Galgenbeck

"Galgenbeck in the land of Tveland is the greatest city that ever was." No King or Queen rules in Galgenbeck — only the arch-priestess Josilfa Migol, whose throne lies in a cool black chamber crossed by shards of light, deep beneath the Cathedral of the Two-Headed Basilisks.

Commoners gossip that Josilfa, "old but still young," colludes with Nechrubel — "the shadow that covers all" — who gave her eternal life. "Nechrubel is melancholy, crop failure, conflict and war. It is said he whispered the apocalyptic prophecies in Verhu's ear." As time grows ever shorter the Two-Headed Basilisks become ever-more desperate in their recruitment. The Inquisition hunts heretics and apostates and corrects them, in public and at length.

The road to salvation, the basilisk-priests teach, lies through mortification of the flesh; the apocalypse is to be met with eyes wide open. "Only then can the soul be allowed passage to the Shimmering Fields" — the afterlife of the orthodox, the green meadow that supplants every other promise. The city is hollowing itself out for the crossing.

Misery 1:1 — The Hollow City

"The City shall be made hollow. Of those who rest in hollowness, they shall not be seen." This is Galgenbeck's prophecy. The sewers run deeper than the streets remember; the cathedral catacombs that uncovered Schleger's tomb keep digging.

Named Citizens

• Josilfa Migol — arch-priestess of the cathedral; commands the city in everything but name.
• Jota Klefunheim — baroness of Klefunheim, a noble holding within or adjacent to the city. Tall, perpetually annoyed. Will pay 200 silver to anyone who can stop the goblin curse before it reaches her doorstep.
• Urgrip Wikt — poor Galgenbeck peasant; owns a Calumny Pearl heirloom whose worth he does not understand.
• Arga — Galgenbeck priest, HP 4, Morale 10, Scale −d4, Staff d4, carries a random sacred scroll. Now trapped among The Deadn't in Graven-Tosk after killing the Undertaker.

The city has its sanatorium (where one origin of the Forlorn Philosopher is born to a nameless mother), its slums full of Scum, its little witches' cottages where one origin of the Occult Herbmaster is raised. Goblins infest its basements (see Goblin Grinder and Goblin) — "mottled, ropy flesh rots but never decomposes; even the oldest skins in the darkest alleys hold their shape to warn passersby of their swiftly approaching end." The alchemist Nagel Krat runs the Medickal Shoppe and the Derelict Mill that hides the Goblin Grinder device. The Bastard — goblin-overlord mutant of the Derelict Mill — was once "a torturer for a group of unsavory royals," a phrase that implies Galgenbeck still keeps a few.

A Sacrilegious Songbird may have struck their devil's-bargain hiding from guards here. Slave revolts (adventure seed 73–74), unholy infiltrations of the court (45–46), and risk at the city wall itself (seed 6) are local hazards.