Stonekeep
Stonekeep is one of the oldest settlements in Demorrah. It's a stoic, fortified city, known for monochromatic stone architecture and etched murals chronicling a long and storied history. Once a bastion of knowledge, structure, and control, the city has begun to shift in ways nobody thought possible. Even the place's name rebuked the idea of anything other than straightforward fact.
Cracks have begun to form, and I don't just mean metaphorical ones. The literal buildings seem unsteady, now.
A surge in banditry along the roads strains things even further. The Stoneguard, Stonekeep's dedicated military force, has been worryingly absent. Whispers of corruption within the Guard grow, and every gate unmanned only serves to confirm them. A masked knight has returned from adventures abroad, and while everyone swears he was in their barrack, nobody can recall his name or where he came from.
Stonekeep's murals are shifting, histories rewriting themselves before my eyes. That stranger... it's like he's not just lying, he's rewriting the truth to fit his story. I know I'm not supposed to make assertions about these things, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I don't like what's happening here.
Primary Features
- Reinforced stone architecture showing structural wear
Murals etched into walls and streets, some reportedly changing
Grand libraries with shifting internal arrangements
Sealed archive wings due to unstable glyph resonance
Sparse Stoneguard patrols
Unknown Quest
450
EXP
"A future Quest is being processed"
Unknown Quest
280
EXP
"A future Quest is being processed"
Era of Stability (Approximately 30 years ago)
Stonekeep flourished through trade, academia, and cultural exchange. Its defenses were never tested in full, and its governance model—meritocratic appointment via scholarly and military achievement—held without incident for nearly a century.The Fractured Accord (15 years ago)
Tensions with a neighboring settlement escalated over territorial and mineral rights. The resulting diplomatic fallout ended peacefully, but with reputational damage. While Stonekeep maintained autonomy, its status as an unshakable city-state began to erode.Cracks in the Stone (1 year ago)
The city has since experienced a slow structural and symbolic decline. Walls crack. Patrols thin. Civic institutions fall behind schedule. The murals, once celebrated for unflinching historic clarity, have begun to contradict their own content.A Knight Returns
An unnamed, masked knight has returned to the city after an undocumented absence. His identity is disputed. No official records name him, yet many claim to have served alongside him. He was granted access to the archives without question. Since his arrival, murals near the archives have begun showing unfamiliar scenes, some with the knight at their center.The Stone Shifts (Recent Event)
Several phenomena are now under Guild review:The Archeon Wing’s glyphwork destabilized following an incident involving the aforementioned knight. The area remains sealed.
Mural sections update independently. Figures appear holding tomes that do not exist in the archive’s catalog.
The Grand Library has been reorganized multiple times by multiple parties, none of whom recall initiating the changes.
One archivist reported speaking to a statue, only to find the statue gone and the hallway replaced with a spiral staircase not present on any floorplan. The archivist has been deemed unreliable due to past reports of questionable clarity, but as this is not an isolated account, it is still being logged.
Whether these changes are magical, temporal, or something else entirely remains unverified. Regardless, Stonekeep’s grip on its own truth is demonstrably weakening.