North of the vast meanders of the Javan River, where the Hool Marshes verge upon the dark boughs of the Dreadwood, lies an expanse of swamp some 100 square miles in size.
Thickly overgrown, covered with a mixture of cypress trees, saw grass, and other stranger botanical specimens growing out of the muck to create a trackless morass, the bemired ground makes for difficult passage for any would-be explorers. The region is not known for its flora, fauna, or terrain, however, but for the dull green glow at its center, which emanates for miles and serves as a local landmark during murky Hool nights. The light’s origin frightens away even the heartiest marshfolk, and has been a source of mystery for years since the light first shone forth. The luminescence intensifies as one approaches its source-the upper reaches of the central keep of a small, ruined fort. The structure resembles a ghostly lighthouse, but most who have seen it consider it an infernal beacon to the underworld.
Located on a low hillock (one of the few patches of solid ground in the region), the long-abandoned structure was once a Keolandish foothold. One of a chain of similar forts constructed more than a century ago to protect the kingdom’s southern border during Keoland’s ill-fated imperial age, the never-completed keep suffered a series of enervating attacks by local tribes of lizardfolk, who inhabited the place after the exhausted Keolanders finally abandoned it, deciding at last to establish the kingdom’s southern frontier in the Dreadwood.
The lizardfolk didn’t hold sway for long. Nearly a century ago, the diabolical Cult of the Black Flame, led by a charismatic Suloise high priest known as Ohjos (the “Eye of God”), swept in to claim the ruined works and complete construction of the fort. Although denizens of the marsh shunned the place, word of the cult’s increasing outrages soon spread beyond the borders of the Hool. When several youths, including the children of nobility, began disappearing from a neighboring province of Keoland, the local lord, Count Arthemene, assembled a small army, even bidding reluctant old King Nyhan IV to sponsor a contingent of grizzled Dreadwood rangers, known as the Dreadwalkers to assist in the effort. The host marched on the cult’s fort, but much to their surprise, they found no evidence of the cult. It had vanished into the mists like a morning fog, leaving the keep totally abandoned save for the grisly remains of the Keolandish younglings.
And so the keep remained until about five years ago, when a mage exiled from Keoland took up residence in the lonely fort. Called Baltronus Zemner of Linth, the wizard of some repute (much of it ill) had spent a good deal of his life combing the depths of the Dreadwood looking for the lost magic of the infamous (though by that time extinct) Suel House of Malhel. According to legend, the Malhel came to a cataclysmic end at their own hands after dabbling in long-lost magic in the years following the Great Migrations. Despite longstanding Keoish prohibitions against seeking out the dark heritage of the Malhel, “Baltron” craved this knowledge and could not be dissuaded from its pursuit.