>>5410340>>5410432>>5410563>>5410764>Woodlands settlement, close to the Monument, often in the darkness of the forest and the heap. A foreboding environment, but its manor is well fortified and the whole place is defended by a palisade. The descent alone takes some time, you and your escort coaxing the loaded horses down steep and winding paths into the valley. Dirt roads bordering scattered fields and woodlands are reminiscent of home, but the cold is unfamiliar: the low lie of the land would be enough to gather a chill, but with the titanic shadow of the Monument there is no doubt that much of this land spends a great part of the day in darkness. Indeed, the commoners you see as you pass villages and farmsteads are waxen and sallow, their crops a variety of unfamiliar, hardy-looking growths that resemble weeds and tubers more than any golden grain. The people seem otherwise in good health though many of them bear scars that one might expect of levies coming back from war, but in the Charnel Lands you suspect the provenance of these injuries to be something else entirely.
It takes some time for your escort to lead you to your new fief, but it is hard to tell the exact hour: the sky has worn the same sunset hue all day, and the light grows dimmer still as you approach the Monument and plod into the shadows of the woods. The trees are tall and twisted, gnarled roots creeping across an uneven landscape of clay slopes and chalk pits. The entirety of this forest is your new estate, but it hardly seems an inviting place for a stroll through nature or a lively hunt.
<span class="mu-s">Deveché</span> squats in the middle of the woodland, the road skirting around the palisade rather than going through the village. A heavy gate blockades the only entrance, and when the Church escort announces your arrival it takes some time before the gate is pushed open at a leisurely pace.
The space within the walls is crammed with huts, mostly log and plank save for the occasional wall or roof of broken masonry cobbled together. A squat church with a stumpy spire pokes above the cracked rooves. A few herb gardens and vegetable plots are slotted into the spaces between homes and workspaces. Free roaming pigs rummage in the muck, and there is a strong smell of blood and woodsmoke over everything.
There is no welcoming committee. A few of the peasants stop to eye you as you trot past, and frankly they look unimpressed. Most of them don’t even bother to stop walking or working.
