Boaral Keep

Boaral Keep was a fortified estate (in extremely poor shape)Reaper's Gale, Chapter 14, US TPB p.400 thirty leagues south of Rennis and an hour's ride from the coast.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.324 For generations it had been held by a line of Dresh-Predas, and its current owner, Dresh Boaral, was the third or fourth son of a distant relation of the original Dresh-Preda for which the Keep was named. It was the birthplace of the Grass Jackets Brigade a century before.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US TPB p.321 
The keep was reached by deeply set narrow path from the main coastal road. A poorly constructed wooden stockade accompanied by a half-dozen decrepit outbuildings surrounded the keep. Within the stockade's outer gate was a courtyard and stable as well as the keep's squat and brooding entrance, whose heavy main doors led to a gloomy foyer. The keep's facade was stained by smoke and featured vertical slit windows. Other buildings inside included a smithy, coop, and a well-house.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 14, US HC p.400-401 The keep maintained a Garrison of roughly a dozen undisciplined soldiers serving Yedan Derryg, the Master at Arms.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US TPB p.321/324 The crones, Pully and Skwish, seemed to keep the main house clean.
Somewhere in the keep's vicinity was Noose Bog.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US TPB p.322/323
==In Reaper's Gale==
Yan Tovis and her elite company stopped at Boaral Keep to refresh and resupply on the road between Letheras and Fent Reach. She found the keep's outer gate guards drunk on duty and the Master at Arms away with a detachment of soldiers chasing rumours on the nearby coast. Inside, Pully and Skwish insisted Dresh Boaral was indisposed, sleeping off whatever drink had caused him to become sick on the floor. They let slip that Dresh Boaral had murdered his wife, so Yan Tovis placed the Dresh under house arrest and sent a rider to Rennis to request adjudication from the Tiste Edur.
Under Yan Tovis' further questioning the two admitted they were Shake witches who had cursed the keep and its owners since the time of its founding. The original Dresh-Preda had killed many Shake and attempted to force the two witches to blacken the stone of the keep with their blessing. Instead, they ensured that each Dresh-Preda went mad and murdered his wife after she was too old to bear children. Dresh Boaral, who had his wife strangled and dumped in the bog, was the twenty-first of their victims. Yan Tovis ordered the witches to end the curse on the keep or face their own executions. To enforce her order, she revealed she was princess of the Shake. Too late to stop the rider to Rennis or cure Dresh Boaral's affliction, she reasoned that the man's summary execution would at least be something of a mercy. When she learned the missing Master at Arms was Yedan Derryg, her half-brother, she took a small group of riders with her to follow after him.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US TPB p.321-325
After reuniting with her brother and spotting a fleet of burning Malazan ships off the coast, Yan Tovis combined her forces with the keep's guards and marched north. Shortly after, Hellian and Urb's two Bonehunters squads found the keep deserted and Dresh Boaral's freshly dead corpse in the hallway. They dragged the body into the latrine pit before setting an ambush for the arriving Edur troop led by Preda Estav Kendar.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 14, US HC p.399-402/403/404
==Notes and references==
Category:Fortresses
Category:Lether