Gravenstoll

A rain-soaked sepulchral hollow housing variously deceased iterations of your Player's Heroic Adventuring Party.

Located in area of sunken ground, and accessible via an ancient timbered lych gate, the graveyard is obscured on all sides by earthen embankments littered with bone and shrouded in dense fog and mists.

Within the hollow are several dozen dead trees from which hang weather-worn canoes, each one cradling the chained and variously decaying remains of a dead warrior, arcanist, mage, or hero.

Each corpse has its tale to tell; a warning or ill omen. Some wish only to be bade farewell, whereas a few seek to trade their lot with the living, and in doing so imprison them here in their stead.

Use this section as a quick reference during play, or at the start of a Session to refresh your GM senses!

Sights

• bleached bones scattered.

• dead trees, blackened, ash covered and broken.

• vile, boggy, putrid mud puddles.

• serpents, spiders, moths and toads.

• large boulders covered in moss and lichen.

• canoe-coffins, strung from dead trees with old hangman's rope.

Sounds

• occasional cry of a carrion crow.

• heavy patter of constant rain.

• creaking of old rope swaying under the weight of the canoes and their cargo.

• occasional snap of a dry twig, or rustling of dead leaves.

• faint, barely audible whispers.

Smells

• acrid smoke.

• rot and putrescence.

• sodden tree bark.

• moss and muck.

• damp, moulding cloth.

An attendant Grave-Warden will gleefully trade weapons, supplies, trinkets and items of interest looted from the many dead.

They have no interest in coin, however, and trade only to revel in the Adventurer's anguish as items and artefacts most personal are offered back to them.

note to the GM : be sure to have a list of the Player Character’s personal possessions at hand.

The unwise and the foolhardy. Some seek out Gravenstoll; others arrive by chance, or come led by beckoning spirits.

All will come face to face with what fateful deaths may await them. Some will attempt perhaps, thereafter, to keep such a demise at bay.

In truth, it may be naught but a vile hallucination caused by the lingering mists and the retched spirits therein.

As the Hero wanders Gravenstoll, encountering various selves dead within the many canoe-caskets, they are harassed by many questions.

What beast tore my arms asunder? What wretched spirit supped there 'pon my skin? Wherefore are my eyes and my tongue? What vipers caused ten thousand wounds, and performed such violence upon me?

see “The Death of Your Hero” section below.

Lingering before corpse after corpse, it is entirely possible that our Heroes do not sense among the trees a buried yearning; that of the dead seeking a transformative exchange.

For each of the Hero’s many dead and buried selves there is a quest unfinished, a destiny unfulfilled, and a poet’s epic unsung, as each corpse yearns to be again of the world, reforging their destinies.

The dead have no scruples, and will do whatever they can to keep our Hero here in Gravenstoll, so that they may continue their journey in the beyond.

Laying one's bedroll upon the rain soaked mosses may offer some small comfort should one also be equipped with a tarp or tent, but the grave atmospheres lend little towards an untroubled, restful sleep.

In rare periods when the rain stops, and the air dries, it is ill advised to lower one's guard, for it is then that the Spoil Seekers begin their silent roaming.

The spectre of death lingers large in Gravenstoll, dwelling within the tallest of the dead trees, at the very centre of this sepulchral hollow.

Able to take many forms, death comes and goes at it pleases, called afar by the trumpets of war, or by the ravages of plague and persecution.

Subordinate spirits mingle with the chilled air amongst the hanging canoe-coffins, each attending to an aspect or attitude of the ever-after.

The dead interred here are at the mercy of these cruel and spiteful spirits, only permitted to speak once they have been honoured with offerings and trinkets.

It is said that the mists that obscure Gravenstoll are formed from the collective will of these vicious spirits. Others believe the fogs exuded from the weary lungs of death itself as it ventures forth into the world.

Death is at play in Gravenstoll, draped in the growing despairs of our Heroes as they unravel the threads of their various doppelgänger's demise.

Some may find themselves - once faced with whatever end awaits them - slowly unlatching from this world, before sinking into a deep despairing misery.

Anguish, regret, futility everlasting; the solemn fruit of these fateful trees.

This enveloping melancholy permeates all; the rain, the trees, the wildlife, the air; pulling at the heart until is so very heavy that it feels it would be a blessing to climb aboard one of the hanging canoes and gives oneself to Gravenstoll.

For to become transfixed and bewildered in this place is to fall foul of Death's fulsome embrace.

Gravenstoll offers your Players a chance to encounter multiple versions of their Heroic Characters, displaying clues and insights into each one's death and demise.

You may wish to utilise these as foreshadowing for upcoming encounters, or for powerful enemies, artefacts or weapons.

Or you may simply wish to feign the above with some of the options below, unsettling and raising the suspicions of your Players for the sessions still to come!

The list below is by no means exhaustive, so do feel free to concoct your own terrible (and Heroic) deaths!

Roll 1d10, or choose from the Table below :

1 - A large tusk pierces the chest of your Hero.

2 - Thousands of obsidian shards pepper the flesh and bones of your Hero.

3 - Your Hero has been crushed and flattened, now no thicker than a single sheet of vellum.

4 - Your Hero appears to have been swallowed whole, thereafter deposited as partially digested waste.

5 - Pierced by great claws, and dropped from a great height, your Hero was.

6 - Tossed into a boiling tar-pool? Or perhaps into the bowels of a volcano? The burns are terrifying!

7 - A great and terrible freeze beset your Hero, but as though it were from within. Ice shards and a bitter cold pierce the flesh.

8 - A vile and putrid disease, or a spell most abhorrent? Whatever the cause, the smell is most unruly. And where are their hands?

9 - The head cleanly removed and buried within the gut, your Hero undoubtedly suffered greatly.

10 - Choked slowly by a nest of shimmering storm serpents, your Hero now sleeps eternally.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and is intended simply to stir the pot of your own imagination.

Use what follows as starting-points, or ignore them entirely in favour of your own Adventure Hooks!

Roll 1d6 or choose from the Table below :

1 - A terrible curse placed upon the Party may only be undone by those who hang in Gravenstoll.

2 - A powerful warlord has tasked the Party with retrieving a rare and powerful weapon buried somewhere in Gravenstoll.

3 - It is rumoured that the Death-Shards keep decomposition at bay, something a merchant guild is willing to pay a great sum of coin to invest in securing.

4 - The Party know that death pursues them, and shall soon arrive upon their doors, and to discover their fates may mean they gain some advantage in the fight that lay ahead.

5 - A wealthy noble-person has offered a grand reward for the Party if they are able to find, and return to them, their forebear's corpse said to hang in Gravenstoll.

6 - There are legends of a doorway, here in Gravenstoll, through which one might enter the land of the lost and spirits gone. Traversing this place would surely secure the Party's legend forevermore?!

Some of these Trinkets can be found within the canoe-coffins of the deceased, others half buried as though they had long ago fallen from the dead.

Roll 1d20 for a Gravenstoll Trinket or choose from the Table below :

1 - A length of braided hair, glistening with pearls and jewels.

2 - A shortsword that seems to vibrate the very air about it when wielded.

3 - A small book of love poetry filled with marginalia that describes a terrifying curse.

4 - A leather pouch filled with sand that, when scattered, fills the air with flammable incense.

5 - A tiny lighthouse carved from driftwood. Is there someone residing within?

6 - A warrior's helmet fashioned from brass. Donning it brings visions of a monarch's demise.

7 - A flint and steel whose spark can set even water aflame.

8 - A paper butterfly whose wings can cut through metal with ease.

9 - A snuff-box whose contents greatly heightens one's sense of smell.

10 - A silk scarf that cools the air about one's face in any weather.

11 - A golden knuckle-duster in the shape of a dragon's skull.

12 - A set of gaming dice that are, in fact, several small metallic creatures adept at picking locks.

13 - A shield whose front depicts several serpents entwined about a blackened heart. When struck by silver it spits eldritch tendrils.

14 - A pouch of bloodied fingers. Throw one upon the ground to discern the desired direction.

15 - A large iron key, patterned with snowflakes.

16 - A clockwork hand.

17 - A chapbook of spells for the summoning, and controlling, of crows.

18 - A clay-pot containing a rancid smelling liquid. Upon the pot is scrawled the word : "Ye God".

19 - A deliciously plump and juicy peach, as fresh as the moment it were plucked from its tree.

20 - A short-bow that can loose arrows forwards through Time.

Roll 1d8 for a Gravenstoll Encounter or choose from the Table below :

1 - A sounder of wild Boar is passing through Gravenstoll, hungrily devouring the flesh and bones of the dead.

2 - An ageing, weary, battle-scarred warrior arrives in Gravenstoll, wishing to challenge Raddir to one final duel.

3 - A small child is discovered sleeping inside one of the many hanging-canoe coffins.

4 - Unusual lightening strikes are causing a coalescing of the scattered bones that litter the perimeter of Gravenstoll, bringing them together in unholy abominations that hunger for the living.

5 - The downpour of rain has become so fierce of late that the ground is beginning to give way.

6 - A subterranean beast of enormous size has burrowed its way into the centre of Gravenstoll.

7 - A recently deceased NPC known to the Party is found within a canoe. They speak of a curse, and beg to be set ablaze.

8 - The rain stops, and small shreds of prayer paper begin to fall upon Gravenstoll, disintegrating in gentle flames as they make contact with the ground.