Dragonwilds:Dowdun Reach

The Region of Dowdun Reach

Dowdun Reach is a Dragonwilds:power level 6 mountainous region in Dragonwilds:Ashenfall located south of Dragonwilds:Silverthorn Keep in Dragonwilds:Fellhollow, accessible through the ominous gatehouse. In order for Players to obtain access to this region, they must first complete Dragonwilds:Withering Heights.

Similarly to Dragonwilds:Fellhollow, Dowdun Reach has underground spacesTemplate:CiteDiscord.This region also introduces the Dragonwilds:Black Knights and the Dragonwilds:Black Knight's Fortress along with new Dragonwilds:mithril-tier material progression.

History

Dowdun Reach is a mountainous region of Dragonwilds:Ashenfall, sitting at the summit of a dormant volcano with the keep itself built inside the caldera that forms the land's highest ground. During the Template:RSL and the Dragonwilds:Human-Garou War, Dragonwilds:the Rasmodels, a noble house who migrated from the mainland, had arrived to Ashenfall and settled within Dragonwilds:Brynmoor. Around the same era, the Dragonwilds:Children of Shadows chose the mountains (then called the Dowdun Mountains) as their home.Template:CiteJournal

The region's value was secured through an accidental finding. A young Zamorakian mining rock for a raven habitat struck a mithril seam and tried to conceal the discovery, but she was found out and killed. Mutiny followed until the order stabilized, at which point the Children of Shadows held the only known source of mithril on Ashenfall.Template:CiteJournal Since the order believed manual labor was below them, goblins were press-ganged into hauling the ore out of the mountain in exchange for scraps of food.Template:CiteJournal Mithril itself was withheld from both arms and armour by strict policy. The Children deliberately kept the supply short to keep its value high, treating it as a bribery currency used to influence those who could further Zamorak's goals.Template:CiteJournal The smiths within the order lived dual lives, openly forging deliberately dulled weapons to arm the Saradominists in Bramblemead while covertly delivering superior goods to their own pilgrims in the Dowdun Mountains.Template:CiteJournal

The Rasmodels did not originally live in Dowdun. The house operated within the Dragonwilds:Temple Woods and Dragonwilds:Bramblemead. The Children of Shadows saw opportunity in the family and infiltrated the household, with members of the order taking positions as personal bodyguards and expecting an easy mark.Template:CiteJournal The Rasmodels were not an easy mark, they moved deliberately into leadership seats within the Children's own circles until the two groups could no longer be told apart, and the family's reputation for poisoning their rivals grew alongside that influence.Template:CiteJournal When one of the family was finally caught in the act, the whole house was banished north to Dowdun Reach, and they took their most loyal bodyguards with them.Template:CiteJournal At Dowdun Reach, the Rasmodels moved freely through the region and continued operating as they had before. The takeover eventually overreached. The youngest Rasmodel was caught poisoning a sleeping official, and what remained of the family's standing collapsed overnight; they were barred from the rest of the Reach, restricted to a single part of the keep, and survived only because their bodyguards had grown loyal enough that moving against them was too dangerous.Template:CiteJournal

Dowdun Reach would soon be its own settlement for not just the Rasmodels, but for the Goblins and Zamorakians. When the elder Lord Rasmodel died, Milliburn took over after his fatherTemplate:CiteJournal and eventually was elected by the Children of Shadows as the Master of Dowdun Reach on the strength of his work training the keep's forces and running its quartermasters. Milliburn raised a new martial order, the Shadow Knights, who would later be known as the Black Knights. The order was born from his deep distrust of Dragonwilds:Fellhollow and its dragons Dragonwilds:Imaru and Dragonwilds:Xikotal, and the Master's own bodyguards formed its core.Template:CiteJournal Steel armour was not new in the region. Dragonwilds:Sadia Vulketra, a member of the Children who feared an eventual Saradominist reprisal, had earlier worked with the Amalgamated blacksmith Dragonwilds:Vesk to produce the first suit of steel gear in the Fellhollow area, starting with a black horned helm.Template:CiteJournal When Milliburn needed to outfit the Shadow Knights in bulk, however, the materials came from an unexpected source. Xikotal brought the Zamorakians an offering of coal and iron as a misguided attempt to draw them into the wider Fellhollow community. The gift instead fuelled and fortified their separation from it.Template:CiteJournal

As the Dragonwilds:Dragon Rebellion tore through Ashenfall and the rest of the subcontinent fell to dragons, Lord Rasmodel and his knights held the Reach and protected those within its walls. During the Rebellion, Dragonwilds:Avisk forged a stone in the desert and hid his soul within it.Template:CiteText The stone was eventually brought to Dowdun Reach, where the mages found it and studied it for its power, calling it the Dreaming Stone. From inside the stone, Avisk whispered to the Children of Shadows to amuse himself, gradually pushing them into turning on one another.Template:CiteText

When Fellhollow was falling to the Withering plague, the Reach's response was to cut itself off entirely. A research group within the keep reported that the surrounding mountains should hold the contamination out, though waterways and crevices still posed a risk. Every pathway to Fellhollow was severed and the Reach closed to the outside world. Knights were stationed in the crypt as an early warning. If the dead rose in the crypts, the Withering had arrived.Template:CiteJournal The Shadow Knight snipers' standing orders were to be shot any draconic presence on sight, with the lone exception of Blue Dragons, which were to be spared to preserve the local balance.Template:CiteJournal

The Dreaming Stone's power was eventually turned to fueling a demon portal, and the Mages of Zamorak were soon summoning demons in growing numbers. Meanwhile, the Shadow Knights operated under two sets of orders. The first set was simple: put down any demon that broke free from its summoner, and "protect" the mages. The second set was kept secret. It held what the order called the 'Demon's Share': whenever a demon went rogue, the knights were to allow one mage to die before stepping in, a policy used in practice to keep the mage population trimmed. Above even that, the knights' highest standing order was not to protect the magi at all, but to destroy the demon portal outright if the summonings ever got beyond control.Template:CiteJournal

The Dreaming Stone had always been a point of contention, and the breaking point came when a demon appeared in the middle of a Shadow Knight training session and killed the unarmed recruits. Alric, the archmage and Lord Rasmodel argued the matter out in the war room. When they emerged, control of the Dreaming Stone and the demon portal's power belonged to Milliburn, and the magi had lost most of their authority.Template:CiteJournal

Alric refused to accept losing command of the Dreaming Stone. Denial is the first tenet of the Dragonwilds:The Gospel of Zamorak, and Alric's faithful lived by it; they secretly redirected the stone's power so that its energy spread to every room of the keep instead of flowing along a single line. The rerouting coincided with a separate scheme of Alric's to capture demon souls in enormous numbers and use them to supercharge the demon portal. The scheme failed. Rather than powering a gateway, the stored demon souls bled into the walls of the keep, and demons could summon themselves anywhere within it. Alric claimed this outcome as his plan all along, warning his magi that nowhere in the Reach was private any longer and that an avernic would be listening whenever someone spoke against them. The rerouting caused other problems too. Overloaded energy tethers set off sudden fires and magical accidents, which the magi pinned on the Master and his knights.Template:CiteJournal Template:CiteJournal Later effects were worse. With the altered flows now running through sleeping quarters, residents stopped dreaming properly, tempers grew short, and a sickness of voices spread outward from the magi wing. The afflicted either fell unconscious or heard competing voices fighting inside their own minds.Template:CiteJournal

It was Milliburn who had enough of the voices and destroyed the stone, putting an end to the whispers, but this only made things worse. The magic of the shards kept the keep's residents alive while destroying their sanity.Template:CiteText Groups of the afflicted would travel together and kill whoever they met, and the Elite Black Knights were deployed to put them down during the worst outbreaks.Template:CiteJournal Milliburn would remain in the top of the keep, where he guards the entrance of Dragonwilds:Umbral Sands.

In the Dragonwilds:Sixth Age, a group of adventurers would make their way to Dowdun Reach, fighting against the region's threat in order to get to Umbral Sands.

Geography

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Journal

Nothing discovered yet...

Music

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Gallery

Teaser banner for Dowdun Reach

Teaser banner for Dowdun Reach
Concept art of Dowdun Reach Black Knight's Fortress

Concept art of Dowdun Reach Black Knight's Fortress
Early Concept Art of the Black Knight's Fortress

Early Concept Art of the Black Knight's Fortress
Early Concept of the Black Knight's Fortress

Early Concept of the Black Knight's Fortress
Early Concept Art

Early Concept Art
A field in Dowdun Reach

A field in Dowdun Reach
View of the Black Knight's Fortress in-game

View of the Black Knight's Fortress in-game
New trees appearance

New trees appearance
Black Knight's Fortress

Black Knight's Fortress
Entrance of the Black Knight's Fortress

Entrance of the Black Knight's Fortress

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Trivia

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References

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