NECROPOLIS

“Promise me this: Don’t bury me with jewelry when I die. Grave robbers are an awfully creepy lot.”

—Syretare, guild thief

Social Class: Lower.

Power Center: Never.

Buildings: Mortuaries (12%), crypts/mausoleums (80%), poor services (3%), poor residences (2%), temple (Vecna, Wee Jas).

Description: Some cities have graveyards scattered throughout their districts, but most restrict such grim sites to a specifi c location called the necropolis, which is often walled or fenced off. The district might be a literal city of the dead, with ranks of graves or crypts laid out in “streets.” Sometimes it consists of underground catacombs or rolling fi elds of graves with simple stone markers. Often plain dirt plots entomb the poor, while the rich and powerful rest in mausoleums or catacombs, often within private family plots. Such graves might be located on private property or be set aside in restricted portions of the necropolis. The sounds of the city seem muted within the district, and the air smells earthy with a faint hint of decay. Carriages and wagons carry corpses and the bereaved to gravesites.

Plot Hook: Someone has been digging up graves and desecrating bodies, and seemingly random murders are being committed nearby. The obvious conclusion is that a necromancer is animating the corpses, but in fact criminals have been hiding the bodies of their rivals inside other, already occupied coffins. They dig up other graves to explain away the disturbed earth, and kill at random to lead investigators to the wrong conclusion.