Urdhar¶
"Taking the gate" — the Urdhar refugees' phrase for a one-way trip through a Rift-Gate whose far side is known to be destroyed (S045)
Contested
The placement of the town of Edgemark is an open question: Placement of Edgemark. The Proturan campaign's Urdhar notes (S045, repeated verbatim in S046, S048, S049 and S050) put Edgemark on the southern side of the Rock of Urdhar; the gazetteer of south-western Rift places (S066), written six days after the first of those notes, puts it in Riker's Edge Chain and gives the "Urdhar Cluster" two different settlements. This page follows the Urdhar notes, which are the fuller and later-repeated account, and records the other reading under Earlier accounts.
Urdhar is a rock in the Rift, once "an important trade node through several gates to a Wood Elven realm in the far east", now "a minor stop along some minor trade routes" (S045). It holds the ruined town of Orchard, the surviving town of Edgemark with its reinforced castle, a shadowed stretch called the Mistlands, and the keep where Malathar brews his plague. The Riftborn privateer Marcayllis uses it as a base. It lies within reach of Vegryn's Tower and the other places of the Rift held by Proturas.
The Rock of Urdhar¶
The Rock of Urdhar once held two settlements, one on its north side and one on its south, each trading through its own gate with the elves and the "barbarian humans from the edge of the elven forests" beyond (S045).
Orchard¶
The northern town was Orchard. "As you can gather from its name, the primary trade coming through this settlement was food, mostly fruits and nuts." When the elves on the far side of its portal were destroyed, so was Orchard: the forces of the Elder God Teneb'Vari "destroyed and cursed it about 30 years ago", reckoned from the Proturan campaign, "and undead still roams in the ruins (something keeps them there)" (S045). Orchard is two days' travel from Edgemark, and the townsfolk of Edgemark blame it for the thing that haunts them.
Edgemark¶
The southern town, Edgemark, "fared better": its gate on the far side was destroyed, "stopping the enemy's forces from getting through". Edgemark had traded elven goods, and meat and furs from the barbarians (S045). It is split into two parts, the castle and the lower town. A Temporal Stabilizer covers castle and town; the docks and the old rift gate stand a short distance outside its radius (S045).
Urdhar Castle is "a reinforced ruin" that once housed a Proturan garrison, "when this was an important route", and is now where Marcayllis lives (S045). The lower town holds about thirty refugees, "outcast Riftborn and Humans", who "get by on scraps from Marcayllis and trading with the occasional ship passing through". Their mayor is appointed by Marcayllis and keeps the town quiet for her; when the campaign reached Urdhar he was leading the townsfolk in raising a short wall from the stone of unused buildings against the "demon" they believed came from Orchard (S045). Marcayllis has recruited most of the able-bodied refugees as pirates. Her ships "dock out of sight from the town on the other side of the island near the cursed ruins", and her crews move to and from the castle by Jumpstone. The townspeople explain their disappearances as people leaving, or "taking the gate" (S045). In truth Malathar takes them.
Mist Keep and the Mistlands¶
Malathar's keep stands apart from the town, reached by jumpstone: one jumpstone supplies it from Edgemark at mid-level, and an upper jumpstone leads to the ruins of Urdhar (S050; S049 leaves the supply point as a placeholder). Mist Keep is the "Primary Research Center for Malathar's Mithrot Plague". He runs a laboratory in its basement on test subjects pulled from Marcayllis's raids or kidnapped from the town by "a subservient undead" (S045). He is "having trouble tuning it for non-elves": many subjects are immune and many others die quickly, and neither case is very contagious. The plague is based on "an early version of Arvandor's Plague", one which "not only destroyed the Mithin in their blood but left them scarred such that they were unable to tap their Anima at all". He has tested a carrier insect and searches the ruins of Urdhar for an ancient relic, Cordycell's Censer, "the Censer of Swarming Blight" (S049, S050).
The keep is held by Malathar's household: his steward Perithus, an undead High Elf and former royal guard; the lab workers Lescilla and Bervandil and the head apprentice Otksalon, all High-Elven zombies with coloured eyes; three human servants "treated nearly like slaves"; eight mercenaries supplied by Eksuru, led by the Red Blade and working in two squads, one always at the keep and one with Malathar when he travels; "innumerable skeletons", among them the Jailer, a frost skeleton, and the Warden, a fire skeleton; and a Red Drake on the roof (S049, S050). The cells each carry a crystal in the ceiling that turns any attempt to draw on Anima into "massive casting feedback", and weakens the body with prolonged exposure (S049).
Beyond the keep lie the Mistlands, into which the Proturan campaign's party fled after breaking out of the cells; sixteen hours' walk through them brought the party, lost and without a map they could read, to the edge of the Vileryth Demonblight (S050).
Gap
The Mistlands are named only as the ground between Mist Keep and the Demonblight. No source describes them.
The Vileryth Demonblight¶
A blighted stretch of the Rift ruled by the demonlord Vileryth, "Lord of Corpserot, Bone Demon, Ruler of the Vileryth Demonblight, Warlord of Bhaal". The Demonblight "is known for undead and flesh-eating acid/ooze", and a river of that ooze bars the way across it (S050). Vileryth's herald is the horned demon Ragnazak Goreflayer, and Ragnazak's lieutenant is Voragul the Tormentor, who turned on his master to help the lost party kill him (S051). The blight's creatures are undead and demons steeped in Corpserot ichor: rot-wyverns that launch ichor-covered spikes, rot-wraiths and shriek-wraiths, Druagr-Ghasts that seek a new host when theirs dies, Corpserot Warriors grown from the ichor, and Corpserot Wights that hurl it (S050).
Gap
How far the Demonblight lies from Edgemark, and whether it sits on the Rock of Urdhar or a neighbouring rock, is not said; the party reached it on foot through the Mistlands.
History¶
Urdhar's importance ended with the Wood Elven realm it served. "About 30 years" before the Proturan campaign, the forces of Teneb'Vari destroyed the elves beyond Orchard's gate and cursed the town; Edgemark's far gate was destroyed to stop them (S045). The Proturan garrison in the castle dates from the time "when this was an important route" and is gone (S045). Marcayllis took the castle afterward, and Malathar, brought back from death by Marcella with the help of a High Elf and set on dismantling the Circle of Eternity (S061), made his keep here. Roughly two days after the party left Urdhar, Malathar's steward Perithus was leading a dig to the Shrine of Kae-Ferrel in Etterwood, and the party followed (S051, S052).
Earlier accounts¶
- The gazetteer of south-western Rift places (S066) knows an "Urdhar Cluster" whose settlements are the Ruins of Urdhall, "overrun with ethereal and corporeal undead" after "the Varimathian conflict in Monforte", and the warded rest stop of Calgrave. It places Edgemark in Riker's Edge Chain as "a small nearly empty town which hosts a small Proturan garrison" whose "portals to Per'Nolien were damaged during the fall of Per'Nolien". Those places are described on the Places of the Rift page.
- Before the campaign reached Urdhar, its notes (S061, S028) named the power there as Marcella, "Witch Queen of Urdhar (in the rift)", "a VERY old Human" and one of the most powerful Warlocks of the Blue Flame, a spy for Eksuru inside the Circle of Eternity. Hobard, who knew her only by the title, "did not know what or where Urdhar is" (S061). From Session 18 onward (S045) the master of Urdhar Castle is Marcayllis, a Riftborn pirate captain. Whether these are one person renamed is a Figures question; see the Marcella page.
In Play¶
A ship putting in at Urdhar finds docks and a dead gate outside the stabilizer, a walled lower town of thirty frightened refugees, a mayor who wants it kept that way, and a castle whose mistress is usually away. The haunted ruins of Orchard are two days off; Mist Keep is reached only by jumpstone; and beyond the Mistlands waits the Demonblight. The Proturan campaign's visit, capture and escape are told in the Proturan campaign chronicle.