A walking guide to Teryk — the fort inside the walls, and the village that has grown up outside them. Numbers match the map.
Getting in
1. Main Gatehouse. Open from dawn to dusk. Approach peacefully with weapons sheathed and you will be waved through onto the avenue. Closed and barred at night.
2-3. Secondary Gatehouses. East and west. Opened only to let troops sortie, and not manned.
4. Avenue. The fort’s spine. Lieutenant Nerra Valek holds it during the day, and takes the name and business of every visitor down on a wax tablet for the annalist’s office. Anyone asking after the Count is sent to the headquarters building (18). Riders are told to dismount and stable their horses in the empty barracks block to the south (10). Work crews are usually about, hauling, patching, and running messages.
5-8. Mural Towers. Thirty feet of stone at the corners of the fort, arrow-slitted, with stairs up to the wall walks and a ballista mounted on the top floor of each.
Inside the walls
Barracks and Stables
9-10. Stable-Barracks Blocks. The cavalry — horse archers and cataphracts — quarter in the southern half of 9 along with their mounts. Most of the rest stands empty. The northern stables of 10 are kept stocked with hay and water for boarders, and there are usually mules and riding horses on hand. The quartermaster (18) might be talked into lending them out for a close friend.
14-17. Infantry Barracks Blocks. Only 14 is occupied. Captain Axios Ilarion is quartered there.
Hospital
11. Shrine to Numilvara. The shrine building serves as the fort’s hospital, run by Attendant Garalen and his staff, who treat soldier and villager alike. The courtyard is holy ground and an ever-burning torch stands in it; the sick who take their rest there mend noticeably faster than they have any right to, and priests of the Lawful gods find their prayers carry further within its walls. Healing herbs, potions, and the like can be bought from the storerooms.
Granaries
12-13. Granaries. Hay, grain, smoked pork, lentils, olive oil, salt, and cheese — a garrison’s worth of siege stores, and the reason Teryk can feed a legion it no longer has.
Headquarters
18. Headquarters Building. Bulletins and official notices are posted along the courtyard walls. The Quartermaster Koinos Thales and the Annalist Hometri Socolo both keep offices here, along with the commissary and the historical archives — which Count Roland has opened to the party.
Notices currently posted
- Experienced warriors with leadership skills are invited to present themselves to Captain Axios Ilarion at the parade ground.
- (yellowed with age) The Fierce Brethren — captained by the legendary Quintus the Rager, Vestus the Unlikely, and Zaira the Beautiful — are recruiting bold comrades for expeditions into the Shadowmount Forest. Find us at the Traveler’s Inn.
- Caravan guards wanted. Seek Guildmaster Karanos in the Forum.
Villa
19. Villa. Where Count Roland Varnel and Contessa Selenia Varnel live and hold court. The Count hears petitioners in his office through most of the day; the Contessa keeps the dinner table, and an invitation to it is worth more than it looks.
Chapterhouse
20. Chapterhouse. Arven the Amazing resides here, and this is where magical research gets done. The library is good enough to support research up to third-level spells; the workshop attached to it is a good deal humbler, and will only serve for first-level work.
21. Cistern. Rainfall does not come close to filling it, so hauling water up from the river is one of the standing punishments for soldiers who have earned one.
Outside the walls
22. Parade Ground. South of the fort, past the ditches. From mid-morning to early afternoon the garrison drills here under Captain Ilarion’s eye. This is also where volunteers are called for — with the Count’s written authorization.
23. Traveler’s Inn. The village inn, and where Casino can be found. Soldiers, carters, and travelers all pass through, which makes it the best place in Teryk to drink, gamble, and listen.
24. Bathhouse. Small, but luxurious by borderlands standards, and the real center of the town’s social life. Nearly every officer in the fort turns up here in the late afternoon to bathe, eat, exercise, and talk, and people are markedly better company in it. (The latrine is the exception. Nobody likes being bothered on the toilet.)
25. Forum. The village market. Guildmaster Aeropos Karanos keeps the merchant guild’s table here. Roughly a third of days there is a fight being advertised or staged, and flyers for Casino’s ring go up here.