Deepcairn - The Ruined Bulwark of the Stone Coast

Slowly the water pushed in and out of the dark corridors, in and out like the rising and falling of Gathric's breath. The candle in his hand offered little warmth in contrast with the salt water flowing around his lower legs, the icy water taking the sodden books and tapestries adrift in a dance of in and out. It was as if the corridor itself was a diaphragm to the heaving, dying lungs of Deepcairn above them. The chamber narrowed as he walked deeper, the water rising higher to his stomach and the walls becoming slick with algae and weed - the place was living, breathing, coughing, spluttering, dying, and Lord Gathric Salter was deep in the belly of the beast.

Deepcairn is a deceptively large keep and fortification on the eastern coast of Cornay, known as the Stone Coast for its sharp rock beaches, jagged cliff edges, and jutting rock formations that litter the coastline and give way to the series of islands known as The Steps in the south east. Deepcairn is occupied, as it has been for centuries, by House Salter - former salt traders who leveraged their wealth to create what was once one of the great centres of learning and stored knowledge in the entirety of Cornay.

In its original form, the keep of Deepcairn was a defensive cliffside bastion built atop a series of naturally formed caves and tunnels - likely remnants of the burrows of the much larger, extinct variants of the modern dire crabs that find their homes along the Stone Coast. These tunnels naturally led from the clifftop where Deepcairn Keep was constructed down to the water's edge in the Bay of Salt - a small bay occupied by the Salters and the Whitecliffs, made up of nearly forty thousand octagonal basalt rock columns. The Bay of Salt is largely dominated by its Dire Crab population, beasts the size of boars with hard shells that the nobility of House Salter have taken to forming into protective armour, and their presence has forced the lords and ladies of Deepcairn to take up the regular use of hammer and warpick to defend themselves and hunt for food and sport.

The original keep now lies largely in ruins, but at one point it was considered a beautiful and proud structure - more monastery than castle in design- and played home to several historical events. The original structure was made up of a single large building, modelled on the abbeys and monasteries of Bridkeep and Westhold but reinforced and redesigned to support the regular living of the nobles of House Salter. Most of our understanding of Deepcairn before its ruined state is lost, but the great hall is the most intact and therefore is the most complete area to draw recollections from.

Large stained glass windows depicting the Fisher in Blue raising a net of mullet to feed a village, or the Lady in Green walking across the cliffs and raising the seas with her hand, were positioned at the head of a great Nave-like hall - though what they were before the Conquest and the introduction of the Cornayan Pantheon is lost to history. The hall itself was lined with eight pillars, each carved with scenes of deep-sea reefs, fish circling up their lengths and crabs and corals jutting from their sides. At the end of the hall, a high table made of dark stone was positioned, with two thrones of basalt pillars and dried coral in its centre and dark wooden chairs around them to house the other members of the family. These thrones were moved from the ruin to the tunnels below later in Deepcairn's lifespan, and can still be found in the new Great Hall that lies beneath the cliff's rock. According to very early myths and stories from before the Cornayan Conquest, the Great Hall was lit at night entirely by eerie green moonlight, presumably through the use of mirrors and stained-glass orbs - though no such contraptions survive to this day, and the likelihood of such a thing so early in the land's history is unlikely at best and the stuff of magical thinking at worst.

Today, the above-ground area of Deepcairn is in a state of ruin, with only its perimeter walls and the small structure that leads to the underground part of the fortification being maintained by the Salter family. The real strength of the Salters is found in what was built in the tunnels in the cliff they call home, constructed by Lady Dorel Salter during the early days of King Romidor the Third's Reign. Lady Dorel is often recalled as "Dorel the Dreamer" for her occupation with the strange mysteries of the world, from the highest reaches of the constellations to the delicate workings of the forces of nature, and her time as head of House Salter deeply reflected that. After being granted bursary by the crown for the construction of a great library, Lady Dorel began the process of converting the natural cave and tunnels beneath her keep into one of the largest centres of stored knowledge in the known world - outsized only by the stores of tomes at Bridkeep or the famous tower library in Dalthos, Agaar. The Salter Library would become a place of learning for nobility all across the realm, with third and fourth-born children often being sent to study the ways of the world as their older siblings studied the duties of statescraft. Such would remain the way for centuries, before the Bloody Scurry and the fall of Cornays.

The Bloody Scurry would see the finances of the now Asterland-ruled realm drain and drain, and expenditure for the upkeep of libraries and places of study was deemed less important than that of warship builders and farms to feed the foreign war. Slowly, through the years, the library of Deepcairn fell into disrepair - with the nobility of the Sea-Born House even favouring the upkeep of their library over that of their above-ground structures, which soon fell to ruin themselves. With the salt stores that had granted the Salters their name and their wealth depleted and replaced with halls of ancient books, their coffers were leaking by the second, and eventually the underground library too fell to ruin. The deepest floors, where books of ancient knowledge and dark secrets lay, were drowned by the onslaught of storms known as the Battering of the East in 665 PB - the first casualty in the rising waters that claimed so many of the deeper floors of Deepcairn's tunnels. Eventually, the water would rise and rise, resting at waist height on the middle floors, and the centuries of knowledge were lost by the end of the harrowing storms.

Today, the Salters occupy the highest floors of their subterranean library - a new great hall carved into the rock with reinforced stained-glass windows depicting symbols of the faith facing out towards the stormy seas. The deeper floors are abandoned entirely, though the enticing rumours of their books' contents have lured more than one Salter to their drownings in their time - the most famous being Lord Randal "Sinkstone", who tied rocks to his belt in hopes of descending, retrieving a tome promising the secrets of old magic and then untying himself to ascend once more. It is safe to say that his nickname was well earned and that Lord Sinkstone never rose from the watery depths.

Another famous drowning can be found in the suicide of Lady Alys Salter in the year 1313 PB, not in the pursuit of knowledge but to escape the arranged marriage between herself and the blackguard brute Ser Robert Warren. The marriage arrangement was made between the half-giant knight and her father, Lord Jon Salter - a dour and ambitious man with little regard for anyone but his coffers and his reputation. Lady Alys' death is likely the cause of her father's own death months later, a sickness of guilt is commonly agreed to be the cause of his demise.

It seems to be that tragedy is built into the walls of Deepcairn, from the loss of knowledge to the loss of life. Perhaps it is the very nature of the Stone Coast's unforgiving environment that misery is the common colour that its occupants are painted with, but the great library was once a thing of wonder and perhaps one day that can be restored. All that is known for certain is that in the deepest corners of Deepcairn's tunnels, in the darkest depths of its freezing water, mysteries lie bound in sodden leather and drowned parchment - perhaps secrets that are worth facing the cold and dark?