Snippet #1916531

It was cold. It was always cold within the fortress, a place that was known among the frightened locals of the surrounding villages and trading posts as 'Snowmaw'. It sat upon the crest of a bare, rocky hill, almost eternally battered by the harsh wind that roared in from the ice wastes.

The old ruin was constructed from the jagged dark grey stone of the region, an old defensive post that had gotten extended upon and built out over the years..though had never been developed enough not to seem spartan and oppressive. It had few glass windows, only deep arrow-slits that allowed the cold air through, or thick iron gratings that did little better. Not many of the floors had gained carpeting, or even wooden floors. The few human servants, most captured and held from the area, managed to find furs and thick clothes to keep themselves from succumbing to the cold during their duties...though plenty succumbed to the creatures.

The flesh golems made up much of the staff. While the frightened and cowed humanfolk were charged with cooking and cleaning, the guard duties and laboratory help was performed by them...much on the basis of the mistress's extreme paranoia. She was always suspicious of the servants sabotaging her work, enough that she would trust few with it.

The golems were a hideous, malformed bunch. They were a haphazardly sewn-together mix of humanoids, animals and hastily-constructed joinings. For many it seemed that the tarnished armor they wore was the only thing keeping their bodies together. They were sickly beasts, and being sickly made them vicious. Many would go after human staff on sight, and their creator rarely stepped in to stop them.

Beneath Snowmaw were the caverns, large, natural caves that spread down some way into the mountain. With the renovation of the fortress the caves had been dug into, hollowed out and bricked in places, in preparation of serving their new purpose. It served as a laboratory, and it served as a dungeon.

At the centre, beneath the main hall of the castle, an enormous cathedral cavern opened up. The insides were lit with large torches set into the walls, which cast strange, jagged shadows across the rocks. Wooden workbenches were arranged around the floor of the cavern, along with a whole range of disturbing apparatus. Tables with thick fastenings made to hold things of human size and shape, large cutting tools...and implements that seemed to defy description.

Most noticable tough stood in the middle. It was suspended from the vaulted roof by a myriad of ropes, chains, and sections of hollow piping, like a grotesque spider's web with a monstrous bulk suspended at the core. It was roughly the size and shape of the dragon, though closer inspection revealed it was nothing close. It was made from any number of different things. The great wings differed in size and colour, the legs were patched together from several different parts, and many pieces seemed to have come from animals nowhere even close to draconic. Its ribcage hung open, the contents uncompleted, and its face seemed incomplete, lacking eyes, much of one side consisting of bone and metal struts.


She crouched on the rickety, makeshift scaffolding that surrounded the enormous, partially completed abomination, stood perfectly still, staring into the eyeless sockets of the golem's face. Elarain had been there for perhaps and hour, and not many of the staff dared suggest she moved. The last person to do so had had their jaw fused shut.

The former rider was, quite clearly, a shadow of her former self. She was pallid and emaciated, she coughed frequently, seeming to be suffering from an illness that never seemed to leave her. She ate very rarely, and slept even less. While a large room had been set up in the tower upstairs, it mostly collected dust, remaining unused. It seemed that by then Elarain was powered more by obsession that earthly things. Obsession and dark magic.

Abruptly she stood, ragged cloak swaying around her narrow shoulders at the sudden movement. Like a clockwork toy that had been wound up, she was suddenly spurred into motion, and she scampered down the haphazard assortment of ropes and ladders to the bottom, showing surprising agility for her condition. She dropped to the stone floor and strode over to the large, reinforce door that stood at the other end of the hall. The entrance to the dungeons.

They were expansive, dark, and extremely hard to escape from. The cells were chiseled into the living rock, leaving the walls and floor rough, often jagged. Very little light filtered down from the tiny grates set high into the ceiling, and that which did seemed grey and anaemic.

As Elarain stepped along the shadowy corridor, the twisted guards lifted their hands, paws or talons in clumsy salute, and the figures hidden within the cells drew further away into the gloomy, hoping not to attract her fickle attention.

"Bring me another!" Elarain exclaimed, grinding to a sudden halt and gesturing to the nearest guard, pointing with a taloned finger.
"I need more parts!"