A Bundle of Tombs

1 - The Open Grave
An open pit, lined with bodies, picked clean. At the bottom is a richly adorned altar, caked in blood.
1 - The bodies are all stitched together, chest to back, and should you trespass, it will rise...
2 - Offer something pleasing on the altar, and the bodies all answer your questions in one voice.
3 - When it rains, the pit fills up with blood, and hags fish for organs.
4 - Occasionally, someone will offer a new body on the altar; whispering words of black magic.

2 - The Shining Fields
A neat graveyard, ordered ranks of gravestones. Some have gemstones encrusted into them. Others have gory, crusted arms bursting from them.
1 - It is merely a custom to leave an exposed arm, the better to satiate the local Hunger Spirits.
2 - The bodies of the dead are enchanted such that if their grave is disturbed, their body will animate to defend it.
3 - The Jewels are offerings to an esoteric Death-God to ensure the peaceful rest of the deceased.
4 - The dead here are cursed, they still feel the pains of life, though they are dead. Animals are allowed to chew them as a form of eternal torture.

3 - The Excarnation Site
Many platforms adorn the mountain-side; stone, wood, ivory. Crows perch above, watching eagerly. All sorts have dropped from the platforms to the ground below.
1 - The Crows are sky-spirits who carry the deceased up into the heavens, body and soul.
2 - Those who go to die here donate their bones to the Cathedral far below them.
3 - The scree-fields are still wandered by the released spirits of those who offered up their bodies.
4 - A mighty Mountain-God in the shape of an almighty eagle lays claim to the dead offered here, and the Crows are its spies, to ensure none of its bounty are tampered with.

4 - The Bog Burials
The pool is black and thick with blotchy bodies bloated on corpse-gases. Something glints in the murk...
1 - The whole -swamp lake is one immense Water Elemental, and the bodies are offerings to supplicate its wrath and keep it buried in the earth.
2 - Strange, serpentine creatures swim in the depths of the mud, and suck the gases from the corpses.
3 - Only the worst criminals are buried here, to keep their spirits trapped in the reflected world of the water.
4 - The site of some ancient battle from elder days, the restless spirits of the dead stir the waters in strange ways, distorting the dry and wet land.

5 - The Cremation Shrine
A stone altar, crusted in ash and scorch. A curved wall surrounds the far side, urns sequestered snugly in many, many recesses.
1 - Ash coats the walls, sometimes it forms the words of the dead; angry and hateful usually, prophetic very ocassionally.
2 - Tiny burnt bones rattle around the floor. If you disturb the dead, the bones rise up in a great bone serpent to attack.
3 - A Lampad dwells in a grand brazier, guardian of the sacred flames. She knows everything about those charred by her ritual flames.
4 - If you tip an urn into the ritual basin, the ashes will show you the way to the underworld the spirit dwells in. If you don't put the ashes back, the spirit will know however...

6 - The Bright Tomb
The coffin is glass, or perhaps crystal. The sepulcher it rests in is bright from many windows. Too bright.
1 - The Tomb ensures that light always cascades around its walls, never ending, never allowing the vampire in the coffin to escape...
2 - The Tomb is actually bright from within, a dead angel and its holy tools and equipment encased in the centre of it all.
3 - The tomb holds a sacred flame that must never die. Clearly, this is is not a permanent solution.
4 - The Dead inside the tomb was a great Saint, when it has need of its body again the crystal parts as water to admit the Saint its proper place in the world again.

7 - Burial By Water
The wooden causeway stops well short of crossing the bay. The bodies are down there, somewhere. Down there too are the many offerings cast down with them...
1 - Spirits of the deep possess bodies buried in the waters, thus they are all buried with stones tied to their feet.
2 - A mysterious, shelled beast dwells deep in the waters, and the offerings and bodies are soldiers sent to fight an eternal spiritual battle with the beast.
3 - They say that water is the birthing ground of all life, returning the dead to the water ensures their new place in mankind's second, and inevitable, childhood. The offerings are aids for them to take with them in their rebirth.
4 - As the void churns above, so it churns below. Those returned to the water will one day find their way up into the heavens to dance with stars evermore.

8 - The Tomb-Tower
A tower rises high, and its sub-levels descend deep. Coffins lie in recesses on every wall.
1 - They say that if you follow the tower up high enough, you will find the tombs of saints. Follow it low enough, and you will find dead and dormant demons.
2 - They say that at the very very bottom of the tower is the tomb of an Ivory Dragon and all its horde. Some say the very tower itself is the horde.
3 - The dead are the victims of a grand, Divine Punishment. Angelic hands raised the stones, and sacred rites placed the bodies within the tower. To disturb the bodies is a cardinal sin.
4 - In the landscape of life, it always helps to know where it is the dead rest. The tower is a grand sign-post; leave well enough alone, and the dead will do so too.

9 - The Elder Tombs
A sprawling sepulcher complex scabs the hill. The earliest graves are said to be elves, but everyone knows that elves can't really die. Right?
1 - The dead within the complex have taken the name 'necropolis' a little too literally...
2 - The Old Tombs have recently been opened, but seemingly from within. Tracks lead into and out of other tombs...
3 - There are a lot of angry spirits, apparently someone has been disturbing the tombs, despite the many, many curses that have warped and wracked their body...
4 - Well, either way, the dead do rest peacefully here. The curses that guard their tombs have withered away over centuries, and the guardians have long since decayed away. It seems the plunder is ripe for the taking, and yet... none have taken it.

10 - The Sealed Sepulcher
A grand dwarven tomb towers above the countryside. The runes on its side are said to describe the way in...
1 - The doors will only open to admit a dead dwarf and those that accompany it.
2 - The Ceremonial Staff of the high priest of the Deep King of Stones and Steel is the key to deciphering the coded messages.
3 - Of course, the actual entrance is far, far below the surface. This is merely an outcropping of the tomb structure. Though there is a shaft of some kind somewhere on the building...
4 - The spirit of the Tomb will only open its doors when properly propitiated. It keeps guard over the dead in exchange for these offerings.

11 - The Abandoned Body
A sack of bones lies barely buried by the roadside. It is kept shut with a glittering ring on a string.
1 - The ring bears the sigil of some grand house from a distant city. Someone would probably pay quite well for this...
2 - There is a letter amongst the flesh and bones. A warning.
3 - The ring belongs to some famous wizard; a fail-safe body for if everything goes terribly, terribly wrong. Perhaps not the most well-thought out plan.
4 - It is just the victim of a highway-man, the ring merely plain and dull. Then why does the flesh feel like velvet? And the ring have some strange, invisible lump on it?

12 - The Cliffs of Kings
There are many caves that pox-mark the cliff-side. Many contain bodies and mummies. Some are said to be Kings.
1 - Best not disturb one of the bodies of the Priest-Kings, lest you look back down the cliff to see a sea of mummified dead crawling up the cliff-side like locusts...
2 - Some of the recesses lead beyond the bodies deep into the rock, lined with more and more and inhumanly more bodies...
3 - Oh, apparently these guys aren't dead, they're just supremely disciplined monks who have transcended the need for food, or air, or sleep, or... much of anything.
4 - There are legends of a vicious ghoulish monster that crawls on the cliffs, that eats the flesh of those buried in the cliffs.

13 - Fortress of the Undying
The Castle's gates are closed, but the dead within continue in a gross facsimile of life.
1 - The Brigadier-Colonel bears no flesh, but his "One Command" and harsh policies ensure the dead have fair representation amongst the wider world.
2 - The curse of the Necromancer lingers on the city, never-ending dullness and labours for the city that wronged it.
3 - They have merely forgotten they are dead, and no-one quite has the heart to tell them otherwise.
4 - The plague that claimed their lives, exists within them still, moving their limbs to the tunes of the hive-mind of the sickness.

14 - The Very Normal Graveyard
Just a normal graveyard, far as you can see. With its very own spooky, spooky grounds-keeper too.
1 - There is apparently a ghost in the graveyard, and its driving housing prices into the ground!
2 - Some of the graves have been dug up recently... and you can never seem to get hold of the grounds-keeper... Hmmm...
3 - Someone keeps complaining of hearing screams and wails from the graveyard! How awful!
4 - Its always misty in there, which means that people keep seeing figures crawling out of the graves. Ha! How laughable.

15 - The Soft-Bellied City
The city was sealed, people and plague trapped within, left to rot together. Nothing got out, and as far as we know, it has been silent ever since.
1 - Now it is the quiet home of Mire-Things, that feed/depend/are the remains of, the dead of the city.
2 - A Marrow Hag has recently moved into the city, picking over the bones of the furious but impotent dead.
3 - The disease spirits that struck the city down lurk still in the abandoned streets and empty squares, waiting for the day when the gates will finally be re-opened.
4 - A shallow sea of liquified flesh coats the grounds of the city, and turgid monstrosities stalk the streets on stilt-legs, and strike looters down with mosquito-maws.

16 - The Bane'd-Fields
This simple commune used to house a cult, with no small secret. Now they all lie dead and rotting, slain all on the same day.
1 - They were a grand sacrifice to an out-being of the stars and dark. It was only partly successful. The successful part now waits panting and heaving in the basements.
2 - They sought divine transcendence, and this was their last step. Now, they have only unrest in death.
3 - A Spirit of Rage managed to slip into the compound, and as given over to their tasks as they were, the cult lasted no time at all against the spirit.
4 - A Rival God sent down an Angel of Death in wrath, a flaming sword sweeping all about the commune to strike down the unholy heathens. The Angel remains to ensure none of the cult's teachings will ever leave the compound.

17 - The Tomb of Eternal Rest
The dead in this tomb wear masks crusted in gold and jewels to ward off possessing spirits.
1 - There are many spirits that roam these hall, hoping to find the few corpses who have lost their masks so that they may walk the mortal world.
2 - There are only a few spirits here, but they are strong enough even to overpower living minds from control of their flesh...
3 - The head masks are phylacteries for the dead, slowly accumulating the energy needed to bring the ancient kings back into the world they are destined to one day inherit.
4 - The masks contain potent warding spells and charms carved into their inside, the better for the dead to use them to journey to the lands of the dead safely.

18 - THE PLACE OF BETRAYAL
At the bottom of this Knife-Lined shaft is said to be the body of some ancient god. How do we know that? You ask too many questions don't you.
1 - It was necessary, we swear it, these knives, they are to it as air is to you, do not go, it can bring no good.
2 - The god was too great, we humbled it in the well, it drowned in its own pride and we are glad to be rid of it.
3 - It threw itself down there, slicked the walls with blood, blazed with light even as the well-water quenched it. Apparently it was a sacrifice, but what good does a sacrifice do any of us?
4 - We threw it down there so that we might drain its juices and feast upon its brown and dried meats and drink deep and glut our thirsts on its blood. Soon. Soon...

19 - Tombs of the Shining Kings
The Imperial Crypts are stuffed with wealth and are apparently completely unguarded. By humans at any rate.
1 - The statues of ancient and forgotten kings are enchanted to slowly stalk intruders, and slowly seal them within the tomb with the sheer mass of their stone bodies.
2 - Old rites of offerings of food have lured Hunger Spirits down into the tombs, where they were trapped with salt. Those who trespass are rarely left as anything more than scraps of bone.
3 - Mechanical traps lurk in the shadows in grand abundance. Most have rusted and frayed beyond functioning, but the tomb remains a maze of delicately balanced death...
4 - The lock is the greatest in this, and any land. Mechanisms within mechanisms, fail-safes in fail-safes; but if you could ever get past it, the riches are all yours for the taking.

20 - The Heart of Flame
Many seek the volcano to have their bodies flung into the lava to burn. It is the fastest return to the spirit of all the world, it is said.
1 - The Oreads that tend the rocks and stoke the flames can be propitiated to lead you down through safe paths to the heart of the mountain, where many spirits of the molten dead linger still.
2 - It is of course, all a lie. The offerings of bodies have ensured that the mountain does not erupt, sparing the world from its molten wrath.
3 - The volcano is also an open door to the spirit world, going both ways. Spirits of all kinds emerge from the sulphurous vents and hot-springs.
4 - The god of the volcano awaits, mouth gaping wide to swallow the bodies of the faithful as they float down and settle in the rock, gathering more and more strength so its eventual return from dormancy that much more apocalyptic.