The Keep

Back to the Campaign: Time of the Green Star


The west (Guest's) Tower houses guests' (including most characters') quarters. Its cellar is a place for guests to stow bulky gear.
The east ('Barracks') tower houses: (Ground Floor) Disarming Room with murder holes.(1F) armoury and (2, 3, 4F) cramped barrack rooms. Friar Ventas has transformed the 3rd Floor Barracks, ensuring that there is no wasted space, All of the single beds have been replaced with bunked beds allowing the space in the room to be maximized. The eastern facing of the room is occupied by the Friar's own billet. The original hastily erected screen has been replaced by a wooden wall that screens his sleeping area and a rough cut wooden desk off from the rest of the room, the area directly in front of the wooden wall has a small rug and three short pews that Ventas uses to lead small prayer services for the men without disturbing the shrine. There is also a small bookshelf in which the Friar has placed small tomes on tactics and military training. It also has a dungeon below.
The north (Duke's) Tower houses 1) the Duke's armoury and trophy room 2) Glixie's library, 3) the Duke's chamber 4) Glixie's observatory. The cellar is Glixie's lab.
The south (Old Wizards) Tower-see full description below has recently been explored and found to contain a number of hazardous spaces including a summoning chamber (where a Devil was encountered) and a chamber trapped with a magical shrieking siren.
The large central chamber to the east is the Great Hall.
The large space on its left is the Fencing Hall. Travellers and villagers cram into this space when danger threatens. It is otherwise used for fencing and games.
Beneath both spaces lie a small but maze-like cellar of kitchens, servants' quarters and store rooms. These have been explored and a secret (blasphemous) chapel discovered from which lead horrific ancient crypts, clearly haunted by the Keep's evil ancestral rulers.
Walls and towers give onto rooftop turrets and defenses.
Outside the keep stand a cluster of huts - a smith, stables, shrine, brewery along with a score of farmers' dwellings. Friar Ventas has also taken over one of the fallow fields and erected a training area where he assists in drilling the men in various forms of combat. It includes models of various sorts of beasts and men. .


The Old Wizard’s Tower
This tower was recently re-opened by the Castellan. Most of its perils-except the way via the basement to the space below- have been dealt with. Now the place is a treasury of books, magical curios and resources for study of spellcraft. A wizard ensconced here as its resident gains the following advantages:
-Gain +5 to knowledge magic, spellcraft or other related rolls when they have access to the Tower's contents
-Can act as though have the Feats Craft Wondrous Item, Brew Potion and Scribe Scroll if they use the lab, library and have the assistance of the skeleton assistant. This will probably having to wear special robes, headbands, rings, etc
-can learn a large number of spells to be copied into their spellbook

The layout is as follows: Ground Floor: the whole circular turret is an open space. The arrow slit windows have been bricked in. The place is a strange nursery filled with mundane and exotic species of plant. These are nutured by a magical lamp.

First Floor: an old library and laboratory packed with fascinating books and paraphernalia. A skeleton-an animated construct rather than undead- is at work at one of the benches, laboriously mending the damaged tomes.

Second Floor: an eerie summoning room. Circles and stars have been etched into the floor. A devil –and the Old Wizard’s old ghost-briefly appeared and exchanged conversation with the party when the chamber was re-opened.

Third and Fourth Floor: the wizard's observatory. Tubes with complex lenses are propped up here and there against bricked up windows. A ladder leads up to a locked trapdoor. There is another exit, a narrow doorway that leads onto a secret staircase that descends somewhere into the Great Hall.

Basement: This place is –still- unnervingly lit by magic wall-mounted candles, which gutter with a pallid, funereal light. The room is the same round shape and size as the turret above. In the centre stands a tomb-like stone box. When the party of heroes and soldiers first entered this space an enormous terrifying face rose from the box and uttered a wail so terrifying* that it emptied the castle of its inhabitants. Members of the party were deeply shaken and were keen not to re-enter, but rather sought an alternative route to the floors that lay beneath.

• While the ‘siren’ is still in place the save is versus Fear DC 1(?). Results under 5 mean that you may well lose your senses with fear.