Originally named Farrengol Penacor, son of King Jerlon Penacor, Farrenghast is an undead menace who has haunted Terrinoth since his first foul deeds many years ago in the Ages of Myth.
Farrengol Penacor's Wayward Ways
King Jerlon of Talindon, after losing his wife to Rusticar Lorimor, lamented his lost love. He refused to countenance taking another queen. Behind his back, Jerlon’s courtiers began to call him the King of Grief.
His son, Prince Farrengol, had always been a boisterous child, but with his mother exiled and his father lost to melancholy, he now lacked any sort of parental hand. Farrengol took to training in the tiltyard with some of the coarser members of his father’s household guard, and an unwise bond of mutual support was forged. The guards taught the young prince how to ride and fight, but they also brought him along when they secretly raided far-flung farmsteads for their own merriment. For his part, the prince made sure that his friends never had to face any serious consequences for their wicked behavior.
On the occasion of the prince’s sixteenth birthday, the court jester performed a verse penned for the occasion. When Farrengol realized that the first letter of each line spelled out the word “bastard,” he flew into a fierce rage and summoned his friends. They galloped from the castle, calling for a pox to take the morose king and his gossiping court. They did not return.
In time, news spread of vicious outlaws who set upon travelers and isolated farms in the north of the country, around the borders and wild lands of Nerekhall. Reports of their crimes were grave and only increased in frequency, but the gloomy King of Grief would not rouse himself to order their capture. It was thus left up to the Lord of Nerekhall to place a bounty on the heads of the outlaws. Roving knights soon tracked the outlaws down to a farmstead. The scene within was one of unspeakable horror.
The next morning, a narrow file of knights arrived at the gates of the Lord of Nerekhall’s castle. They carried a number of long poles from which dangled a score of heads. Under the dried blood and grime of the road, some of the heads could be recognized as those of members of the household guard who had ridden out with Prince Farrengol. The prince was there, too. He and his closest companions had been taken alive, and now they sat astride the knights’ spare horses, their hands and feet held fast in iron fetters.
The Forbidding Tower of Nerek
Nerekhall was named for the strange and forbidding ruin that stood upon lonely downs in the center of the region. No farms or homesteads stood in the shadow of the Tower of Nerek, for so awful was its aspect that a deep sense of foreboding began to gnaw at the sanity of anyone who spent any time nearby. It is said that Elves originally built the tower, though they refuse to confirm this rumor and stake no claim on the dismal ruin. Anyone who lived in the vicinity found their sleep wracked with nightmares, and delusions coming to haunt their waking thoughts. The Lord of Nerekhall used it as a prison.
Prince Farrengol and his companions were interred within and left there to wait for the King, for the Lord of Nerekhall was too circumspect to dare pass judgment on a Penacor. In the dark nights in the tower, the group is said to have discovered the secret behind the tower’s ill repute: a Daewyl portal nestled in an attic nook, and within an Ynfernael shade. Farrengol no sooner encountered the demon than he promised it fealty if only it might somehow grant him freedom.
When King Jerlon arrived at the keep of the Lord of Nerekhall, he was presented with evidence of his son’s crimes and the heads of his household guard. The King wasted little time in condemning Prince Farrengol to death. He ordered the outlaws to be hanged from the Tower of Nerek and their bodies taken from the borders of Talindon and cast into the mires of the northeastern swampland.
Return of the Dread Prince
The King of Grief returned to his castle, and there, he eked out a few more miserable years, dying a lonely and largely unmourned monarch. His surviving son, Farrendon, shared none of his father’s frailties and displayed more of the robust spirit associated with the Penacor line.
And yet, Prince Farrengol and his companions had not yet passed from this world. Their bodies lay putrefied in the swamp, but the shade in the tower had not forgotten its promise. Invigorated by dark magic, the bodies of Farrengol and his companions at last rose from the swamp and set about their old crimes once more. The undead raiders terrorized the lonely homesteads that nestled around the borders of the swamp, and with the loot and weapons they captured, they set up a fastness of their own, inhabiting a ruined keep among the Misty Hills that overlooked the marshes that had been their grave. Lord Farrenghast, as the foul wretch came to be known, went on to terrorize the surrounding lands with his skeletal followers. They were as a plague upon this region, seemingly unstoppable in their dark thirsts.
The Dread Prince Farrenghast was caught by a valiant band more than a century after his rise. That was believed to be his end, but there exist accounts that have him haunting Terrinoth several times since then. Despite the wight's actions, a long period of relative peace settled on most the land in these years.
The First Darkness
It would eventually come to be that a savage Uthuk Y'llan invasion shook the very foundations of Talindon. During this terrible war known as the First Darkness, Lord Farrenghast once again appeared in his cursed form. From the sullen Misty Hills to the northeast marched a column of skeletal warriors with Farrenghast riding at their head. Some, especially those far from Nerekhall, had forgotten his evil, but he was a deathless curse on the land. The vile wight had no hesitation, of course, in pledging his assistance to the Ynfernael cause.
In 483, the Sunderlands commander Waiqar was sent to relieve the dwarves of Thelgrim, who were under siege by the terrible Uthuk, and the task proved simple enough for the Sunderman (who was a proficient wizard as well as skilled military leader). By autumn, he had even grown bored with his duty and devised his own campaign against the forces of Farrenghast. This campaign proved a great success, and Waiqar’s forces banished the undead horde.
The Haunting of the Misty Hills
Over time, the foul essence of the undead seeped into the earth itself, and made it as vile as they. It was perhaps this darkness that called to the Mistlands, which absorbed the Misty Hills into itself.
Despite the horrific nature of the Misty Hills, some still travel here in search of ancient relics and older knowledge. Like their undead inhabitants, the Misty Hills have changed little since the time Farrenghast took the keep and the surrounding lands for his own. The opportunities there are many for the brave and clever.
Within the keep, necromantic tomes of tremendous power rest on shelves of decaying wood, their leather bindings and blood-marked pages still fresh despite the centuries. Weapon stores from Farrenghast’s many campaigns are said to lie inside the lesser fastnesses within the Hills. These include items from across Mennara—for his foes have come from far and wide to thwart him, and after failing left their possessions along with their corpses. Rumors have spread that unbound Stars of Timmorran seeded away within unmarked chests, drawing the attention of those mages hungry for power or eager to study such priceless rarities.
References
- Realms of Terrinoth