The Bone Road and the Razing Line

The Bone Road runs between Crockport and Grabford, as shown on the color map. Its importance lies in the fact that virtually all the major defensive fortifications of Iuz being currently constructed lie behind this line. There are some 20 wooden and stone forts under construction, most with charmed giants as laborers and human slaves working together with some "free humanoids" captured from the Vesve, These latter captives are carefully selected so they are members of different, rival tribes or "sub-tribes" to those orcs who act as slavemasters over them. South of the Bone Road, warbands, patrols and freelance raiding parties are the order of the day.

The Bone Road itself is being decorated, as it were, in a manner calculated to outrage the Furyondians to the south. Impaled skulls and rib cages of fallen Furyondian and Highfolk troops are used along the road's margins, in a manner reminiscent of the Road of Skulls, but more haphazardly and without the bones having any magical attributes. The highway itself is broad but muddled, and counts only as a secondary road for the purposes of determining travel rates along it. Patrols are very frequent along the Bone Road, with a patrol passing every 10-15 minutes during the night and every 20-30 minutes during the day.

The Razing Line is an entirely different matter. Here, beyond the no-man’s land, lies a quarter-mile wide area of utterly blasted and barren land. Decimated by fire and acid employed by priests and mages, this line is continuously extended eastward and is the source of much Furyondian anxiety. This destructive magic is not simply being used for reasons of viciousness. Rather, the ground has been specially prepared to provide conditions for the use of animate dead spells. Iuz's priests and mages are still working at the right combination of magical preparations, but when they are through, skeletons animated here from the many victims of the wars will be stronger (+1hp per HD) and more difficult to turn (as ghouls) than normal. Worse still, priests will be able to add +2 to the number of skeletons an animate dead spell will create. This may not seem worrying, but with literally thousands of bodies to work with, the cumulative effects could be considerable. It is also entirely possible that other, more powerful, undead created or summoned within the Razing Line zone will be strengthened in certain ways. Magical scrying does not reveal this, possibly due to the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the amplifying magics which are being tested and readied for use here.