Crows' Meadow

Crows' Meadow is a barren field about two versts southeast of Lazarevo, above the banks of the Vydra River. The field is treeless, and often attracts large flocks of crows, who come to peck at the bone fragments that still litter the field.
The Meadow has a deservedly ill reputation in the village. It was the site, roughly 40 years ago, of a massacre of the residents of Trofimovka - a village that stood on the same site where Lazarevo stands now. Trofimovka was sacked by the Kochmaki, who killed the entire population, and drove off the rest. For reasons that were unclear for many years, the raiders slaughtered their captives in what became the Meadow - prior to this event, the area had much more vegetation - and then vanished.
Additionally, a narrow and hidden chute in the Meadow leads down to a warren that is (or was) inhabited by a family of poleviks, led by their matriarch, the poludnitsa Plamenka. Though her half-human son Plamen partly grew up in this warren, most of the villagers fear the poleviks, though they sometimes traffic with them.
As the party initially composed of Katarina Borisovna's suitors learned, what transpired is that the raiders were in league with a servitor of Baba Yaga's. They raided the village in order to seize its considerable wealth in order to then transfer it into the crone's hands. Plamenka, who lived below, succeeded in enchanting the raiders to kill the captives, and then each other, and somehow animated their bones to become the guardians of the warren. The treasure was eventually found and taken by the party, and Plamenka was killed, while a few of the skeletons escaped, and wreaked havoc upon Lazarevo. It is not known what happened to Plamen's polevik stepfather or step-siblings, or even to most of the grain they hoarded, as the party left for the Otherworld shortly after taking hold of the treasure.

Type

Meadow