Lore:Fort Frostmoth

was the primary Imperial settlement on the south coast of Solstheim, in the Hirstaang Forest. It was established some time in the Third Era, after the Imperial discovery of the island. The fort acted as the area office of the East Empire Company, established on Solstheim to mine the rich deposits of ebony from Raven Rock, and was also the main link to Vvardenfell by way of  . The fort was known among the legionnaires as a punishment detail, due partly to the unpleasant weather and partly due to the mead.

In  , during the fulfillment of the Bloodmoon Prophecy, the fort was attacked by werewolves sent by Hircine, who captured   to act as one of the Prey in the Hunt. The fort sustained heavy structural damage in the attack. Carius survived the ordeal and re-assumed command of the fort later that year. 

In  , the Nords of Skyrim attempted to capture the whole of Solstheim and remove Fort Frostmoth.   Solstheim did indeed, as a whole, come under official control from Skyrim at this time:  but the fort remained intact, as did the recently-established town of Raven Rock and its ebony mines.  Indeed, any change in the overall situation seems to have existed largely on paper.

After the Oblivion Crisis, Dunmer refugees led by House Redoran began settling in Raven Rock in  , under the leadership of Councilor  , who maintained a good relationship with the East Empire Company who were currently (still) in charge of the town. . There is evidence that General Carius, while still alive, perceived the Dunmer settlements as a threat to the garrison and demanded that the Dunmer surrender. They never replied, and Carius repeatedly wrote to the Imperial Council to seek guidance,  apparently also without reply. Eventually, Carius decided to declare war on Raven Rock, threatening to retaliate if the Dunmer attacked the fort.  It appears, in fact, that several of the letters were never actually sent (it was in Fort Frostmoth that they were found, in  ), and that the whole idea of a conflict between Fort Frostmoth and Raven Rock appears to have been a product of an increasingly paranoid Carius's imagination. Raven Rock at that time still regarded itself as under Imperial protection according to its own history, and was still under the control of the East Empire Company; furthermore, the Dunmer colony was still very small. 

In  , the aging Fort Frostmoth was almost completely destroyed by the eruption of the Red Mountain, resulting in the deaths of most of the garrison including General Carius.  The few surviving Imperial soldiers moved to Raven Rock and attempted to establish a new garrison there, but they were too few in number to effectively protect the settlement on their own: they were supplemented, and eventually replaced, by guards from House Redoran.  In   Solstheim officially became a territory of Morrowind when the High King of Skyrim offered the island to the Dunmer people. The East Empire Company withdrew from Solstheim by this time, believing the ebony mine to be failing (in fact it kept going for a considerable time), and taking the last vestiges of Imperial influence along with it, and the fort was never rebuilt.  The ruins were taken over by   and  s.

Some time before  ,  , an apprentice of   of Great House Telvanni, entered the ruins of Fort Frostmoth to conduct necromantic experiments using  . She succeeded in reanimating the corpse of Falx Carius, but after two months she departed when she was unable to exert any manner of control over him. The undead Carius, apparently under the delusion that the Ash Spawn still in the fort were his garrison, continued (or possibly began; see notes) his crusade against House Redoran by sending enclaves of Ash Spawn to attack Raven Rock. In 4E 201, the Last Dragonborn traced the attacks back to Fort Frostmoth and destroyed Carius on behalf of the Redoran Guard.  
 

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Notes
It is doubtful that the Dunmer of Raven Rock even knew that Carius perceived them as a threat in the early Fourth Era - that is, if Carius ever wrote the letters at the time at all. It is possible that the letters, and his paranoid insanity about the increasing growth of the Dunmer colony, actually all date from after his necromantic reanimation, by which time the Dunmer were indeed in charge of Raven Rock and their colony was indeed "sizable", and Carius's "attempts to contact them" took the form of sending invasions of Ash Spawn, one of which was carrying his apparent "declaration of war" as if the Ash Spawn invasion had been a diplomatic mission.

See Also
For game-specific information, see the Bloodmoon and Dragonborn articles.

References