Ashbel Necropolis

"We bones that here are, for yours await." - The new municipal motto

     The Feird Region is still recovering from the devastation brought by the Retaliations War. The goblinoid hordes were mostly incapable of taking big cities, but the wasting of the fields brought hunger in the following years. The whole region still depends of foodstuffs coming from Sycamore and Ametis.

     The Ashbel metropolis, in the empire's south, was thoroughly sacked and declared a "dead city" by the senate. It became the greatest necropolis ever seen in Sarba, quickly filled up with the dead of war. The Carnificius' cult convinced the senate into allowing them to use the railway to transport bones from crowded necropolises throughout the empire to Ashbel. The Duvant barony was created to stop thieves and necromancers from stealing the dead and belongings left by the living. The duvantian guardians are helped by the cult of Carnificius against necromantic threats, patrol the labyrinth of urban ruins, escort peregrines and wonder if Arcantos, Ghara's first lich, might be interested in such a concentration of raw materials. Maganchos secretly help, but they also use the ruins for their own purposes. The Athanatoi Order also helps, as long as it is allowed to recruit undead here.

It is notable that the undead which appear here aren't aggressive, some are even friendly. Carnificius' cult says this reflects the good nature of old Ashbel.

      The necropolis and its surroundings are managed by the Carnificius' cult. Besides mundane problems such as transporting and housing bones in ways that please the dead souls, the region suffers with hauntings at a chronic level:

1. Many ghosts from when the city was sacked still manifest themselves.
2. Fel's pockets must be purified before they burst.
3. Two arachiinferi appear for every one that is banished to hell.
4. Corpse diggers try to smuggle bones and steal sacrifices to the dead.

     Many of the public slaves brought here to reform the ruins into mortuary shelters were freed only to become part of the death god's cult. Some still resent what they see as "escaping the living to be enslaved by the dead", in the words of Vokk, hanged by trying to reanimate skeletons in the Guilty Avenue, ossuary number seventy. Flesh golem's crews are being used as workers and sources of perpetual motion. They create mausoleums, towers and artistic mosaics, all made out of piled bones and recycled rubble. The former city and its surroundings are almost a necrocracy inside the Northern Empire, managed with considerable autonomy by the cult of the god of the dead.

      The aqueducts were restored to provide a moat around the necropolis, accessible only a properly blessed drawbridge. What remains of the walls are inscribed with explanations and requests in Ispariz, the extinct language which the cult of Carnificius uses to send messages to the dead. The underground tunnel network connecting cellars, sewers and cisterns is labyrinthine. All these measures are to confuse and imprison the local spirits, including the naturally occurring will-o'-the-wisps.

Dukai, the Vile. Due to unpronounceable crimes, he was condemned to death, death, death and prison. This means he was killed, revived, killed, revived, killed and his soul was imprisoned so that it may never reincarnate. The chest which hosts it is kept in a tower here.