Barrowfield

This line of low, grass-girt mounds is about 30 miles south and east of Peldan’s Helm in the dangerous “Beast Country” of western Mistledale. Mistrans shun the mist-shrouded hills, believing them to be haunted by the nameless dead buried here. It is commonly known in the Dale that the hills are tombs: Walking skeletons were unleashed from one of them some years ago when a band of outlaws dug into the most easterly mound, thinking they had found the site of brigand treasure. (The robbers tried this spot after slaying a gullible old merchant who had bought a fake old treasure map in Scardale. Because the old man fought so fiercely to keep it, they thought the map must be real.)
After consultations with several sages and a peek at the library in the Leaves of Learning in Highmoon, I can say with certainty that there are still undead guarding the Barrowfield. They are the remains of Netherese who fled here after some battle or magical disaster. These survivors soon perished, as they were horribly changed so that they sickened and died by what is recorded as “overexposure to magic”.
Much of what I read about them is speculation, but it seems they were either cursed or willingly linked to a specific magical item each - and suffered unforeseen effects. This magical “twisting” (akin to the wild magic zones now abroad in Faerûn) made the Netherese into wraiths who are unturnable and, it seems, undestroyable. If slain, they vanish back into the buried magical items to which they are each linked, only to reappear the next day. Moreover, each wraith can emit a single spell effect of the item to which it is linked in a beam it can control as a weapon. One sage writes of what can only be an ice storm unleashed by a wraith on shepherds who tried to camp on one bar row hill; another describes a cone of cold being hurled at adventurers from behind by a wraith that rose up out of ground they had walked over.
Some brave adventurers, the Proud Mace band of Westgate, managed to “send down” (temporarily destroy) all of the wraiths in a titanic spell battle and proceeded to dig up some of the items. They soon discovered that the wraiths remained linked to the items - not the tombs - when they reappeared, attacking fiercely, the next day at the same location the items had been moved to. Wounded and low on magic, the Proud Mace members barely survived this second battle, so they returned the items to the barrow and fled, hoping to be rid of the nightly wraith attacks - which is what happened.
As far as the Riders of Mistledale know, only a lone brigand band has recently dared to dig into the barrows. They dug up the grassed-over but clearly disturbed earth where the Proud Mace adventurers had dug and carried off only one item: some sort of magical rod with thorny protuberances and glowing inset gems. They had traveled only a little way from where they obtained the rod before succumbing to the wraith attacks. To prevent the reach of the undead creatures (who seem to stay within a certain distance of their items) from extending further toward the Dale, the Riders bravely rode in and bore the rod back to the digging. Presumably, it remains there to this day. Needless to say, camping on or near the barrow hills is not recommended.

Type

Plain