Castle Avernus
Once the citadel of Azalin Rex, Castle Avernus loomed as a symbol of order, dread, and eternal vigilance. It was here that the lich-king bent his will to governing a realm of death, magic, and secrecy. But now, Castle Avernus burns—not with flame, but with the echo of a catastrophe too vast for time to finish.
Castle Avernus is not a ruin. It is a wound in the world, a riddle of fire and time, a memory under glass, and a haunted echo of a tyrant who refused to end. To enter is to risk one's past, one's identity, and perhaps one's place in the timeline of reality itself.
Some seek to conquer it. Others to understand. But most who return (if they return) only say:
"It’s not dead. It’s remembering.”
Purpose / Function
Why the castle persists in this half-dead state is a matter of endless speculation:
- Some believe it anchors the domain’s reality, and that its complete destruction would hasten Darkon's collapse.
- Others claim it is a trap—Azalin’s final safeguard, baiting the curious or the ambitious to restore him or take his place.
- A rare few speak of the Unspoken, an entity born in the blast, which wears Azalin’s mannerisms but is not him.
Those who linger in Avernus too long suffer temporal dissolution: memories slide away, limbs slow to obey, and eventually they become frozen thoughts echoing through the halls—neither ghosts nor illusions, but trapped consciousness without anchor.
Alterations
Space within Castle Avernus has become non-Euclidean. Corridors shift. Returning to a room may show it entirely changed, or inhabited by a version of oneself that never left. Some explorers find whole additional wings of the castle that never existed before: schools of forbidden magic, prisons containing echoes of Azalin's former enemies, or a child’s nursery none can explain.
It is said that stairs lead down forever into catacombs that never existed, and that at their bottom is a vault humming with the pulse of uncreated magic—a place where Azalin tried to outwit death again and failed.
History
Long ago—or perhaps just moments ago, for time is unsure within Avernus—a calamity erupted from the castle’s deepest vaults: a blast of alien fire and warping force, not of this world nor the next. The explosion froze partway through its destruction. Walls buckle outward but never fall. Flame rolls through corridors without consuming. Shards of stone and arcane crystal float in air thick with frozen time.
- One wing is trapped mid-collapse, held aloft by unseen pressure.
- In the banquet hall, a grand chandelier is forever toppling, its shattered glass suspended like stars in slow motion.
- A scorched library flickers between states—burnt ruin and pristine order—every time one blinks.
- The air smells faintly of ash, blood, and something untranslatable, like a memory that never belonged to you.
Castle Avernus is not abandoned. Something lingers within its stilled halls and impossible geometry. Many who enter report:
- The whispers of Azalin Rex, repeating lines of fractured thought, spell incantations, or personal regrets—though the lich himself is nowhere to be found.
- Echoes of intruders, including themselves, stepping through rooms they haven’t yet reached.
- Reconstructed guardians—bone constructs, undead echoes, or memory-warped simulacra of former servants who do not know they died.
- A reflected version of the castle glimpsed in broken mirrors and silvered surfaces, where time moves differently and the castle still stands.
Some scholars believe Azalin's consciousness fractured in the explosion, and that pieces of him live on within Avernus, animating illusions, rewriting invaders’ memories, or weaving new realities from his grief.
Others whisper that Castle Avernus has become self-aware—a cursed intellect formed from the wreckage of its master’s final spellwork.
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