Severed Hand

The Severed Hand, formerly Hand of the Seldarine, is an elven fortress built in the early 900s. It is located at the base of The Spine of the World across from the Fields of Slaughter. For centuries, elves lived in peace in the fortress. In that days, there was a friendship and a defensive treaty between those elves and the dwarves of Dorn's Deep. Then, an army of orcs came, and a battle took place first on the soon-to-be-named Fields of Slaughter (named after the battle), then, finally, in the halls of the fortress itself. To the astonishment of the elves, the orcs were armed with weapons forged by the elves and the dwarves. The elves thought the greedy dwarfes sold those weapons to the orcs and thus betrayed the elves. Actually, they didn't, but the unscrupulous drow merchant Nym and his associates stole those weapons from Dorn's Deep's treasury and sold them to the horde. In the final moments of the Hand, when the horde already had seized the first three floors of the fortress, the elven archmage Larrel, founder and also inhabitant of the Hand, and his associate wizards desperately cast a mythal upon the Hand. The spell went terribly wrong. It transformed all elves and all orcs within the Hand into undead beings, frozen in the final moment of battle. Those who had already died in the battle also began to rise as hideous undead. In the Year of the Cold Soul (1281 DR), adventurers seeking guidance from Larrel entered the Severed Hand and put all those undead beings to their final rest.

The Layout
The Hand is separated into four floors, and on the fourth floor, four towers and one "fake" tower that leads to nowhere, (like five fingers) branch out of it, each having four floors themselves. The four towers are the Wizard tower, the Cleric tower, the Officer tower, and the War tower. The first floor is the greeting hall, the second floor is the guild (where the library, workhouses, etc. are) floor, the third floor is the throne floor, and the fourth floor is where the lodging (barracks, slave quarters, etc.) floor, and the four towers branch out of this floor.

The Legion of the Chimera's Occupation
In the year 1306 DR, the cambions Isair and Madae brought their army to the abandoned fortress to make it the base of their operation. After enslaving hundereds of men and women, a huge restoration project commenced. Isair and Madae sent emissaries to the Ten-Towns to create some kind of a peace treaty for trading. The mayor of Bryn Shander thought sending his emissary with pastries filled with holy water to the twins, which burned them because of their demonic nature, which ignited a war. Soon, a band of adventurers that had sailed from Luskan to aid Targos made their way to the fortress. They found a huge slave population, which they freed by slaying the glabrezu guard. They met a mage named Orrick the Gray, who informed them the whole fortress was collapsing into limbo because of the intense changes the twins had been setting on the fortress. When the adventurers went to battle Isair and Madae, the twins began to be sucked into limbo themselves. The fortress followed, and most of the Hand was destroyed.