying Harrachdarastrix and much of the castle before slaughtering each other. The last survivor, a black dragon named Sharndrel, was enraged to find the hoard it had fought so hard for looted so that only coins were left, and barely enough of them for the wyrm to bed down on. It went seeking the triumphant and overconfident Ithtaerus, found him gloating over the best wine of the castle in the upper chambers of the central keep, and blasted him with its acid until his bones crumbled to powder. The castle was left as a shattered ruin, eagerly raided by orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, goblins, and trolls from the moor until all the dwarves were dead or had fled. The serpentmen of Myrmekion Moors even sent a large war party to search it for magic, and they bore away all they found.
Then hobgoblin chieftains seized the castle. They used it as a base from which to raid the caravan road and the lands around; gathering orcs and trolls into ever-larger bands until a warrior claiming to be the heir to Daeros declared himself Lord of House Tear and marched his army in and cleaned the castle out.
House Tear was obliterated after they rebelled against their liege lord Strathclyde, who was perceived as weak by his own vassals. To restore dominance the liege lord's son marched against the upstart Lord of Castle Tear, the half-dwarf Lord Reyne Tear, known as the "Red Manticore of Xenophon". By the end of the rebellion, Castle Tear had been put to the torch and all members of Lord Reyne's house were executed. "The Sad Story Atop Xenophon Tor", a popular Northern late night tavern ballad remembers these events;
And who are you, the proud lord said,
that I must bow so low?
Only a cat of a different coat,
that's all the truth I know.
In a coat of gold or a coat of red,
a manticore still has claws,
And mine are long and sharp, my lord,
as long and sharp as yours.
And so he spoke, and so he spoke,
that lord of Castle Tear,
But now the rains weep o'er his hall,
with no one there to hear.
Yes now the rains weep o'er his hall,
and not a soul to hear.
The title is a play on words, as the "rains" fall over the empty halls of the "Reynes" who have been killed to the last man, and "not a soul to hear".
The lyrics heavily reference the fact that the sigil of House of Reyne was also a manticore, but a red one instead of the golden manticore used as the sigil of his liege lord. The rebellion of the Reynes and Strathclydes was thus seen as a civil war of manticores.
The victors set an armed temple to Kthon, called the Hold of the Battling Manticores, in the cellars to guard against creatures using the gate, for it seemed indestructible. Some spell laid on it hurled back magics used against it and sent forth ghosts of creatures slain in the castle to attack those approaching it. Seasons passed, and more devils discovered the other end of the planar link. Stealthily at first, and then in greater numbers, they came through into the world, overwhelmed the temple, and took the castle as their own. It is this foul evil that was recently broken and driven back to Hell. Though the gate was magically sealed, most Ffolk believe that it will be reopened again and that the stain of evil will never leave the castle now.
Today, the outer wall of the castle is breached and broken in many places. Its great gate is a gaping hole, and from there a road leads straight to the inner gate, whose doors have also fallen. Though the inner ward is still a defensible, if crumbling fortress, the former city between it and the outer wall has become scrub vegetation, pits, the former cellar delves of the dwarves and heaps of stone rubble. The central keep is a blasted shell, the gigantic skeleton of a dragon draped over the broken walls, and the interior floors have fallen in. Most of the surrounding inner ward towers stand relatively intact. Travelers fleeing from trolls, brigands, or worse in this area could take refuge in one of these and defend it.
It is rumored that beneath the castle flows an underground river. It runs from an unknown source north into the Green Woods and there turns abruptly southeast. It can be entered from a certain cavern in the eastern reaches of the forest, and its main passage is large enough to be navigable by boats, although many lurking monsters, drown hole side passages, and whirlpools make this a dangerous route.
The river runs southeast along the edge of the moor, and then turns northeast and passes under the southwest tower of the castle’s inner ward. There it connects with a trapdoor and shaft in the cellar once used for waste disposal. It flows swiftly on to a large and permanent whirlpool and thence drains down to unexplored depths in the Underrealm.
If one wins past the whirlpool, the river runs on to emerge as a waterfall in a ravine, one of many such clefts in the Myrmekion Moors, where it flows out into a small pool. The pool drains away into the depths again. Xenophon Tor Castle is still a popular destination for adventurers and thrill seekers. Many poke about in the half-revealed dwarven cellars, but anything that can be found easily has been carried away already, and trolls and orcneas lurk in the ruins, awaiting prey. Brigands use the castle, and more than one misty night has seen a wild spell battle between rival adventuring bands caused by brigand trickery. The outlaws lie in wait after setting in motion their plan and hope to seize gear, wealth, and magic from the weakened survivors, or dead victims, of the misunderstanding they have brought about.
Every season brings new plans for the rebuilding of Xenophon Tor Castle in the taverns of Longforge, Freehaven, Ebonbed, and Citadel, but somehow such plans come to naught. Some say it is the castle’s ill luck, caused by the great evil of devils, others blame covert work by brigand lords, the Black Network, and the Cult of the Dragon, all of whom either want the castle for their own or want it to stay a ruin.
RUINED SETTLEMENT
420 CE
Type
City
Location under
Comments