A short history of the town, the castle, the Vaults and the King, by the Loremaster, who has read all of it.
Die KurstadtChapter 1
Bad Niederprunk
Kind
Spa town
Name
“Lower Prunk”
Known for
Its waters, its fireworks
Bad Niederprunk lies in the valley below the castle, where a warm spring rises under the old bathhouse. Its name means, approximately, Lower Prunk, which the town takes as a compliment and visitors from England do not.
The town has three things: its waters, its view of the castle, and a great many fireworks. It sets them off for weddings, for christenings, for the first snow and for every hero who walks up the castle road. It is, I am obliged to record, that sort of town.
The arrows sold at the castle are made here, goose-fletched and true, by a man who will not say where he gets the geese.
Das SchlossChapter 2
Schloss Prunkenstein
Kind
Fairy-tale castle
Where
An Alpine crag
Spires
Uncounted (I tried)
Schloss Prunkenstein stands on its crag above the valley, all spires and lit windows, exactly as a castle in a story ought to. This is not an accident. Its first drawings were made by the court theatre's set painter, who had never built anything that was not meant to be looked at from the stalls.
Its name, Prunkenstein, means something like pomp-stone. To English ears it sounds like a castle with a monster in it. To German ones, like a castle built to be shown off. Both are correct.
Das VerliesChapter 3
The Prunkenstein Vaults
Dug
In a single summer
By
800 masons and one architect
The Grand Stair
1,412 steps
Beneath the castle lie the Prunkenstein Vaults: hall after hall, floor after floor, down to the throne of the Tyrant King. They were dug in a single summer, by eight hundred masons and one architect, who took the Grand Stair from a stage set he had once admired.
The Stair has one thousand four hundred and twelve steps, all but one of them structural. The last one is decorative.
Halfway down, the Fountain of the Five Watchers mends wounds and refills quivers. According to the plaque, it is not for drinking. The plaque is right.
Der TyrannenkönigChapter 4
King Ludolf von Prunk, the Terrible
Reign
Terrible
Height
Six feet (the statue says eleven)
Residence
The very bottom
King Ludolf von Prunk spent the treasury of Prunkenstein on the grandest dungeon ever built, and then went and sat at the very bottom of it, on his gold. Historians disagree about why. I do not.
His statue in the Entrance Hall is eleven feet tall, which flatters him by roughly five. His portraits are everywhere, his crest is on every banner, and no visitor in living memory has seen him in person. He is, I am told, very busy.
Der Fluch der SterneChapter 5
The Curse of the Stars
The Five Watchers
Five stars over the kingdom
The Curse
One by one, they fail
The cure
One hero (see below)
Five bright stars once watched over Prunkenstein, and it is said that while all five shine, the Vaults shall stand. Then came the Curse of the Stars, and one by one the stars began to fail.
Only one hero, the legend says, can break it. I shall be recording his progress in the legend as it occurs, for the record, and with what I hope is becoming modesty on his behalf, since he has none.
Der DracheChapter 6
Ashmaw
Kind
Dragon, red
Post
Guardian of the Grand Stair
Diet
The Ninth Expedition, and most of the Tenth
Ashmaw, the Tyrant King's dragon, guards the way down to the Grand Stair. It flies, it rains fire, and when it is truly annoyed it floods its whole arena with flame.
Dragons, like curses, run in families. Ashmaw's sibling is said to keep the depths below, where it is colder.
Der HeldChapter 7
Sir Roderick Vane, the Undaunted
The hero of the legend, who would be the first to tell you so. He has a page of his own.
