Legends and Hauntings

Could the surrounding acre offer some offense only the storm could see, and so provoke it to withhold its draught? Mayhap Boles and I were the culprits, though I couldn’t recall any outrages in the past week that would have affronted the very weather. Yet there it was, the sound of rain all about, a torrent of drops invisible through the gloom. As I turned to speculate with Boles, my bone-dry palm outstretched as evidence, the investigator’s glare into the shadows sent a shudder through me. I’d seen the look all too often. “Not rain, Quintin.” He spoke steadily without turning. “Steps.” And like a devil summoned by its name, a thing of bone and rot and ageold hunger pulled itself through the night’s veil. And it was not alone.

—Ailson Kindler, “Case of the Dreaming Dead”

Far more than the politicking of petty villains and the roaming of wayward ghosts account for Ustalav’s brooding pall. From the superstitions that preoccupy villagers to tales of shadowy groups that trade souls for power, the legends of the grim country know far greater variety than merely tragic deaths and spook stories. Yet the people of Ustalav excel in the telling of accounts of depraved souls, tainted blood, and dark magic, in part because of the mysterious traditions that pervade their lives, but even more so because, for them, the grimmest stories are all too often horrifying truths.

Superstition

The roots of Ustalavic superstition reach back into the darkened corridors of time, to an age when Varisian caravans roamed the land and Kellid shamans shrieked prayers to hill-striding god-beasts. Today, every village or family has a wise grandmother who knows just what spices will ease a cold, what wreath-shapes ward off evil, and how to test for werewolves. While many of these defenses are little more than folk medicine, custom, and hokum, some trace their pedigree to half-recalled advice, history passed into legend, and forgotten magic. Thus, although much of this body of Ustalavic folk knowledge proves unreliable, the wise know it is never to be dismissed.

Although regional variations result in countless superstitions, some being unique to hamlets or even families, the best known tales concern the following topics.

Animals: Most animal superstitions have to do with bad luck, such as cats being able to see one’s sins or foxes being red because the first fox was born amid the f lames of hell. Thus it is typically considered unlucky to cross paths with or bring harm to such creatures. Many animals are also said to be allies of the dead, with crow eyes being windows through which the dead can peer and whippoorwills heralding a coming death (finding a dead whippoorwill being especially bad luck). Dogs, hawks, and horses, however, are the focus of many good superstitions, as their keen sense of smell, sight, or bestial intuition can alert their owners to evil before it strikes. Forge works and the craft of civilization are also said to combat the base savagery of beasts, and so silver and cold-forged iron are used in making many weapons and talismans that gird those forced to travel the wilds.

Fortune-telling: Although most dismiss casting bones, reading tealeaves, and interpreting storm patterns as the diversions of charlatans and the unbalanced, Ustalavs treat spirit boards and Harrow cards with a respectful suspicion. Most believe in these tools’ ability to commune with sprits or divine hints of the future, but also know fearful stories of dreadful powers unleashed by inexpert users. Thus, the common folk tend to avoid such divinations—and magic in general—except for in times of most dire need.

Graves: Just because something’s dead doesn’t mean it’s gone. Ustalavs hold great respect for the dead, and fear their return. Graves, crypts, mausoleums, and headstones are treated as the homes of those interred, and those who defile such places garner the ire of those within. Potter’s fields and grave-shrines are often situated at crossroads, so that unquiet spirits become lost on the road rather than terrorizing their home communities. It’s also common for the corpses of the wicked or those who died mysteriously to be wrapped in chains, laden with rocks, or planted vertically or upside down, all to deter the dead from returning. The poor of Ustalav also commonly cremate their dead, and it’s said that a pinch of a loved one’s ashes sprinkled across a threshold or mixed into clay or mortar protects a place from wandering spirits.

Bloodlines

Blood is power in Ustalav. Running slow and deep, it gushes through ages of memory and tradition to shape the passions and quarrels of the modern day. Throughout the country, one’s blood determines his life’s value, whether he be peasant or prince, and what hardships will trouble his days. Yet some bloodlines carry with them more than just social opportunities and expectations. As inescapable as a family likeness, ancestral scars, lingering vengeances, and ageless curses aff lict Ustalavic families from the spires of power to the depths of poverty, and even should the inheritors of such burdens seek to ignore or forget the compulsions of their birth, in Ustalav blood is never denied.

The families listed here range from Ustalav’s most inf luential to the nearly unknown, yet all possess tainted blood that guides their fates or directs their ruin. Beyond dungeons or lurking monsters, these families’ ancestral destinies might spark any number of adventures as they seek to avoid their fates, or drag others down to share in their dooms.

Rulers

Both destiny and tragedy seem attracted to those in power. As those among the echelons of command seek to indulge or avoid their respective fates, lives by the thousands are changed forever.

Caliphvaso: Through the ages the fates of the Caliphvasos and Ordranti princes have intertwined. Since the nation’s resurrection, the rulers of Caliphas have desired the Ustalavic throne, yet despite centuries of manipulations, failed intermarriages, and subtle treacheries, the crown they view as rightfully theirs has ever evaded their grasp. Family histories speak of greater outrages between the houses as well, such as Laurisica Caliphvaso, who was banished to Sarkoris for her threatening intelligence and popularity, and Ralagen Caliphvaso, poisoned by Prince Gennen to quell scandalous rumors—and whose radiant ghost still wanders Chateau Douleurs. With every generation, the Caliphvasos grow more embittered and ambitious, culminating in the line’s final pure-blooded member, Carmilla, who holds the capital within her demesne and seeks only the time to spring a trap decades in the making.

Galdana: Although known to the current count of Amaans only by way of dusty family legends, the Galdana line possesses an inherent talent for the arcane, especially those magics that manipulate the mind and command the dead.

Muralt: The cousins of the Odranti family secretly suffer as the slaves of the traitor Iselin, a deathless necromancer who forces his will upon the inheritors of his bloodline. Although the villain has long manipulated the Odranti and Muralt lines, any relation of these families could fall under his control.

Odranti: The crown of Ustalav both empowers and cripples. Generation after generation, Ordranti princes take the throne with visions of inf luence and reformation, only to have their hopes dashed by ages of entrenched decrees, bureaucracy, and noble infighting. Thus even the family’s most capable rulers typically become mere figureheads and fall to distraction, passing the nation’s mounting ills to their offspring along with the shackles of princedom.

Despite his militaristic impatience, Prince Aduard III has seen little change during his rule. Yet, proud and convinced of his family’s right to wear the crown, he refuses to let the throne pass to the supposed son of his weak brother and a Caliphvaso trollop, despite not yet having a legitimate heir of his own.

Tiriac: The curse of vampirism taints the ruler of Varno, who has posed as the past several lords of his line. Loathing his affliction, Tiriac endlessly seeks a cure so he might die as a human. But he is not without scions—of a kind. Although Tiriac loathes his condition, through the centuries he has unleashed more than one vampire spawn, reserving his cursed blood for those he despises most, or those who hold the greatest chances of curing his condition but require the time to do so.

Virholt: Few know of the secret divinations that prove a direct heir to Andriadus Virholt, bastard of Ustalav’s last king, still lives. Yet even were a successor to this ancient royal bloodline to realize his heritage and make himself known, Andriadus’s supposed betrayal of his nation to the Whispering Tyrant would make the revelation more likely to end in an execution rather than a coronation.

Nobles

Dozens of Ustalavic nobles cling to petty titles and moldy heritages, often unaware to what extent their dead ancestors control their lives.

Arudora: Centuries ago, some power beyond foulness, evil, and age sought to destroy the Arudora family, transforming their estate into the cursed citadel known as Bastardhall. Through the ages and under dozens of different names, the Arudora line has lived on. Yet some power still seeks the surviving Arudora, thirsty to reclaim the blood of Bastardhall.

Beauturne: Former counts of the Palatinate of Lozeri, the Beauturnes endlessly scheme and seek to raise support in their private war against the Palatinates, bitterly striving to reclaim rulership of their stolen lands.

Beumhal: Although the Beumhal line was thought to have ended in a night of madness and murder, under the name Inimald a branch of the family line abandoned their ties and lived on. With House Beumhal’s reclamation and reopening, some scion of the Beumhal family might be called back, whether by curiosity, greed, or something else.

Kindler: With their family estate, August House, rotting outside Ardis, most of the remaining members of the impoverished Kindler line have forsaken their family titles and holdings. Against the advice of his aunt, famed author and former Pathfinder Ailson Kindler, the young sage Styrian Kindler chronicles legends along Avistan’s western coast. A mysterious swordsman calling himself Calanvald Kindler also walks the streets of Caliphas, hunting some elusive foe, though none among the Kindler family know anything of him.

Millair: More than 80 years ago, Camille Adler was murdered on the night of her marriage to Halister Millair, locking the five families of Lake Redleaf into a prison of misinformation, pride, and suspicion. Eventually a new heir will take ownership of Millair Manor, and the secret of a decades-old mystery will rise again.

Moulot: When the explorer Jacaid Moulot returned from Varisia with a gigantic rune-etched diamond, he presented it to his wife as a gift. Seven days later she died mysteriously. Ever since, every female Moulot to claim the diamond has been enigmatically murdered, granting the Thassilonian artifact the name the Invidian Eye.

Commoners

Dark deeds and hidden plots aren’t unique to Ustalav’s rulers, with many families of common stock being haunted or blessed by the specters of ages past.

Ghalmont: None among the Ghalmont family know of the half-Kellid blood running through their veins or their clan’s true name, Twisted Tongue, though such might explain their ancestral nightmares of midnight rites before bestial obelisks, as well as their loathing for the Ustalavic crown.

Locnave: Considering their family blessed by Cayden Cailean, the Locnaves hold peace and simple pleasures as life’s greatest rewards. Many in Chastel look to the family for leadership and aid when hardships arise.

Reinhold: The swampers of the Graidmere hate the Reinholds, who have defended their ranch along the bog’s edge for eight generations. Although the family has suffered curses and murders, they stand as the best-known trackers and bandit hunters in Sinaria.

Thell: In 80 years, nothing more exciting than a lost sheep beset the Thell farmstead. Strangeness and danger were so unknown to the Blickwell farmstead that when Brouse and Emuriel’s newborn, Zoenessa, was kidnapped by servants of the palsied hag Osiso Clatterclaws and replaced by the witch’s changeling daughter, no one even noticed. Raised as human, none but Zoenessa herself ever suspected her terrible heritage, even into adulthood enduring nightmares of eyes upon her and eerily tempting songs beckoning her into the night.

Treyes: When Liron and Cadamon Treyes raided the ruins of Kalexcourt and founded Lepidstadt University, more than just the people of Ustalav noticed. The ancestors of the famed scholars and adventurers have long been held as authorities on Ustalav’s ancient mysteries, but are also haunted by those selfsame secrets.

Voltiaro: The power behind Illmarsh’s unsettling Church of the Indomitable Sea, this inbred family of thugs and hypocrites disguise their depraved agendas behind a cloak of doomsaying, suspicion, and fanaticism. Although numerous sons and daughters have f led their family and its unwholesome traditions, some call of their tainted blood always compels them to return. The latest of these outside children to feel the call is Oscor Voltiaro, a distant cousin whose parents never told him of his family’s legacy, and who now desperately seeks anyone who can help reverse the strange and piscine transformations wracking his body.

Conspiracies

The denizens of the night aren’t the only creatures of which Ustalav’s people spread fearful whispers. In ancient meeting places and secret chapels congregate the initiates of forgotten orders and strange religions, members of secretive factions whose manipulations shape events to their own enigmatic, avaricious, or apocalyptic ends.

The Old Cults

Mad Fanatics of Unnamable Gods
Alignment: CE
Headquarters: Carrion Hill, Illmarsh, others
Leader: Varied

Places of fundamental wrongness taint certain corners of Ustalav. There the sanity of existence wears thin, and through imperceptible tears in reality things mortals hardly dare imagine seek to slake unnamable hungers. At these weak places congregate the dark scholars, doombringers, and lunatics known collectively as the Old Cults, raising their chants like the debauched Kellid tribes of the bloody past, worshiping god-things with names like Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth, as well as lesser-known entities that ageless writings refer to as the King in Yellow, Mhar Massif, Tychilarius, and the Shining Son. These cultists rarely trust their allies, much less the fanatics of other inscrutable forces, making the Old Cults a general title for a host of mad agendas. Several insane factions seek out ancient gates and thin places through which they might commune with their impossible masters, and the menhirs of Vieland, the rank swamps of the Graidmere, the dead town of Scrawny Crossing, the village of Illmarsh, and the city of Carrion Hill number among the brightest beacons to these insane servants.

Sczarni

Wandering Thieves and Fortune-Seekers
Alignment: CN
Headquarters: None
Leader: Varied family leaders

While the majority of Ustalav’s Varisian population forsook the ancient, wandering culture of their people, such stagnant lives could never suit the notorious Sczarni. Although these endlessly roaming clans of tinkerers, charlatans, and thieves might sometimes camp near towns or squat in derelict city blocks, the road is their true home, and they openly mock their settled cousins, whom they view as cowardly, broken, or “legless.” Sczarni often earn their reputations as pickpockets and cheats, but rarely intentionally harm their marks. Most view their capers as lessons in wariness, without inherent malice. Should they perceive some insult, though, be it real or imagined, their criminal sense of honor demands recompense in equal turn, with slander, violence, kidnapping, or theft. Despite the disorganization of the widely traveling clans, the Sczarni cling to a united tradition of legends, oral histories, and mysterious magic, and many still practice the Harrow readings and other fortune-telling practices of their ancestors.

The Whispering Way

True Life Begins with Undeath
Alignment: CE
Headquarters: Renchurch
Leader: Contested

The ages-old cult of undeath flourishes in Ustalav. Many of the morbid society of undead obsessed magicusers, servants of Urgathoa, and maniacs plot their routes to immortality and the death of the world from the haunted monastery of Renchurch, short miles from the Whispering Tyrant’s prison-throne of Gallowspire. Yet, throughout the rest of Ustalav, the servants of the Whispering Way slip through the night, robbing graves to fuel necromantic experiments, seeding the worship of Urgathoa and the promise of undying power in fertile soil, and seeking the tools to resurrect their fallen champion, Tar-Baphon. Disorganization afflicts the Whispering Way, though, as mortal cult leaders, rising morbid savants, and the undying lieutenants of the Whispering Tyrant all vie for mastery and seek to pursue their vision of the end of the world.

Hauntings

Across Ustalav lie the scattered settings of tales of woe, monuments to historical tragedies, irreligious altars, stains of existential imbalance, and more unspeakable corruptions of earth and stone. From these vaults of horror creep more than just shuddersome tales. All too often, the terrors of legend themselves spring forth, authors of outrages and the spawn of blasphemies upon which death and sanity hold no rein. Endlessly these accursed sites call to heroes and lore-seekers, adventurers intent on putting an end to their mysteries and lingering corruption. Few who hearken to these dark summons return, and the scarred bodies and shattered minds of those who do only strengthen the chilling grip of these bastions of fear.

What follows is a selection of Ustalav’s most infamous haunted locations and cursed sites. While the country’s people shun innumerable sites of local miseries and misfortunes, those here number among the greatest scars afflicting the Ustalavic countryside—those places whose miseries grow greater and more malignant year after year. Fireside tales paint fearful portraits of these locations, their grim masters, the best known of their shadowy residents, and the unexplainable things that haunt their halls, but few claim to have actually ventured within sight of these grim edifices. Thus, revelations beyond the scattered details collected herein await discovery by future bands of the brave and foolhardy.

Bastardhall

Eternal Bastion of Blasphemies

Woe to those in whose veins f lows the blood of Bastardhall, for every drop is a sanguine link in immortal bindings neither age nor anguish must ever be allowed to rust.

What happened at Castle Arudora in 4213 AR was terrible but swift. It began the night a scullery maid whispered of admitting a stranger carrying a swaddled bundle into Lord Raudltz Arudora’s library, and of how that stranger bore a shocking resemblance to the centuries-old statues of the family’s nobly armored patriarch, the lost paladin Lord Eragayl Arudora. The following day seven messengers raced from the castle with summons for the family’s most distant kin. Yet what urgency prompted the call, none would ever know.

Few saw the black coach that stormed through the village of Maiserene, but the crack of its driver’s whip splintered the peace of the quiet community. That night, a fog rose across Lake Laroba, blotting out the island fortress of the Arudora save for ghostly glimpses, and has refused to fall in the ages since. Nothing but the black coach—the harbinger of death—has left the castle since.

Few dare to guess what fate befell the Arudora family, but whatever curse afflicted the respected noble clan proved virulent and persistent. The villagers of Maiserene had little hope as dark things came upon them in the night, the brutalized corpses of castle servants and older deceased residents that shrieked and gibbered and dragged many back across the misty bridge. The residents managed to destroy the wooden bridge reaching out to the castle, but no tool or craft could mar the spectral span that rose to replace it. In the face of such terrors, the faith of the town’s church of Aroden faltered and failed, and ultimately the people of Maiserence scattered or stood alone against the night.

Now, Castle Arudora—the fortress fearful tales and maledictions name Bastardhall—stands mysterious and silent, but for one year of each century. Then, the nameless curse of the Arudoras manifests and rides out, an unnatural coach of blackest evil that scours Varno and beyond in search of occupants. The coach knows its passengers and bids them enter of their own will; should these fearfully specific riders refuse, the coach departs with its mysterious driver’s promise to return in a week’s time, when his words will no longer be a request, but a demand. For centuries the people of Varno have feared the black coach, and spread rumors of why it claims those it does—that the victims are secret witches, the kin of saints, relatives of the Arudora servants, or the culprits of secret crimes. Whatever the reason, the fearful have long attempted to avoid or fight the coach, but all have failed. A peasant army even marched on Bastardhall in 4413 and burned the accursed palace to the ground. But, a century later, when the mists parted, the castle stood restored, even grown in its number of towers, and the coach’s six midnight steeds galloped forth once more.

Today, the people of Cesca, Corvischior, and scattered hamlets dread the turning of the century and pray they’ll never spy Bastardhall’s black coach. Those daring few who have sought the castle out tell of a ruined village where frightened shades still huddle and an ethereal bridge reaches into the mists, while dark shapes teeming amid the black waters scatter at the passage of something elusive but massive. Divine servants and potent arcanists have attempted to probe the island fortress, but their powers reveal only greater mysteries, such as a veil of incredible holy might that rings the island like a divine prison. Yet still rumors and sightings f ly weird and wild, claiming that servants of the goddess Urgathoa ply Lake Laroba on dark skiffs, that things long dead or never born circle the castle towers and feed upon all who enter the mist, and that those who draw near and listen at the cursed earth might feel a terrible thrum, as of relentless drums in the depths or the pulsing of a monstrous heart. Few will ever know the truth of what lies within the halls, among the towers, or buried beneath the cellars of the accursed castle, but again the time draws close, and soon the black coach will bring a new generation of Bastardhall’s scions home once more.

Casnoriva

Academy of Arcane Insanity

After aiding the armies of Soividia Ustav in founding his nation, the Varisian wizard Casnori constructed his sprawling, star-shaped manor amid the mountains of Virholt. For years he taught apprentices and advised the kings of Ustalav, until finally departing Golarion to explore other realms. Before the Whispering Tyrant made his presence in the world known again, the lich struck out at the school of magic at Casnoriva, trapping the scholars and students there amid their own extradimensional sanctuaries, and unleashed terrors from the planes to twist the estate’s halls and hunt its residents. Silent and mysterious, the halfpreserved ruin of Casnoriva still stands, though masterless magics endlessly war around its floating stone towers.

Castle Corvischior

Laboratory of the Vampire Count

Across the lake from the county seat of Varno stands the castle of Corvischior. This was once known as Korsinoria Palace in brighter days, when heroic counts opened the citadel’s gates to their people in grand festivals, yet the eyes of the once majestic griffin-gargoyles have blackened with tears of neglect and the gardens’ armies of gay topiaries have melded into a shapeless terror. While still the home of Varno’s ruling family, the Tiriacs, the land’s people believe their lords forsook them long ago in favor distant, debauched courts. In truth, since Count Ristomaur’s supposed death in 4521, the land has known a single lord: Count Ristomaur Tiriac himself. For centuries, the reluctant vampire has sought a cure for his death-like condition, seeking out the brightest minds in alchemy and arcana and secretly spiriting them back to Corvischior to toil in search of some alchemical salvation. The once glimmering halls and spires of Castle Corvischior lie abandoned but for strange guardians and the spectres of the Tiriac family servants who, under the mastery of the crone-like Radaya, eternally suffer in a purgatory of their final moments. Below, the cellars house a vast dungeon of profane laboratories, unsettling surgeries, chemical oubliettes, experiment prisons, and lodging for an army of savants, both living and dead. Among it all, Tiriac and his most trusted advisors oversee ever more outlandish experiments, eternally hopeful for some miraculous breakthrough, even as they feed failure after grotesque failure into the caverns deep beneath Lake Korsinoria.

The Furrows

Wasteland of Trenches and War Scars

A scar sprawls across the heart of Ustalav, scourged not by necromancy or monsters, but by vicious human cruelty. What was once the lush Ardealian farmland known as the Furcina Plain now lies dead and barren, its residents slain, its farms scorched and salted, and its land scored by the trenches of warmongers compelled by greed and pride.

In 4687, infuriated by the mismanagement of Ardeal’s wealthy lands and taking advantage of the new prince’s inexperience, the knights of count Aericnein Neska seized control of Furcina. Managing to avoid royal censure through delays and manipulations, Neska sought time to force Count Olomon Venacdahlia into ceding the lands to him. The stubborn count of Ardeal proved too proud to concede the largely fallow lands, raising a small army of unprepared nobles and conscripted peasants to drive out Neska’s well-trained knights. Although well outnumbered, Barstoi’s soldiers fortified themselves amid the land’s very fields, digging miles of trenches and ramparts to withstand the waves of Ardealian conscripts. Bloody skirmishes and grim conditions typified the 6 years of battle that came to be known as the War without Rivals.

Facing growing royal ire, Count Neska withdrew his troops from Furcina, but not without striking a crippling parting blow, his retreating knights burning the regions’ fields and forests and salting the ashes behind them. The demoralized Ardealian survivors reclaimed a worthless wasteland scattered with the bones of their fellows and the ruins of once-bountiful villages. Although Prince Aduard’s court eventually forced Barstoi to pay recompense, it was a pitiful sum paid over the course of decades.

Today, the Furrows—as locals came to call trenchscarred Furcina—remains much as Barstoi’s troops left it decades ago. Although some life desperately struggles through the ashes and poisoned ground, the land is largely dead—yet hardly abandoned. The village of Feldgrau, once the region’s largest community, lies silent, its residents slaughtered and buried in a mass grave, yet their memories linger on. Dilapidated noble estates rest like gigantic, empty skulls amid their dusty lands, the House of Ensland and Candlehalls being the most infamous, frequented by insidious gamblers and cavorting ghost lights. Only dust and poison sludge runs through the parched beds of the Millrun River and Bainecreek, where contagion and muck take on a predatory semblance of life. Crossbough Bridge, the site of the villainous Coronel Jebaid’s capture and drowning, still stands resilient, though none who enter its covered expanse ever reach their destination. Among the dead rows of the Ripe Earth Orchards something unnatural has brought a new, deviant life to the blackened fields, while amid the charred Thrushsong Woods the ash ghosts of ancient trees and terrified fey wander in search of vengeance. Yet most sickening are the black veins of the Peasant Graves and Dead Man’s Maze, the two largest labyrinths of trenches scarring the festering land, where the embittered remains of armies were left to rot and never told of their battles’ end.

Gallowspire

Prison of the Whispering Tyrant

Storytellers across Avistan and beyond tell the tale of the deathless wizard known as the Whispering Tyrant, his undead campaign to conquer the land and murder a god, and the alliance of heroes who buried him within his fortress. For many this is a heroic tale of righteousness, sacrifice, and hope. But those storytellers end their tales too soon, choosing to ignore the truth that Tar-Baphon was never slain, and in fact lives on, trapped with his greatest works and servants beneath the grim fastness of Gallowspire.

For nearly 900 years, Gallowspire has stood amid the ruins of Adorak, the lich lord’s city of death. Ensorcelled chains and blades festoon the grim tower, upon which the lich’s guardians suffer endless unlives, while gargantuan necromantic terrors await their master’s commands with the patience of the dead. Winding ascents, spiraling loggias, and chain-riddled tunnels climb the spire’s exterior, culminating in a horned terrace where the tarnished silver seal of the Shining Crusade bars entry, but only as a consequence of keeping the tower’s master sealed within.

The Garden of Lead

Pleasure Palace of the Damned

History tells of the Garden of Leids, where Ustalav’s kings once lounged amid extraordinary waterfall gardens and menageries of fantastic beasts. Soon after Dissayn, the Skeleton Countess, led the Whispering Tyrant’s hordes to the garden’s gates, she gathered nobles captured from throughout the land for a final fete. During the night, her skeletal minions f looded the palace’s winding halls, delicate pools, and enchanting canals with molten lead. Frozen as it was in its final moment, the catastrophically haunted gardens hold the corpses of its final costumed revelers, their bodies and grim finery magically and eternally encased in lead. Rumors also hold that Dissayn escaped destruction during the fall of Tar-Baphon and, in her madness, retreated here, indulging her unliving insanity as the tyrant-hostess of an endless grotesquery.

Ghasterhall

The Palace of Travesties

A true mastermind, the Whispering Tyrant let little go to waste. At the prison-library of Ghasterhall, known to some as the Palace of Travesties, the lich lord stored ancient texts of no immediate use, half-living alchemical and necromantic experiments, random relics, and other unthinkable or nameless curiosities and experiments. Here a horde of undying scholar-sentinels filled their immortal minds with lore and discoveries, a single skullsage bound to each scrap. With no master to make demands of it, the impregnable library stands quiet, the work in its bowels largely halted except for the endless experiments of its scrupulous curator, the demilich Gier.

Kalexcourt

Vault of the Witch-Priests

Amid the fogs of Ustalav stand the monuments of an age of savagery, when scarred barbarians did battle in the names of warlords, totems, gods, and beings that defied definition. For ages, Kalexcourt, the Fortress of Monoliths, stood amid the hills of Vieland. Here, on the ground holiest to the region’s lost Kellid tribes, the shamans, wise men, and witch-priests were committed back to the earth. While pale warriors stood sentinel upon gigantic, molar-like towers, the divine dead commingled in a rot of ages far beneath the soil, each interred corpse adding the memories of its life, informing an endless spirit moot in its inf luence over the beasts of the land and the eddies of fate. Yet centuries ago, Kalexcourt fell to the swords of the invading Varisians, and shamans were buried no more. Ages later, explorers delved into the mysteries of the mound fortress, discovering a conqueror’s ransom in golden torcs, legend-scrawled shields, and strange idols, but also awakening a terror ancient and hungry for minds. Dozens died within the mound, and only by toppling the entire ruin did two adventurers seal the ancient thing within the cavern-tombs below. All of Vieland knows the legend-lie of how the Treyes brothers discovered fantastic wealth within the tunnels of Kalexcourt, and how their unwary assistants destroyed the mysterious ruin. But only the hidden journal of Liron Treyes holds the truth: that amid the true wealth of Kalexcourt, the witch-priests of the ancient Kellids still lurk—and now know of their people’s slaughter.

The Saffron House

Manor at the Edge of Madness

Mired in the clinging murk of the Sclerain Swamp lolls a yellow stain amid the grasping black and green, a blotch on both nature and time that the swamp’s slow ages refuse to erase. Tinged the shade of rotting bandages, the aptly named Saffron House leaks its wrongness onto both its surroundings and those who enter, its nausea-inducing shades quickly overwhelming any fear of the things that lurk in the mire and drive victims toward the sagging estate. Those who explore the seemingly abandoned, sheet-shrouded rooms eventually realize an unnerving feature: the layout of the house itself. Many rooms that serve as vital organs of a home feel underformed or atrophied, uninviting in their tightness or crippled layout, while other chambers seem like vestigial afterthoughts, near useless in their confines. Slowly the realizations dawn: that thin things move in the spaces between the walls, that a thousand suicides never freed owner Cleid Thord from his home, and that the house’s noxious color is the manifestation of an omnipresent, otherworldly intruder visible through the psychically soaked parchment of a traumatized reality—one that still watches.