Valley of the Unfortunate Undead

Rumors whisper the basilisk HE is coiled within its crypts, a sight infrequently survived. Lies and legends enshroud the valley, obscuring any truth. Peddler's tales say the soil — the very air — is lethal, bringing a sleepless, stumbling death. This is no clean fate but a slow-growing, fathomless despair, weighing down the traveler with poisoned memories and dark thoughts until the spark of life is mutated into a mournful, hopeless undeath.

Others claim lost wanderers can fall and find themselves in the Realm of the Dead when the black soil hungrily drags them under the earth.

Those without hope travel here seeking an end to pain, a golden afterlife beyond this dark and ruined world. They gather in suicide cults and the valley's few twisted trees begin to droop strange fruit from hempen rope. Others plumb the crypts seeking Verhu, believing they can persuade him of other fates. Some simply and stupidly leave gifts and sacrifices to a power they cannot comprehend. Gloom grows, obscuring the world like an oil-stained image.

The child-thief Tergol is named in the same passage as the Valley, his "vile crimes and alchemy of flesh" stealing the young ones.

The Heretical Priest (origin 4) hides in temple ruins here. The Forlorn Philosopher (origin 6) may have been educated by the damned among the Valley's mud pits. The clay of the Valley is what the Tablets of Ochre Obscurity are made from.

Regional Fauna (Eat-Prey-Kill, p.11)

The undead-warm soil breeds its own corruption:

• Phantom Rats (d10) — half-in-this-world, glowing sickly blue.
• Grubstoppers (d10) — any bug big enough to fill a hungry stomach.
• Tomb Ape — frog-footed, snake-scaled, silver-greedy.
• Gravelings (d6) — skinless dogs with thumbs.
• Marrow Sparrow — drinks marrow from the sleeping.
• Bonemare — fleshless horse, first-turn unclean scroll.