As fortresses, thrones, chapels, and crypts, hundreds of castles have risen within the borders of Odranto. Since the days of its unification, Ustalav has sought to defend its borders against barbarian invaders seeking to reclaim their lands. The true border between Ustalav and what was once Sarkoris has shifted dramatically over the ages, leaving border forts scattered across the county in its wake. During the rule of the Whispering Tyrant, a deathless nobility haunted many of the region’s citadels, and the lich reinforced the nation’s border with his own necromanticlyinfused fortifications, some of which refuse to crumble even centuries after their master’s defeat.
Even after Ustalav’s rebirth, Odranto continued to face incursions. With the coming of the Worldwound to Sarkoris, Kellid refugees f looded toward Ustalav. Refusing to see her family’s homeland overrun by her nation’s historic enemies, Princess Maraet Ordranti commanded that all Sarkorians crossing the Moutray River face steel as invaders, lest their demonic taint infect Ustalav as well. Thus, countless Sarkorins, f leeing the nightmares of their tainted nation, rushed full into the pikes and quarrels of Odranto’s defenders. So went the series of massacres deceptively called the Demonskin War, a conf lict that ended only after no Sarkorins remained to f lee their hellish homeland. For the first time in history, the borders of Odranto rest quiet, though victory proves bleaker than any of the realm’s defenders could have imagined.
Today, the people of Odranto live somberly, none quite convinced that, even after nearly a century, the threat of invasion is truly gone. What began ages ago as an exploitation of barbaric fears lingers upon nearly every home in the county, gargoyles of stone, wood, clay, and ceramic haunting every gable, lintel, post, and eave, supposedly warding off invaders and evil spirits alike. The people of Odranto take to stonework, soldiering, and piping with skill, the latter echoing with haunting beauty among rocky cairns across the county. Tales say that, on certain nights, the dead rise to the notes of spectral musicians, crawling from ancient graves to exercise their bones upon the land once more.
Notable Locations
Not all of the ruins scattered across Odranto’s fields lie quiet, and several brim with memories of tragedies past.
Ardagh: Built on the ruins of a Kellid village, the town of Ardagh has fallen and been rebuilt more than a dozen times. Rings of ruined walls circle the hill upon which the small, citadel-like community rises, many incorporating stones from barbarian menhirs that once littered the region. Tales of ancient treasures and Kellid curses dominate provincial legends, with the local landmarks of the Starling Well, Prewller’s Field, and Pharasma’s Needle—a gargoylecovered chapel and watchtower situated as the fortress town’s “keep”—holding particular notoriety as the resting places of haunted gold and powerful magic.
Castle Kronquist: During the age of the Whispering Tyrant, the vampire lord Malyas ruled over northern Ustalav from the nightmare castle of Kronquist. From here, the dead subjugated the realm’s living survivors while terrorizing nearby countries. Although the castle’s notorious hunting skulls, hypnotic specters, undead war machines, and daemonic guardians supposedly passed with the defeat of the lich lord, none can truly be sure, for the citadel’s infamous fanged gates closed after the tyrant’s fall and have not opened since. Yet something still moves within the secluded fortress, as on the night of every new moon the iron-horned clock tower tolls the darkest moment of midnight, just as it has for centuries.
Ground of Lost Tears: The most infamous massacre of the Demonskin War occurred at the Willowwind Priory, a Pharasmin refuge suspected of harboring displaced Sarkorins. Pursuing several families of Kellids, a border patrol tracked the refugees to the priory and, when the nuns denied them entry, set the refuge af lame. Legends say that the priory burned without a sound, and that afterward no bones—of either the Sarkorins or the nuns—were discovered. Today, no noise aside from sobs can be heard amid the blackened stones that mark the holy ground’s perimeter, but on Pharasma’s holy festival, the Day of Bones, a shadow opens within the earth and the shades of Pharasmin nuns lead a congregation of hundreds of barbarians in the day’s prayers.
House Beumhal: When, in a single night, Niclavos Beumhal hanged his kennel of hunting dogs, his favorite stallion, his twin sons, his sister, and finally himself, none doubted that House Beumhal was a cursed place. For decades the estate sat shunned and empty, until Korinnia Avorbina purchased the land and reopened it as an inn and hostel. The haunted hotel now caters to the daring and curious, with its mystic orbs, spectral visions, and strangled cries startling even the most cynical guests. No visitors are allowed on the fourth f loor—or, as of recently, portions of the third—as these are said to be the domain of the house’s ghostly master, Niclavos Beumhal himself.
Count Conwrest Muralt
An orphan born in Ardagh, Conwrest spent the first 12 years of his life raised by Pharasmin oblates until his adoption by the aging widower Count Manfray Muralt. His new life at Castle Odranto proved peaceful, and he was given full run of the ancestral estate, except for entry to his new father’s private study. When Conwrest turned 14, the count returned from court with Lyrabella, a 10-year-old with dark hair and a sharp mind. The youths became fast friends, and as they grew older, their affection grew greater than familial. Years later, after suffering a debilitating seizure, Count Manfray summoned his grown son to his bedside. Moments before his death, the haunted-looking count spoke in a strange voice, giving Conwrest directions to a secret cabinet in his study.
Sorrow at Manfray’s death soon turned to joy with Conwrest and Lyrabella’s marriage. Weeks passed before the new count had occasion to investigate his father’s study, where he found a treasure trove of tomes on cultic mysticism, the Odranti lineage, and—grimly—the family’s madness, of which volumes of personal journals proved Manfray a secret victim. Hidden behind diaries of his father’s impossible confessions and warring personalities, Conwrest found the secret cabinet, and within a gruesome treasure: a f luid-filled specimen jar in which swam an ancient, withered head. When the head turned to gaze upon Conwrest, the count’s exclamation choked in his throat as his mind became no longer solely his own. So did Iselin, servant of the Whispering Way and betrayer of the Odranti line, claim a new body—at least, partially.
As the Whispering Tyrant rose in 3203, there were those who welcomed him. Among them was Iselin Odranti, outcast son of the ruler of Odranto. The whispers of the Tyrant reached far, and as the lich raised armies in the west, Iselin and his doomsayers prepared his way in the east. The necromancer’s reward proved bitter though, as the eternal life promised transformed him into a rotting husk. The necromancer raged, and in his madness demanded the vampire regent Malyas provide recompense. Intolerant of fools, the vampire struck Iselin’s head from his shoulders. Summoning Iselin’s own niece, a slave and survivor of the undead invasion, he gave her the still shrieking head and commanded her to lock it away. In this manner Iselin’s treachery saved his family, for though it condemned his line to witness an age of horrors, their guardianship of the head sheltered them through the Tyrant’s depredations.
When young Andredos Odranti was pronounced prince of the restored Ustalav, he had heard of the head, but only as a legend. Decades later, when lesser members of the Odranti line sought to raise Castle Odranto upon the lands where their ancestors had weathered the Tyrant’s rule, workers rediscovered Iselin’s buried head. Mad after ages of seclusion, Iselin might have been destroyed, had he not been brought before a scion of the Odranti line, a distant relative bearing the necromancer’s own long-dried blood. To his terrible salvation, Iselin discovered he could exert a measure of control over his relative, and so bid his distant grandnephew hide and protect him. When that nephew passed, so was Iselin’s secret revealed to the next in the line, the heir falling under the head’s control, passing the secret burden down through the ages. Until Muralt. When fate intervened against Iselin, his stewardship passing to a descendent unable to father a child, the ancient traitor raged. Attempts to overwhelm other guardians proved fruitless, and even a bold attempt to usurp Prince Valislav Ordranti revealed some strange resistance or opposing ensnarement. Delving into the family histories, it took Iselin-Muralt years to discover a potential new heir, the scion of a forgotten family branch fallen to poverty near Ardagh: Conwrest. Iselin’s early attempts to control Conwrest proved unsuccessful, however, which he blamed on a thinning of his family blood. So he sought out a second relative, discovered among a family near Caliphas. After her family’s orchestrated doom, Lyrabella came to live at Castle Odranto, where Iselin sought to unite two distantly separated twigs of the family tree into a single, easier-to-influence bough.
Today, the undying necromancer exerts partial control over Count Conwrest. His wife Lyrabella, kept unaware of the head’s presence, sees her husband’s struggle and quietly seeks aid for his growing madness. To date, Conwrest believes he has been able to protect his wife from Iselin’s desire for an heir, but blackouts during periods of his ancestor’s control, combined with his wife’s devotion, keep her in peril.
