Graveyard

A field of graves under the open sky, behind a low wall, with leaning stones, a few family tombs and an old yew. By day it is a quiet place for mourners; at night it belongs to body snatchers, ghouls and whatever the priests could not keep down. The ground is soft, the paths are overgrown, and nobody walks it after dark without a reason.

Light
Dim
Going
Easy

Hear it

Hazards

  • Night. Out of the lantern's circle, the stones look like crouching people and the people look like stones. D&D 5e: Outdoors at night is Darkness, even under most moons: a creature trying to see into it has the Blinded condition. A full moon may give Dim Light, where Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight have Disadvantage. Darkvision treats Darkness as Dim Light within its range.
  • Sinking ground. Old coffins rot and the earth above them sags. A foot goes through the turf into a hollow full of splinters. D&D 5e (House rule): Our rule: the old rows are Difficult Terrain. A creature that runs or fights there makes a DC 11 Dexterity save once a round or sinks to the knee, Prone and stuck until it spends 1.5 m (5 ft) of movement to pull free.
  • Mausoleum lock. Rich families guard their vaults against body snatchers. The lock on the bronze door bites. D&D 5e: Opening the lock with anything but its key springs a needle: DC 11 Constitution save, or 1d10 Poison damage and the Poisoned condition for 1 hour; half damage only on a success. A Knock spell avoids it. A Search action and a DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check find it, and an action with a DC 15 Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check disarms it (a failure sets it off).
  • Restless dead. Someone buried badly, a suicide outside the wall, a murder never avenged: on some nights the earth over them moves. D&D 5e (House rule): Our rule: on each night spent in the graveyard, roll a d6. On a 1, 1d4 Zombies or Skeletons rise from the unconsecrated corner. Proper rites by a priest (Religion DC 13, 1 hour) lay a grave to rest for good.

Adventure hooks

  1. Body snatchers are digging up fresh corpses for a surgeon in town. A widow hires the party to guard her husband’s grave every night until he is, in her words, no longer worth the trouble.
  2. The gravedigger has buried the same man three times, and three times he has come back to complain about the service. He is not undead: he is a swindler collecting from the burial club, and the club keeps paying.
  3. The hollow of an old yew is where lovers leave letters for each other. Someone has been answering them, with advice that has so far been right every time.
  4. The council plans to clear the old graveyard for a new market hall. The families want their dead moved first; the builder wants the whole job done in one night, and has already hired the carts.

What may happen

  1. A fresh grave, the earth still loose. Footprints lead to it from the road, and none lead away.
  2. Two men with a cart, shovels and a sack, digging by a shuttered lantern. They offer coin to be left alone.
  3. The old gravedigger sits in his hut with a lamp and a cudgel. He knows every grave, and which ones to avoid.
  4. A crow sits on one stone and will not move, even when shooed.
  5. A bell on a cord tied to a grave rings once, very faintly. Someone was afraid of being buried alive.
  6. Fresh flowers on a grave nobody has visited in fifty years, by the dates on the stone.
  7. A low mist fills the hollows between graves, knee deep, and does not move with the wind.
  8. Long, clawed footprints between the graves, and earth scraped away from a coffin.
  9. An epitaph names the person buried here, and the one who killed them.
  10. The hollow of the old yew holds a bundle of letters wrapped in oilcloth.
  11. A small funeral at dusk, only three mourners. One of them watches the party more than the coffin.
  12. The gate swings shut behind the party with a long creak. Nobody touched it.
  13. A widow keeps watch by a new grave with a lantern and a hound, the third night after the burial, so the dead will stay put.
  14. A coffin waits under the lychgate for tomorrow’s burial, alone. The lid has not been nailed.
  15. A pale light drifts between the stones and stops each time the party stops, as if waiting to be followed.
  16. A stonemason is carving a headstone for a woman of the town who is still alive. He was paid in advance, by a stranger.
  17. A little watch house with an arrow slit stands by the wall, built against body snatchers. Its log names the nights they came.
  18. The charnel house by the chapel is full. Bones are stacked outside under a lean-to, skulls in one pile, everything else in another.
  19. A ring of salt and iron nails surrounds one grave. Someone renewed it this week.
  20. A white hare sits among the stones at dusk and watches the party. Villagers say it is a drowned girl come back.
  21. The priest will not bury a stranger inside the wall. His widow begs the party to plead for him.
  22. On the feast of the dead, a family eats on their ancestors’ tomb and invites the party to share their bread and wine.
  23. In the far corner rises a grassy mound older than the chapel, with a standing stone the builders did not dare move.
  24. Thick moss grows on the oldest stones. Healers say it closes wounds, if gathered before sunrise.
  25. A young gravedigger, a woman, is digging a grave nobody has died for yet. She says one always comes before the week is out.

Creatures

To bring back

Ghoul Bile, Zombie Ichor, Crawling Claw Nail, Ghost Light, Ghoul Tongue, Will-o'-Wisp Spark, Ectoplasm Portion, Fog of the Veil, Vampiric Dust, Will-o'-Wisp Trail, Revenant Soul, Skullfire Essence, Banshee Dust, Death Knight Ashes

Other sites

Dungeon, Crypt, Ruin, Sewer, Fortress, Mine Works, Temple, Laboratory, City

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

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