Cutting a broad swathe through the tall, ramshackle slums, overlooked by the imposing Amethyst College, is the largest of Morr’s gardens and routes to the underworld in the Empire -- the fabled haunted Cemetery of Old Altdorf. It is surrounded by a high, spiked wall, beyond which grows a thick tangle of black rose trees. The wall is in disrepair in many places along its great length, but few dare to breach the sanctity of Morr’s realm -- especially in this place of ethereal notoriety.[1a]
Beyond the wall are countless ancient graves and mausoleums of generations of Altdorfers, some simple and plain, some bedecked by ornate and looming skull-headed statues. There are also thousands of shallow, unmarked graves of those hastily interred after the devastation of the Red Plague in 1786 IC.[1a] It was once considered the most desirable cemetery in the city, but has gained an eerie and haunted reputation since the Colleges of Magic were founded nearby.[3a] Certainly the dead rest uneasy in their graves here and their spirits still roam the garden to this day, and the proximity of the Amethyst college is no coincidence.[1a]
For most of the year, the garden is forbidden to Altdorfers, who leave their dead at the iron gates with a few of their possessions and money to pay for the burial. Only the priests of Morr are allowed in the garden and they rarely leave. But, upon the Festival of Morr the living, should they dare, are permitted to enter the garden to feast and celebrate with their deceased friends and relatives. For some, it is quite literally…[1a]
At the centre of the cemetery is the mortuary: a great, plain slab of a building in black granite accessed through a foreboding stone portal.[1a][3a] It is a secret known only to the Morrite priests what the mortuary contains. They claim that the structure is necessary to dispel baleful magic and quell Undead activity. But suspicious Altdorfers spread many other rumours about the purpose of the building.[3a]
One corner of the graveyard features close-set rows of tiny graves, where sentimental wizards have buried their deceased familiars.[3a]
Notes[]
- Career Compendium states that the senior grave warden of "the great Altdorf cemetery" is a fellow named "Old Grouse", who keeps a few fresh graves waiting for any whom he catches trespassing, and is said to have a hidden cache of grave goods called "Morr's Bounty."[2a] "The great Altdorf cemetery" may be synonymous with the Old Altdorf Cemetery.