Barrowland
From Glen Cook Wiki
The Barrowland is where the original White Rose trapped the Dominator, the Lady, and the Ten Who Were Taken. It is an enormous and powerfully enchanted place which the White Rose's wizards made as strong as possible to contain its prisoners, and deadly to intruders. It lies far north of Charm in the Great Forest. The nearest large city is Oar.
It was designed in two levels; the bottom, as a five-pointed star a fathom tall, with limestone retaining walls, surrounded by a moat. This is the level where the Taken were interred. Clockwise from the top, the five outer barrows (on the points of the star) contained Soulcatcher, Shapeshifter, Nightcrawler, Stormbringer, and Bonegnasher. The other five Taken were interred at the inner points. A pentagon rose another fathom high from the star; the Dominator and the Lady were interred atop this level, in the Great Barrow, on a north-south axis. The entire Barrowland is dotted with fetishes anchoring major spells (visible as demons to the spirit world). A dragon lay sleeping around the Great Barrow as well. A dedicated military unit, the Eternal Guard, is posted right outside the Barrowland. The Guard has special amulets to allow its members to enter the Barrowland without harm.
The Lady and the Ten escape
Less than a century before the first chronicle, the wizard Bomanz sought to contact (but not free) the Lady. However, he was deceived and manipulated by a group known as the Resurrectionists, including his son Stancil. As a result, the Lady and the Taken were liberated, and Bomanz became trapped in their stead.
The Lady somehow ensured that the Dominator and his "pets" (a hoard of vicious monsters, including a dragon) remained buried. This enabled her to build her own empire for approximately one hundred years.
The Dominator
Over the centuries, neglect crept in and began affecting the Barrowland. The moat filled in as a bog and some of the physical fetishes began to decay, loosening their enchantments. The Dominator, having lost the Battle of Charm and failing to escape via his Black Castle scheme, eventually diverted the course of the nearby Great Tragic river so it undercut the Barrowland, further ruining the ancient confinement spells.
This forced the Lady and Darling to become allies and orchestrate his destruction. Together with their combined forces, they systematically erased from the Barrowland all of the old magic before the water did, carefully trapping and exterminating each of the Dominator's monsters as they attempted to flee. When Darling rode in and enveloped the Dominator within her null, the final monster (the dragon) emerged, while a force of forest tribesmen (compelled to arms by Toadkiller Dog) tried to buy time for the Dominator to escape outside the null. His plan failed, however, and he was slain despite the chaos.
