The Estuary of the Unquiet Dead

The floods caused by the moonfall created the estuary. Rumor has it, that sunken cities and kingdoms of men lie at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes the tide washes jewelry and gold coins on the shore. Always the rising tide brings the undead drowned ones to the shallow coasts. In the depth of the sea live sea serpents, whales and seals. Still, fishing boats, merchant ships and dwarven galleys sail the estuary.

The Stone-Cold Forest

The Stone-Cold Forest is a woodland of petrified trees radiating an unnatural and unseasonal cold. Before the Moonfall, the dwarves build their galleys of stone from the trees. The docks were located in the nearby city of Brú'na'Brae. Today, the forest and the city lie abandoned by the dwarves and creatures of night and cold have come to roost there.

Those who enter the forest without winter travel clothes take 1d4 points of damage each turn. In winter, even someone travelling in winter clothing takes 1 point of damage per turn. Wearing heavy furs protects from even the worst winter weather, but all actions are at -2 penalty.

The Stone-Cold Forest rises above the tides of the Estuary of the Unquiet Dead. Not even storm tides will flood the hilly woodland.

The Book of Stone

This grimoire consists of thin stone sheets harvested from the trees in the Stone-Cold Forest. Within the pages are densely etched with dwarven runes. The book contains five 5th level spells that any magic-user or tiefling can learn: major creation, passwall, stone shape, transmute rock to mud and wall of stone.

The real treasure, though, is the treatise on building stone galleys, an art currently lost to the dwarves. If dwarves hear of a character possessing the book, they will stop at nothing to acquire it. They will try to buy, steal or rob it.

But that is not the worst. The grimoire is as cursed as any other. Each time someone learns a spell from the book, he has to save vs. magical device. If the save is failed, the character is turned into a dwarf of equal level losing his spellcasting abilities. The victim can be saved by casting a remove curse on him.

The Drowning Woods

Pale dead trees stretch their branches accusingly towards the sky, the spongy ground is covered with rotting leaves and mushrooms, and it smells of moss and brine. Each tide of the Eastern Ocean brings more water. Each footstep fills with it. The trees slowly sink into it. The marsh elves fear the woods and the woods hate the marsh elves.

Here, in antiquity, the lichwitch Audreen the Icy ruled over the ivory court of the pale elves. Rumor has it, her palace still lies at the bottom of a lake within the forest.

The Swamp of Dreadful Dreams

The Swamp of Dreadful Dreams is a mire of treacherous mud holes and quicksand, overgrown with cyan blue grass and weeping willows smelling of coppery death, and at night flooded by the saltwater tides from the Estuary of the Unquiet Dead. Legend tells that beneath the ever-present hills are the barrows of the queen consorts of the First Dwarves, lying dreaming, waiting to be reborn as slime demons from the outer dark.

Every night's sleep in the Swamp of Dreadful Dreams has a 25% chance of being a nightmare. If someone experiences a nightmare, the next day he suffers a -1 penalty to any and all actions and saves. Marsh elves never experience nightmares in the swamp, dwarves have a 50% chance of having nightmares.