Vraath Keep has a tragic history, as the ruins and skeletal remains attest.

by Berglan Gobnustle, chief librarian, Brindol Academy

For centuries, trade through the Witchwood used the Dawn Way, and the soldiers stationed at Vraath Keep were the primary defenders of the region. Their presence kept the road safe for merchants to travel.

A few years before the fall of Rhest, an ambitious young man named Amery Vraath inherited control of the keep. After the Rhestilor kingdom dissolved, Amery laid claim to the entire Witchwood and sought to rid his new domain of its evil reputation. Chief among his targets was a tribe of forest giants that dwelt deep in the woods. Known as the Twistusks, these forest giants generally kept to themselves but raided merchants on the Dawn Way from time to time.

The brash young lord gathered together an impressive group of mercenaries and adventurers, and early one summer day led his force against the Twistusks. The battle was furious, but in the end Amery’s men won the day and forced the Twistusks to flee into the mountains. The soldiers burned the giants’ steading to the ground and returned to Vraath, victorious.

Yet their victory was short-lived. One week later, the surviving Twistusks returned and attacked Vraath Keep during a tremendous thunderstorm. The giants bombarded the keep all nightlong with hurled boulders and massive poisoned arrows. When the sun rose, four of the Twistusks lay dead amid the ruined keep, but none of the keep’s soldiers or residents remained.

It is said that those who had survived the battle were taken away to be eaten by the giants in their own victory feast—all except for Amery Vraath. The young lordling retreated into the vault below his keep after he was shot by a forest giant’s poisoned arrow, hoping to elude death, only to perish slowly of his poisoned wound.

Rumors persist that Amery’s ghost haunts the ruins, and that those who dare to travel the Dawn Way at night say they sometimes hear the sounds of his anguished cries coming from somewhere deep underground. Perhaps this is why nobody has yet returned with proof of wild theories of a hidden vault containing a great treasure...