Emberwatch Keep

Emberwatch Keep sits on the western flank of Mount Cindervale (“the Emberheart”) and is hewn from the dark basalt of the volcano. The western portion of the valley is lush with plants that grow in the rich volcanic soil, whereas the rest of the Cindervale area is coated with black ash and scorched of life. The winds come in from the west, keeping the keep out of the foul vapours of the volcano.

The elves called the volcano “Emberheart” because of the river of molten rock running like blood through its veins. Some also believe that a slumbering fire god arrived here and was bound within the mountain during the great war. The slopes of the volcano glow at night with drifting embers and streamlets of slow-moving lava. Black ash fields spread for miles eastwards; and with every full moon the mountain seems to “breath” incandescent gas plumes into the night sky.

Constructed a century ago by Sir Darius Scoriawyn for his nameless dwarven ally who would use the volcano for forging heat-tempered steel alloys like none seen in this world before. The corners of the square structure are reinforced with rusting iron bracing, but the actual construction isn’t designed for siege or combat with very few arrow slits and a propensity for windows instead.

The structure is four stories tall with a basement (not mapped at this time). The lower level is the greeting and dining hall, kitchens, scullery, and buttery. The second level is the great hall on the north side, and the barracks for the men-at-arms on the south. The main room of the great hall has massive doors that swing open on nights when the wind is right to look at the twinkling cone of the mountain.

The third level contains the Lord & Lady’s apartment as well as a smaller suite for noble guests.

With the return of the dwarves to their own world upon their great Earthships, the keep changed hands and is now the domain of Lady Aurelia Magmaris – a noble with fiery passions that match her fiery hair. Trained in both swordplay and fire magic, she has found this keep much to her liking.

Her husband, Calian Magmaris, is less enamoured with the site now. While it was the Cindervale that inspired his opus – “The Heart’s Inferno Suite”, he dreams of composing pastoral ballads in gentler climes. He has begun writing distant friends and family begging for invitations for from the ash and brimstone (as well as the strange beasts that hide in the dense foliage of the valley).

Of Magmaris’s twenty men-at-arms, five were recently sent to find the forge and kiln of Lord Scoriawyn’s dwarven ally. They ventured down a lava tube after reporting seeing a ghostly ash-covered child dancing towards the site and have not returned… but echoes of distant hammering and anguished cries drift up from the tube at night – a call for a rescue mission, or bait for something darker?

The 1200 dpi versions of the map were drawn at a scale of 300 pixels per square and are 13,800 x 13,200 pixels in size (46 x 44 squares). To use this with a VTT you would need to resize the squares to 70 pixels (for the recommended 5′ squares that make sense for the furnishings as shown) or 140 pixels (for the classic 10′ squares) – so resizing the image to 3,220 x 3,080 or 6,440 x 6,160 pixels, respectively.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2025/06/25/emberwatch-keep/