Hungerdouse (fortress in The Deeping)

Steel Realms

To the inhabitants of The Steel Realms, the day-landers, the name Hungerdouse was the stuff of nightmares. To the Orrish, it was a fortress from whence they could travel in The Deeping, appearing nearly anywhere in the Central Heartlands.

The Hungerdouse [Effect]

For ages, the dark gods and their servants accompanied raids into the lands of light with a withering blight that would effect food stores and crops. It was never overly powerful, and it was named many things – “Grain Blight”, “Ever-mold”, “Mold-Shadow”; The Orrish priests referred to it as just “the bread blight” – it affected grains first and foremost. Within the Fortress of Hungerdouse, the effect was channeled back into the stockpiles of the warriors, magically increasing the meager stores and the growing of fungi and other sources of sustenance. To such a degree, that the fortress became a breeding ground in the west. It could feed captured humanoid brood-mares for producing more Orrish and allowed them to bring goblin and ork females as family. Even after the fortress fell, forever afterwards the old effect would be known as “Hungerdouse”.

Chronicle of Hungerdouse Fortress

As a strange chamber in The Deeping, the place was used by the Orrish since CY 7432. It seemed to grow Cave-Mana and fungi quite better than many other places. It was named by the Orrish, for it was “where hunger is slaked!”, but used as well by their enemies because the ‘bread-blight’ perfected here was like “dousing the food-stores in a dust of hunger.” It lies in the southeast Saelish of Dunstrand somewhere – lost to memory and sealed up. From the time of CY 7620, the earliest reckonings of Orrish using the name, the fortress spent 800 years as one of the most feared names in the central heartlands. The Orrish established a base of operations, and began breeding Nurth slaves and raiders, off-spawn, and all manner of foul, shadowy things to haunt the lands. Accompanying every raid was the “Hungerdouse Effect”.

The Demise

In CY 8242, the Red Fiend Adventuring Band, lead by the infamous Corpsebolt the Crazed – a deadly necromancer – was promised a vast reward if they were to stop the incessant raids which went out across Umbak, Dunstrand, and Fandelok. They were to strike it down, and be made titled lords and ladies in return. They were never heard from again. However, the raids were greatly reduced, and after 20 more years of raiding, they had exhausted what was left of the Orrish (seemingly) population in the fortress. Forays were made, and Druids sealed up the tunnels in the hills – there were many entrances and exits. Over the years though, powerful adventuring bands have broken the seals, hidden by Wyldsign, and gone seeking fortune.

Recent Times

The Halls of Hungerdouse were said to contain near a millennium of loot from raids – a vast fortune. Few ever returned – and most would not speak of what they saw, only that vast numbers of Nurthlings still crawled the darker reaches. For a few hundred years, it was forgotten, until settlers from county Faer in Dunstrand built Womac Tower in the southeast Saelish of Bar-Innis. When they were excavating the few sewers made for the town, they opened a tunnel which lead to Hungerdouse. Troops from county Faer and the Earldom of Bar-Innis were sent in. A hundred or more went in, only a handful made it out alive – to come out in ones and twos in the hills above the town. They never saw the dark halls of the fortress itself, but the tunnels lead for miles in all directions and the Nurth ambushed them at every turn. Those that lived suffered nightmares and madness. The tunnel was sealed up – some say over a dozen feet thick wall of magic brick-work was laid.

It is rumored that Halsrum’s Trail was once connected to the lands this fortress presided over.

Realm's Aptitude Powers: Divine, Occult, and Psychic