Set apart from the main village on a bend of the Imeryd’s Run, the Nulb Graveyard is older than the oldest name in town. Its cracked stones and tilting monuments mark centuries of burials — fishermen lost to the river, cutthroats hanged in the square, innocents claimed in the Temple’s shadow. A sizable section bears the unmarked and hastily buried victims of the First Uprising of the Temple of Elemental Evil and the reprisals after the Battle of Emridy Meadows, when allied forces swept through Nulb, purging cultists and their collaborators.

Mist clings here longer than anywhere else in Nulb. The air tastes of wet stone and turned earth. Locals cross themselves or whisper charms when passing the gnarled tree line that separates the graveyard from the road.

“The living walk past my gates, pretending they do not hear the whispers. The dead have more to say than any of them.” – Osric Vell, Gravekeeper

Where the Stones Remember

The Nulb Graveyard is a grim and weathered site, befitting the shadowy reputation of the village it serves.

• The Grounds: Weather-worn headstones lean at odd angles, half-swallowed by moss. Some graves are sunken, others little more than churned soil. A cluster of crypts sits at the far western edge, their stonework blackened with age and smoke from offerings long since abandoned.
• Caretaker’s Cottage: A single-room stone hut with a crooked chimney, tucked behind a screen of twisted hawthorn. The shutters never open; the only light comes from a single narrow slit of a window.
• The River Border: The Imeryd’s Run laps quietly against the graveyard’s southern edge, carrying away silt, bones, and secrets alike.

Background

The Nulb Graveyard has long served as the final resting place for the village’s dead. However, its true importance lies not in its function, but in the roles played by its caretakers and its place in the broader web of Nulb’s intrigue.

Historical Context

• Legacy of Neglect: The graveyard reflects Nulb’s lawlessness, with graves poorly tended and new bodies often buried without ceremony.

The Gravekeeper – Osric Vell

Once a minor necromancer in the service of a forgotten petty lord, Osric came to Nulb decades ago, broken in body and wary in spirit. The Temple’s first rise taught him the dangers of ambition — he watched powerful necromancers gutted, burned, or fed to their own creations when they displeased the cult’s inner circle. Osric has no interest in raising an army of the dead to challenge Nulb’s masters; survival means keeping your head low and your usefulness higher.

• Appearance: Skeletal frame wrapped in a patched black cloak, wisps of white hair escaping a hood. His left hand is missing the smallest finger, the stump capped with silver.
• Personality: Sardonic, deliberate, and unfailingly polite in a way that feels like mockery. Speaks to the dead as easily as to the living.
• Special Talent: Uses the crypts to question the dead — not for grand power plays, but to gather secrets, histories, and warnings. For the right coin or favor, he might share what the corpses have whispered.
• Private Interest: Osric searches for the burial site of an unnamed “Herald” of the Elder Elemental Eye — a corpse said to have been interred in secret after Emridy Meadows, carrying with it a relic capable of opening a long-forgotten vault beneath the Temple ruins.

Politics & Relationships

• Temple of Elemental Evil Leaders:
• Hedrack knows of Osric’s talent and would use him for intelligence-gathering, but Osric refuses direct service, claiming poor health and “treacherous lungs.”
• Feldrin occasionally bribes Osric with preserved food and wine to confirm deaths of spies or deserters.
• Romag suspects Osric knows where certain Earth Temple dead are buried and wants those bones for ritual purposes.
• Nulb Leaders:
• Madame Selentis tolerates Osric, seeing him as a neutral fixture. She occasionally pays him to confirm whether a “problem” has been properly buried.
• Belsornig’s Pirates have dumped more than a few bodies in his care, preferring the anonymity of unmarked graves.
• Wat & Dick Rentsch avoid him, claiming his eyes “see too much.”
• The Dead as Allies:
• Osric maintains a ledger of names, dates, and whispered truths from the graveyard’s inhabitants. Some of these dead were once agents, rivals, or lovers of current Nulb players.

Adventuring Hooks

1. The Herald’s Grave: Osric hires the PCs to quietly locate and recover an unmarked coffin before Temple diggers find it first.
2. Payment in Secrets: A faction leader offers the PCs Osric’s fee to interrogate the corpse of a murdered spy.
3. The Mist Speaks: At dawn, the party hears voices in the graveyard mist — Osric claims it’s an omen, but refuses to say of what.
4. Pirate Retribution: Belsornig’s men accuse Osric of keeping an item buried with one of their dead, and the PCs are caught in the standoff.

Nulb Graveyard – Minor Encounter Table (1d6)

Maldrith the Hexed and the Glyphs of Orcus (Expanded Plot Thread for Nulb Graveyard)

Plot Hook: “A Curse Upon Nulb”

Strange undead monstrosities—stitched horrors, bone-melded beasts, and abyssal wights—have begun emerging from the Waterside Hostel and nearby grave sites. These creatures are the result of Maldrith’s experiments, part of his attempt to weave a necromantic ley web beneath Nulb itself. Ancient graves in the Nulb Graveyard have been secretly marked with glyphs of Orcus, each symbol an anchor to the Abyss. These runes are only visible under necromantic scrutiny or detect magic, and they pulse with foul energy.

Relationship to Nulb Graveyard and Osric Vell

• Maldrith has covertly infiltrated the graveyard during the gravekeeper Osric Vell’s trance-like communion with spirits. Osric suspects something foul but cannot identify it directly.
• Seressa, Osric’s undead companion, is drawn to the glyphs as if they whisper to her. She may lead PCs unknowingly to these cursed areas.
• The souls of the marked dead do not rest—some rise, others weep in dreams.

Glyphs of Orcus – Necromantic Function

• The glyphs are carved directly into the soil and bone beneath certain graves, bypassing Osric’s awareness.
• When enough are placed, they will form a sigilic circle, opening a small planar breach—a shrine of Orcus in disguise.
• Each glyph feeds on death nearby, strengthening the necromantic web and reducing resurrection success within Nulb.

Adventure Thread: The Glyphmarked Dead

A cleric or paladin PC might sense holy dissonance in the graveyard. With magical inspection, they discover the glyphs of Orcus and uncover Maldrith’s intent: to raise the entire graveyard as a testing ground before converting the Waterside Hostel—and eventually all of Nulb—into a necropolis.

Integration with Maldrith’s Ambition:

• These glyphs are the first ritual steps of his greater plan: turning Nulb into a city of the dead, where undead serve openly, and living beings are culled for fuel.
• These rituals weaken the planar barrier between the Material Plane and the Abyss, specifically empowering Orcus' domain.

Seressa in the Graveyard

(narration and 2nd-person dialogue for encounters with Osric Vell’s veiled paramour)

Arrival (boxed text to read aloud)

The fog clings low, a damp shawl over crooked stones. You pass names pared down by weather until they’re more scar than script. Lantern light jitters; something stirs the mist like breath against glass. A woman’s outline gathers where the paths cross—hair moving in no wind, a gown the color of old rain. She doesn’t look at you so much as through you, as if you’re the ones not quite real.

A silver thread glints at her throat and is gone. Her lips part, but the first sound is the graveyard itself: wet earth settling, root and bone conferring. Then—soft as paper tearing—

“You’ve come to wake the quiet.”

How she behaves

• Drift, don’t stalk. She never closes the last five feet unless invited; she circles the party’s lantern like a moth that remembers fire.
• Echo memory. She favors names and small kindnesses. Offerings (wildflowers, a ribbon, a whispered apology) make her steadier. Steel, lit torches, and holy symbols make her thinner.
• Osric’s radius. Within sight of Osric’s lantern, she is gentler and less direct; beyond it, she’s colder, more literal. If turned or threatened, she recedes toward the crypts, and Osric will arrive moments later with a lantern and a warning cough.

DM: Mechanics nudges

• A sincere offering lowers social DCs by 2 (to DC 12–14 Persuasion for a second answer).
• Direct, accusatory demands raise DCs by 2 (to DC 16–18).
• Detect Evil and Good pings undead; she does not attack unless attacked first.
• Asking a question that includes a true name (of a victim, or a Nulb landmark) earns one extra fragment.

Vague, Haunting Responses (2nd person prompts with her replies)

If you ask, “Who are you?”

“You know me already. I am the echo of a promise kept too late.”
“I was Seressa when breath was coin. Now I am the debt.”

If you ask about the Temple (location/plan):

“Stone learns to swallow songs. The faithful go down to speak without witnesses.”
“The river brings gifts and takes confessions. Watch the cargo that doesn’t cry.”

DM hint: “Down” = belowground approaches/tunnels; “cargo that doesn’t cry” = bound captives moved like crates.

If you ask about Nulb’s leaders (“Who rules here?”):

“A woman with a still face counts the river by heartbeats.”
“The loud ones drink upstairs; the quiet ones choose who doesn’t come back.”

DM hint: The “still face” is Madame Selentis; “drink upstairs” nods to the Broker/Elvanna’s loft; “quiet ones” are Temple couriers/assassins.

If you press about the Waterside vs. Boatman’s:

“Earth keeps its secrets under ale and keys.”
“Water smiles with a knife behind its back.”

DM hint: Earth = Waterside/Romag cut-outs; Water = Boatman’s/Tolub/Belsornig circles.

If you ask, “Where do prisoners go?”

“First to the house that isn’t a house—to be weighed. Then the river teaches them silence.”
“Some go to the cottage that hunts. They don’t all return the same way.”

DM hint: “House that isn’t a house” = warehouse/cellar hand-offs; “cottage that hunts” = the Hunting Cottage and tunnel network.

If you ask about outposts beyond Nulb:

“The hollow monastery prays to stone and hunger.”
“On the teeth of the hills, the watchfire never sleeps.”
“Upstream, the drowned fort counts boats by moonlight.”

DM hint: Shattered Monastery (Earth), Etters watchtower (Fire), river fort on the Imeryds Run (Water).

If you ask, “How do we find the truth?”

“Stop asking men with clean hands. Follow what they drop when they run.”
“Truth is heavy. It sinks. Dredge the places that are too clean.”

If you ask about Osric:

“He keeps the promises the living can’t carry.”
“He writes what the dead remember, so the living don’t have to bleed twice.”

If you ask how to lay her to rest:

“There is a name sewn into the hem of my night. Unpick it.”
“Set right a debt I did not choose—then I’ll remember how to sleep.”

DM hint: A personal token (locket, ribbon, ledger entry) tied to her death, or justice for a trafficked victim, completes her rest.

If you accuse her of serving the Temple:

“I serve the ledger that can’t be burned.”
“They tried to write me out. I learned to read in the dark.”

If you ask for a safe path:

“There is no safe path, only honest prices. Pay with patience, not noise.”
“When the river sings, don’t sing back. Listen for the missing oar.”

DM hint: “Honest prices” = subtle play; “missing oar” = a quiet escort boat or off-schedule movement.

If you ask who killed her:

“Hands that smelled of tar and fear. A voice that counted to three.”
“The one who ordered it never touched me. He still doesn’t touch anything.”

DM hint: A river thug did the deed; the order came from someone who avoids direct violence (broker, courier, or overseer).

Short interludes you can drop between questions

• She lingers by a child’s marker, tracing the air where letters used to be. “Some names are lighter to carry if you forget how to say them.”
• Lantern light tugs at the edge of her face; for a heartbeat she is almost warm. “I remember rain that wasn’t inside me.”
• She flinches at a church bell far off. “Hush. The dead are counting.”

Exits (how she departs)

• The Gentle Fade: She steps backward into fog as if the mist had stairs. A single dew-wet petal remains, not native to Nulb.
• The Sudden Thin: A holy word or raised steel thins her to seams of cold and she’s gone; footprints fill with water that wasn’t there.
• Osric’s Lantern: A distant yellow square cuts the dark. She turns her head, listening like someone hearing her name called from another room. “He’s working. Be good.” Then she dissolves into the path between stones.

DM Use at the Table

• Information density: Each question yields one poetic fragment and one clearer line if the party is respectful or offers a token.
• Mislead without lying: She names places by metaphor (river = movement, stone = secrecy, fire = vigilance, air = whispers), preserving mystery while still pointing the party where you want them to go.
• Escalation: If players act with care, she will appear again on future nights with a slightly clearer thread; if they make noise (brawls, divine challenges), she won’t manifest while Temple traffic is active.