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The White Keep
Far above the frozen shores of the White Seas, atop the northernmost peak of the Spinning Winds, the White Keep looms bluff and forbidding.
It is not a human castle. No living men could have withstood the bitter cold or thin air long enough to set its ice-mortared stones in place. Frost giants built the White Keep, raising walls of rock and iron to dwarf any work of men. Frost giants live there still, and hunt the lower slopes in the company of winter wolves. On most hunts they take seals and whales, but any mortals foolish enough to venture onto their grounds is likely to end on the drying racks.
No one knows what enemy the frost giants built the White Keep to face. It is possible that they had none, and instead raised it as a monument to the High Thane who finally united the tribes, or at the behest of their cruel god Inuakel, called the Father of Storms.
Whatever the purpose of the White Keep, its creators drew deeply on the power of elemental ice to build it. Those who have visited the castle tell of entire galleries where all the furniture and sculpture is carved of sparkling, jewel-like ice; windows are paned with it, and the castle's artisans used translucent ceilings and walls to turn whole rooms into dazzling, hollow crystals. Little of this would have been possible without the giants' mastery of truefrost, a secret they guard jealously.
Still higher than the White Keep, at the very tip of Wintermount, there is a small lodge built entirely of truefrost, black iron, and bones. Called Winter's Crown, it is the holiest site in the Father of Storms' faith. Outsiders are not permitted to set foot on the peak that holds the lodge, much less within Winter's Crown itself. Even most frost giants are barred from its doors. It is known that truefrost can be made only within Winter's Crown, and the resulting extreme scarcity makes the substance almost impossible to find outside the frost giants' realm.
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