Synopsis: ...

Warnings: ...

(Image credits: David Schleinkofer, 1982.)

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The Ruins of Skoth sat half-buried in the hillside like a hunched, squatting gargoyle. Crumbling pillars of stone framed its cavernous maw, a dark entrance sunk deep into the swampy terrain, flooded with murky water. The clouds were a deep blue-grey black, the hill a poisonous green. A single tree a little up the hillside was long since dead, and its sharp black branches scraped like fingers against the sickly sky.

The ruins of Skoth loomed against the blue-black sky. The crypt sat hunched over in the hillside, giant crumbling henges of stone framing a cavernous entrance, swamp-water creeping up the stairs at the base.

The Ruins of Skoth sat half-buried in the swamp like a hunched, squatting gargoyle. A deep, dark maw led deeper into a passage of stone, where traps and trick pitfalls awaited the heroic and unwary fools who might have braved this tomb for treasure or glory. The sky was a deep blue-grey, the clouds on the horizon pitch-black, and the hillside a deep and poisonous green. The reeds waved in the fetid air, and the dead branches of a lonely tree atop the hill scraped the sky like long, sharp fingernails.

Ancient battles had left the land barren and poisonous. The resonating chirp of insects in the air was the only sign of life at all, and it was an ringing, menacing sound, constant and malicious.

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The ruins of Growle sat hunched against the sky like a squatting gargoyle, a crumbling mess of moss and stone half sunk into the swamp.

The hill was a deep poisonous green against the bruised dark sky, and the maw of the crypt yawned open and ominous, littered with the bones of those who had - foolishly - braved this path before: heroes and adventurers who had fallen to traps and spikes and pits; those who had come seeking glory and found only doom.

This was the final resting place of the witch king Salamancer. Salamancer had been unmatched in both cruelty and magical ability. The necromancer was long-dead, but his poisonous hold on the land remained - the swamp was cursed: none who walked here lived long, and even the purest of heart soon became corrupted by their most selfish and evil desires.

The swamp was empty now, however: no evil ghosts, no animated dead. Only the sharp ringing of insects and the

---biologic.neocites.org 11/26/2022---