Kaphlyn the Necromancer
In the years after the first fall of Harmonia, a young woman named Kaphlyn came to Reedmere Keep. She was already an accomplished practitioner of the arcane arts. Where she had studied, and how she knew of the vault beneath the keep, remain matters of conjecture. The earliest accounts describe a fair-haired woman in a deep burgundy hood. Years later, when envoys from the Duchy came to bargain with her, they described much the same woman. In the marshes, people said that Kaphlyn kept her youth by taking it from others. The envoys could attest to one small thing. The rose she held at their audience had been fresh when they entered the hall. Its petals were black at the edges by the time they left.
Reedmere Keep
When the humanoid armies overran Harmonia, they took the towns, the main roads and the land that could feed a garrison. They passed over Reedmere. The keep stood deep in the marshes at the end of a causeway that flooded in wet weather. There was little to plunder nearby, and an occupying force would have had to bring in its own provisions. Lady Fiorella D’Ambrose kept the household together through those years. Sir Brontaur, an elderly paladin of Heironeous who had retired to Reedmere, took up his sword again and stood watch at the gate. People fleeing the invaders could still find a dry bed and a meal there. Brontaur had only to see someone coming down the causeway to send word to the kitchens.
Kaphlyn came to Reedmere under that protection. Fiorella gave her a room, fed her at her own table and showed her the way to the old vault beneath the keep. What Kaphlyn found below is unknown. What followed is better remembered. She drained Fiorella of life and raised her with her memories intact. When Brontaur discovered what had happened, he tried to get the rest of the household out. He died holding the gate open for them. Kaphlyn raised him too and gave him charge of the gate where he had fallen.
The Court of Mortesia
Reedmere became the seat of Mortesia. Kaphlyn claimed all the land within half a day’s walk of her gates and sent her dead to enforce the boundary. Crimson banners bearing a silver rose in full bloom hung from the ivy-clad towers. After dark, strange lights appeared in the narrow windows and a cold blue glow sometimes showed beneath the gate. The sentries kept their posts in weather that would have driven living men indoors.
Every office in Kaphlyn’s household was held by the dead. Lady Fiorella (pictured), now Chamberlain, received guests in the hall where she had first welcomed Kaphlyn. She still carried the household keys. Sir Brontaur, Marshal of the Gate, wore the lightning bolt of Heironeous on his old armour. When a guest was granted safe conduct, he took care to tell them exactly where that protection ended.
The third of Kaphlyn’s principal retainers was Tarkesh (pictured), a hobgoblin chieftain who had come to demand the surrender of the castle. Kaphlyn received him under safe conduct and heard his demands at supper. Tarkesh broke guest-right by drawing a blade on Fiorella and demanding the keys. Kaphlyn drained him where he stood and raised him. As Keeper of Petitions, he now records every treaty, judgement and grant of safe conduct, and explains the obligations of host and guest to each new envoy. Fiorella has heard him give that explanation many times.
Kaphlyn heard petitions from a high-backed chair, with Tarkesh on her right and Fiorella on her left. She let people finish speaking and expected them to remember the terms they had agreed. Visitors with her protection could dine at her table and leave unharmed. Those brought in for trespass might hear Tarkesh read out the exact place where they had crossed her boundary before Kaphlyn pronounced judgement.
The Siege of Harmonia
Tibor Vadild, brother and rival of Duchess Katalin, marched on Mortesia with a force he believed sufficient to take the castle. Kaphlyn defeated him. She then went to the burial grounds outside Harmonia, raised thousands of humanoid dead and laid siege to the city. The survivors of the Chapray Force gathered at Steelrayn. It was reckoned that some 1,500 had died and fewer than 400 escaped Kaphlyn’s horde. Some took ship for home. Others remained in Harmonias and entered the service of Lord Douglas or Sir Wulfram. The Duchy brokered a hurried treaty. It agreed to leave Mortesia alone, and Kaphlyn withdrew her army as promised. Less than a week after the attack, Sir Galwas the Everfaithful returned with the bodies of Tibor Vadild and Eleanor Chapray. Tibor was buried in the family crypt beneath Castle Everwatch. Eleanor was sent home to House Chapray. Sir Galwas gave no account of what had happened to them.
The Disappearance of Mortesia
While the Heroes of Everwatch were exploring beneath Vrowbin, Galsitan Gresvurian performed music that carried across the boundary between worlds. The Fey Queen heard him from Anwyn and came to listen. When she returned to her own realm, the boundary failed to settle back into its former shape. Much of Mortesia vanished. Where Kaphlyn’s domain had once stood, travellers found the Golden Woods of Anwyn, with ancient trees and settlements that had existed in another world only moments before. The Mort Swamp, north of the woods, survived the exchange and remained steeped in the necromancy of her former domain. No trace of the keep, its court or its army was found in the marsh. The neighbours who had once watched for strange lights in the windows could now look across the swamp after dark and see nothing at all.
