Castel d'Ombro ("Castle of Shadows") resides on the coast of Sicily near Syracuse. For countless centuries, the castle was the center of clan Lasombra, as well as the haven of the Antediluvian himself and his childer.
History[]
The castle stands as dark and foreboding now as it was when first built by the Lasombra Antediluvian. It was there that [Lasombra] spent many of his days in torpor while contemplating the dark secrets of the Abyss.
During the Dark Ages, the castle was a main focus of Lasombra activity, as the Court of Blood were in upheaval over the Shadow Reconquista happening in Iberia and the Crusades in the Holy Land. Pilgrims of Clan Lasombra traveled great distances in order to gain an audience by their founder or one of his childer.
All of this changed in 1405, when the Castle was attacked by Anarchs with the aid of some Assamites, led by the Antediluvian's own childe, Gratiano. It is widely believed that Gratiano was able to diablerize the Clan founder.
After this, the Castle of Shadows fell into disuse. It is rumored that the occasional Court of Blood is still held there.
Overview[]
Officially, this was the ancestral estate of the Ombrivecchio family and now property of the Italian government. In both truth and in official record, a variety of hazardous wastes were stored here during World War II and for twenty years afterward, and the ground is genuinely dangerous to living men and women.
There were occasional mysterious phenomena associated with the place, and an old tale about how the shadows here remained intact even when lava flows from nearby Mount Etna cast their lurid red glow on everything else. Neither local residents nor visiting authorities realized how thoroughly their minds were twisted on a regular basis to hide all that was genuinely interesting about the castle at the center of the estate. To vampiric sight it was a different matter altogether.
For some, it looked more like a tomb than a fortress. It was intended to keep the unwilling inside as well as to keep the unwanted out. The castle was a simple design, modified countless times over the centuries, and did not depend on physical strength for its defense. A long outer wall, precisely square, enclosed two interior towers, also square. The eastern tower rose higher, with a spreading upper deck to allow watchers the best view of any trouble coming from the volcano as well as other directions.
It was impossible to tell from a distance what the walls were made of, because animated shadows crawled over every surface in a barely visible ebb and flow. Tides of shadow rose out of the depths after sunset each night and wrapped around the castle in a generally spiral pattern, reversing after midnight to gradually drain away. The shadows spiraled along the road and lawns as they did up the walls.
The Vault[]
Down the great hall's east staircase, past the ground floor (with a quick look at the courtyard), past the warehouse level and the dungeon level, lay the Founder's crypt. This was a sprawling labyrinth several times wider than the castle, built out of caves whose carvers were so old that they might not have been entirely human. It was, of course, pitch black.
Gallery[]
