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The content here was originally published on my Storybridge site during my student days. Its archived here.
Ruling over the town of Dravencliffe, and Silverstream Pass is office of Baron Dravencliffe in the mighty castle of Dravencliffe Keep. The Eckert family have held the office for generations, right through the spellplague and through history. The current Baron is an elderly man, with an imposing hawkish visage.
The castle is part baronetcy, part fortress and part museum - its twisting corridors full of family treasures, historical curiosities and irreplaceable iconic artifacts, secured behind its mighty stone walls.
A frontal assault on the castle itself is nearly impossible, with its snaking access road winding for 25 miles up from Silverstream Pass, up the sides of rocky mountain outcrops, over narrow bridges, precipitous stonework buttresses and through miraculous tunnels before crossing a 40 foot drawbridge over a deep chasm to the castles door.
The story of its founding is in many tomes saved from the spellplague, and can be read of in the temple libraries all up and down the nowadays Serpentine Coast.
Built by the same dwarven engineers that made the Dravencliffe Road, the castle and its access road are of a workmanship that only the ancients could produce. Decades of painstaking work in chilling temperatures, hewing an impossible construction out of frozen rock.
The blocks of stone that make up both the pavement of the road and the walls of the castle are typically 2-3 feet long, a foot wide and 6-12 inches thick - a massive weight to move, but even more so in the thin air of Dravencliffe. The joints are not mortared but are so tight that a fine blade cannot slip between them.
The date now - 1485DR, 100 years after the Spellplague - marks nearly 300 years of this castle standing.
The Keep was commissioned in 1397DR when Tollemann Eckert was a captain in the King Rasamman’s army trying to fight back the orcish hordes pouring through from the East. Captain Eckert was fresh from a great victory at the Battle of Gannon Dale, fighting the orcs and goblins who marched on Lysanmere - whose Spell plague shattered foundations Tyrephene is now built on. The King promoted him to Major and asked him to set up a post with his men in Silverstream Pass.
Above the hills of the pass, on the northern side, Eckert spotted an enormous seam of coal, in a sprawling zig-zag across the face of the cliffs, beneath the snow-capped peaks.
It was here that Eckert made a cunning plan to provide him and his men a base against the weather and enemies of the Dramorthians. He paid two dwarven prospectors to look for precious metals, amongst the seams of coal in the pass and his gamble paid off when troves of adamantine, platinum and copper were found. In return for mining rights he persuaded a team of 200 of the best dwarven miners and engineers to come to a new town of Dravencliffe - named so for the coal black cliff-face patterns in the shapes of those fell birds.
The miners could have all of the metals for themselves on two conditions - they tell nothing of the deal to the King, and they build Eckert and his men an impenetrable castle as a bolthole, with a precipitous road leading to it. If the hordes attacked, the men could pick off as many of the advancing army as possible from the rocks and trees beside the Silverstream Pass road, and then the access road, but when hopelessly outnumbered as they inevitably would be, they could retreat inside the keep, drop the drawbridge and wait out the attackers who would freeze on the bleak road below.
The Dwarven engineers first built the road and the town, and it was from this base that Major Eckert had his first few victories as unprepared horde armies with 10 times the forces Eckert had fell before his well trained men, and the harsh conditions and treacherous terrain. The King was well impressed and granted Eckert the new Baronetcy of Dravencliffe.
But by the time the finishing touches were going into place on the keep, the orcish hordes led by evil shamans of Gruumsh, aided by occasional bands of Drow, launched much more organized attacks on the Baron’s men. Many of the Baron’s men had died in these attacks, and only a hardy core of fearsome hardbitten soldiers remained. The Dwarven miners and engineers left when the work on the castle was finished, with perhaps a dozen remaining on, having become attached to the location, and determined to mine out their stakes.
The Baron’s wife, Yefgani, died a year or two after moving to the castle, from a wasting disease after being caught in a snowstorm.
The Keep is a huge structure, its tallest towers 80 feet high, and its perimeter walls over 500 feet around. It is perched on the edge of a chasm cut through over the millenia by the Frostbitter River which tumbles through the chasm before joining Silver Stream below. The only crossing for the chasm is a 40 foot long drawbridge, built by the cunning dwarven engineers. It can be dropped in two 20 foot leaves at the pull of a lever and any on it would plummet 200 feet to the floor of the chasm below.
The drawbridge gives onto a portcullis door and then into a large court, big enough for a small army to gather on horseback. Overlooking the court are two towers at the front of the castle, peppered with arrow slits. From the court an impressive entry way opens into the castle proper. Inside the Baron lives akin to a king, with a staff of 15 servants, clerics and accountants to manage the Baronetcy. One floor is given over to the Baron and his family, while staff quarters are at the rear, and in the Clerics Tower to the rear.
The Clerics Tower is a 60 foot high structure reached by a short pathway, that has a view back towards the east along the Frostbitter River, and serves both as a watchpost and as spare rooms for the Baron's staff.
The Baronetcy is made up of:
Baron of Dravencliffe, Eckert Tollemann III
Baroness Dravencliffe, Talluta Tollemann
Master Karl Tollemann, Heir to the Baronetcy
Head of the Staff, Chancellor Extremus, Rolund Glimmerstone, a Half-Elf Cleric
House Chief, Rulian Cragg, a Goliath Ranger
Brother Sincerious, Oskar Vereen, Head of the Clerics of Dravencliffe Baronetcy, Eladrin Cleric
Chief Cook, Oleg Mummage, Gnome Wizard
Head of the Watch, Brother Eyron Fallbranch, a Half-Elf Cleric
Paramount Healer, Abbot Munin Bazel, a Deva Warlord
Captain of Guards, Royce Badgerston, a Human Warlord
Cheif of Rastlers, Tune Faskinhold (also has a base in
The lands around are precipitous rock with climbs typically at two feet up for every foot along, and in many places vertical cliff faces. Most of the lands are covered with snow, although a few rare outcrops of trees cling to the rocks in sheltered spots.
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