Part 1: Riverside - Adventures in the Forgotten Realms: A Verdant Tomb

Part 1: Riverside. The adventure begins when the adventurers reach the area near the sepulcher, about 40 miles east of the village of Secomber. There the south branch of the Delimbiyr (sometimes called Hark River) runs through reedy marshlands along the feet of cliffs and steep hills that rise to form the High Moors' plateau. The place they seek is a shrine and once-beautiful mausoleum built by a few wealthy families from Secomber. It is set into a cliff on the south side of the river. Designed to be rustic and remote, the site has fallen into severe disrepair as a result of its distance from Secomber. Many of the families whose ancestors were interred here have since taken their wealth to Waterdeep and never returned. After visitors stopped arriving to remember those buried here, no one came to combat the weather and the waters as they took their toll. Only one of the participating families stayed in Secomber but fell on hard times decades ago and gradually came to forget their forebears. Their family name was Everlake. The last of them died of old age within the past twenty years. The Surrounding Area The land immediately around the sepulcher is unkempt, avoided even by the goats and sheep of the few shepherds in the region. Trees are rare here. Stray boulders and scrub plants abound. Cold, windswept rain billows across the reeds and grasses uphill from the river. Water runs off the hills above in muddy streams, bringing dead leaves and clumps of grasses into damp heaps. A single, dead tree bends in the wind, like a bony hand grasping at the sky. The grassy ground rises up gradually from the riverbank to where the sepulcher is built into the base of a scrabbly 20-foot cliff. Bits of red granite jut from the cliff and the ground, revealed over long years by the river and the rain. Across the river, wide meadows and wild hedges feed the local sheep. Two troll stalk the marsh on the sepulcher's side of the river. They're twin brothers, clad in rough leather and ra...