1.18 Briarwood Castle

It was difficult to determine direction in the pitch black darkness, but if I were to guess, we were heading back in the direction I had just left. I must have nodded off for a moment, for when I awoke there was no sign of Smokey. I was laying on the flagstones of a castle’s inner courtyard. The sun was just beginning to rise.

Imagine for a moment an endless primeval woodland. The topography is irregular, but the giant trees dwarf the hills and valleys of the ground underneath. There is only one major river flowing through this woodland, although there are many smaller creeks and streams. This is a glacier river, its headwater found high in the mountains. The river divides the wood in ⅔’s, flowing from the north east and the changing direction to due west about half way through its course. It is here, where this river bends, that is found an island. On this island, surrounded on both sides by the Rivier Auberun, lies the Castle that gives the Briarwood its name.

The languages of the Realm like Tradespeak and Low Imperial differentiate between rivers that flow into the sea, and those that flow into other rivers. In this way it is much like french which as two translations, riviere and fleuve. Auberun is a riviere in that it flows toward the center of the continent before joining other waterways.

With the exception of the Castle itself, found on the highest central hill of the isle, the entire island is filled with brambles and briar hedges. All signs of cultivation, of roadways, of towns, villages, and farms have long since faded away. The giant trees that invest the rest of the wood are missing. A fruit orchard of apples and pears is stunted, choking on briar. Only hawthorns grow here unrestrained. Thorny vines completely cover the outer wall, foot long thorn poison spikes, sharp as needles, guard the stones from invaders. No plants grow inside the walls except a single great hawthorn.

The Castle itself seems strongly influenced by gothic architecture, although built for practical defense more than gaudy appearance. There is a lack of visible wood; the roofs, when not missing, are slate. There is cloudy coloured glass in the few windows, and an elaborate iron weather vane on the peak of the highest tower roof. While most of the buildings are of blue-grey granite, the main tower is crafted of a silver and gold veined white marble. A shield carved into the stone of the main entrance shows two supporting beasts; one, a ram horned bear, the other an antlered rabbit, holding up a crown with seven points. Above the crown is the figure of an owl, with four out stretched wings,

There is a marble fountain burbling with cold clear water, pouring out of the maws of stone beasts: the horned bear; antlered rabbit; a panther like cat with four eyes and three tails; the owl with four wings; and a great boar with a single eye in its forehead. Each arrayed with their backs against each other, facing outward.

In the main keep of the Castle, stained glass windows and tapestries told stories of the Lords who once ruled here. The first of the line was a young farmboy with but a single spell to his name, one that caused crops to grow rapidly, and then die. He used this trick to grow beans along the walls of fortified buildings, to climb in the less protected windows of the upper floors. This clever Thief stole from many rich and powerful men. He used the wealth he stole to build this Castle and set himself up as the local Baron.

Many of the other pictorial stories were equally familiar.

At the end of the North Hall one would find the Castle’s Chapel. A space shared among the patron gods of this locality. Statues stood in three recesses behind a plain altar, each with a kneeling pad for supplicants.

The first, a figure of a green man: light green skin, darker green hair and beard, amber eyes and brown antlers. He held a long bronze spear in his right hand, and a silver hunting horn in his left. An inscription in High Imperial said, “Green King, Horned Lord, Great Huntsmaster”.

The second idol appeared to be a blue angel. Sky blue skin, silver blue hair and wings, with violet eyes. The tips of the wing feathers turned bright scarlet, like fresh blood. On her head was a crown, woven of dark crimson roses, ebony thorns, and pale yellow lilies. A copper chalice was in her right hand, the left hand holding a spool of thread. Her inscription, “Mother of Mercy, Sister of Sorrows, Weaver of Weal and Woe”.

The third figure was a hooded vagabond of indeterminate gender, but with silver and gold wings sprouting from its ankles. Two bone white six sided dice were found in its right hand, in the left a kris bladed dagger. The inscription read, “Coinspinner, Fatechanger, Luckbringer”.

At the end of the West Hall behind an oaken door bound with black iron was the ancient Armory, containing racks of rusting and corroded armour and weapons.

The East Hall ended in another oak door, this one bound in brass. Through the door was the Castle’s Library, mostly books and scrolls long turned to dust. A few of the more intact books had titles like, “A Noble’s Guide to the Realm”, “Dungeon Delving for Fun and Prophet”, and “1001 uses for Unicorn Blood”.

If one were to climb the tallest tower to the top, a tricky business since the stairway had long rotted to dust, one would find a room fit for a princess. In the room one could find a copper spinning wheel with a thorn spindle and a spool filled with golden thread, a full sized silver mirror the frame decorated with engravings of rose vines and apple blossoms, a white oak wardrobe containing three dresses, silver, gold, and diamond along with a pair of amber coloured crystal slippers, and a king sized four poster bed on which lay the mummified remains of a fifteen year old girl.

Tapestries on the walls told the stories of the Castle’s Ladies: the miller’s daughter who married the first Baron’s son, gifted with the power of transmutation but cursed to need to consume the heart of her firstborn; her daughter, who could speak with the birds and beasts, married to the visiting son of a Count, after escaping from her jealous mother’s attempts to poison her; and and many others, including her eventual many greats granddaughter, who poisoned herself with her ancestral grandmother’s spinning wheel on her fifteenth birthday.

I think I may have heard some of these stories somewhere before. Of coarse after a thousand years enchanted slumber, everyone was dead.

Checking my Status showed I had fully recovered from all my then current aliments, but had to deal with:

Caution!

You have entered an Area affected by the Curse of Eternal Slumber! Every 24 hours spent here will require a Willpower check or gain one additional Rank of Exhaustion Fatigue that can not be removed while in the AoE of the Curse.

Apparently the Curse had faded over time. An evil grandmother instead of a fairy godmother, but this was very much the Castle of Sleeping Beauty.

I was interupted from my musings by a six foot tale rabbit, not including his ear or antlers. It walked upright on his hind legs, twitched his nose.

-"Fuzzy britches must really hate you, dumping you Here for Her. You have been eating my children, and I would not have been so cruel."