The Dreadcrown Keep

The Dreadcrown Keep had been discovered a thousand years before Raggard and his kin ever made their way into the strange cavern that housed it.

Through his research, Raggard found that it had been originally discovered by an expedition of the Emeraldvein clan. It was nearly a month’s travel from Gunabash, through the twisting tunnels of the Deepways. Even with all of his digging, all he could confirm was the name it had been given, the clan that first mapped it, and a crudely drawn route with a single note pressed into the margin:

“strange, feels wrong, we mapped it, then backtracked and went around the cavern”.

In a thousand years, nothing had apparently changed about the Dreadcrown Keep. Nothing.

When Raggard and the others finally reached the place, the cavern itself felt like a warning made physical. It was very large, but totally smooth—floor, walls, ceiling—as though it had been created with magic instead of naturally formed stone. Nothing grew or lived there. No moss, no lichen, no fungus, no small creatures, no insects… nothing. The tower stood in the center of the cavern and radiated a sense of evil that did not lessen with distance.

What Raggard and his kin did not expect was the sudden appearance of another being.

A strange little creature—like a cross between a halfling and a house cat—stepped into view wearing a long vest covered with bulging pockets that almost reached the floor. It held out a piece of paper and winked at Raggard as he took it.

“I am Flauge, the Heraloo, be careful.” it said, before disappearing.

And then it was gone, as if it had never been there at all. Raggard would later argue with himself about why a Heraloo would interfere at all, and find no answer that sat clean.

Raggard looked down at the paper. It appeared to be a history of the cavern and the strange keep.

Centuries before its discovery, the cavern had been just another hollow space in the earth—rough, cracked, and completely ordinary. Until the arrival of three wizards: two humans and an elf. They had been drawn to the cavern, through magical discovery, as the place where they should create their most powerful summoning. The wizards had unearthed a series of artifacts years before—those artifacts laid clues and hints to something grander—and now they believed they had found the place to cast their spells and learn what it was they had truly been searching for.

They set about creating the ritual space. Symbols were etched into the stone floor—protection and binding sigils meant to ensure whatever they brought forth would remain under their control. When they began, the flash of magical energy filled the air as the three progressed through the ritual until the cavern glowed with a pale blue light surrounding a portal of some kind.

What came through the portal was not a man, or a monster.

It was infernal magical energy.

It blasted through with a roar, instantly killing all three wizards—but more importantly, cleansing the floor of the binding symbols. The energy swirled and flowed, growing larger and larger until it filled the cavern. Stone melted and smoothed. Cracks disappeared. Rubble vanished. The rumble of the power sounded like a far-off cave-in that never arrived.

When the energy was spent, the cavern was completely smooth and empty.

Then the portal opened again.

A group of devils stepped through—arch-devils, five figures in long robes covered in symbols, exuding power that was nearly tangible. At the head of the group stood a tall figure with black hair, black horns, and black eyes; its skin a deep red, almost maroon; a staff taller than it was held like an instrument of office. Those following behind the leader were almost identical, except smaller—shorter, less imposing, but almost equally powerful.

The five spread out to inspect the cavern. When they gathered again in the center, they seemed pleased. One was sent back through the portal while the others prepared the area for a different sort of ritual.

More figures stepped through—many sizes and shapes, but all obviously devils from the hells. They gathered together and began spells of their own. Again, magic flared through the cavern, this time the glow a deep red. Hours passed, and suddenly a massive structure began to appear, as though it were being pulled into this world from another.

The structure was immense: a keep, but built in a way not seen on the mortal world. It was a product of the hells—an infernal construction meant to intimidate and induce fear, a fortress raised as a declaration.

As the magic dissipated and the devils sagged from exhaustion, a war cry sounded and a group clad in heavy armor charged into the weakened devils. The battle was bloody. The devils were tired, but not defenseless. Even so, when it ended, the newcomers stood victorious. The devils were all dead, or had fled back to the hells.

Another group joined the armored warriors then—figures in robes, clerics and priests. They cast spells on the tower, and on the cavern, hoping to return the keep to where it had come from. But it would not yield. So they cast more spells, sealing the cavern from entrance, choosing imprisonment over leaving an infernal fortress loose in the world.

Less than a century after the Dreadcrown Keep was brought into the mortal world, those same armored warriors and robed priests were no longer strangers passing through history. They were the Gatewatch Covenant—an order that tracked Infernal and Abyssal movement wherever it bled into Trimella. Their only crest was a simple lantern—because even in darkness, they watched. Their vigilance demanded a fixed place, and so a keep was raised and a small settlement gathered around it, lanterns burning through every long night. In time, the place became known simply as Lanternhold.

That was when the cult of Malmath the Defiler turned its attention to them.

A small horde of lesser demons was summoned to the mortal world and unleashed on the Covenant and the city that had grown up around their keep. The demons and cultists destroyed the order, the people of the city, and then the city and keep itself—razed it all to the ground.

Time did what time always does. The sealing spells placed upon the cavern faded and thinned. The Deepways shifted. Routes collapsed and reopened. Maps were lost, redrawn, and lost again. And yet the chamber endured in its wrongness—smooth as worked stone, empty of life, silent in a way that made seasoned dwarves swallow hard.

Now, as Raggard stood at the entrance to the cavern, he could still feel it.

The sense of evil in the Keep had not weakened.

It had waited.