Faulmoor

An Explorer’s Chronicle: Into the Rotting Heart of Faulmoor

I had heard tales of Faulmoor before I set foot upon its sodden soil—whispers of a land where the fog never lifts, where the dead outnumber the living, and where even the trees seem to lean in close, listening. Now, as I trudge through this mire-ridden expanse, I find those tales were but feeble echoes of the truth. Faulmoor is worse than legend claims.

The ground itself shifts like a restless beast beneath my boots, treacherous and untrustworthy. One moment, the path is firm, the next, I am knee-deep in sucking mud that clings as though it wishes to pull me into the depths. The stench of stagnant water and rot lingers in the air, mingling with the acrid scent of distant pyres—whole villages burned to the ground in desperate attempts to cleanse the Rotmire Blight.

The Rotmire Blight: A Land Choked in Plague

It has been two years since the blight first took hold, and its mark upon the land is unmistakable. Quarantine wards litter the region like tombstones, places once teeming with life now reduced to grim, silent husks. No one enters these wards—not unless they have a death wish. I passed through the outskirts of Ashenmoor, where the signs of suffering were still fresh. Barricades of rotting wood, scrawled with desperate warnings—KEEP OUT, THE DEAD WALK—stood as the only barrier between the living world and whatever festers within. I did not dare to linger.

Even outside the quarantined zones, fear grips the land like a vice. Travelers are few, their faces hidden behind cloth masks soaked in bitter herbs. Those who remain in these forsaken lands watch from behind shuttered windows, unwilling to greet strangers for fear of what they might bring. Trust is a dead currency in Faulmoor.

The Warring Houses: A Broken Rule

Though the blight has brought Faulmoor to its knees, the noble houses cling to power like drowning men grasping at driftwood. House Valkenmar, the so-called rulers of this festering barony, still maintain their hold over Blackhollow Fort and Valkeilheim, but their strength is waning. Their bannermen patrol the roads, not to keep order, but to ensure their own survival. I have seen them—gaunt men in rusted armor, more akin to brigands than knights.

Further north, House Wilthorne of Ebonmoor is no better, ruling from their mist-choked keep, Rimewatch. Rumors tell of a sickness within their halls, one they refuse to acknowledge. And then there is House Harrowden of Fenmire, their lands half-drowned by the encroaching tide of the Siltmarsh. They have always been a desperate people, but now, they are something worse—cornered.

These houses conspire, even as the land rots beneath them. I have overheard whispers in roadside taverns—plans to seize what little remains before the blight takes it all. The plague may be their common enemy, but old grudges die hard in Faulmoor.

The Roads to the Dead

If one can call them roads at all. What little infrastructure remains is crumbling, neglected for years as survival takes precedence over governance. The old stone bridges are cracked and coated in moss, their foundations eaten away by the ceaseless damp. The main thoroughfares, those that once carried merchants and soldiers, are little more than winding trails of mud and broken carts. The dead outnumber the living here, not in bodies, but in presence.

I have traveled to many forsaken places, but Faulmoor weighs upon me differently. The air is too thick, the silence too deep, as if the land itself knows its time is running out. I had intended to press further—to see the ruins of Harrowgate, to follow the western paths toward Weeping Fen—but as I sit beneath the rotted boughs of a gnarled tree, scratching these words into my journal, I find myself hesitating.

There is something wrong with this land. Not just the plague. Not just the politics.

Something deeper. Something old. Something waiting.

—From the journal of Aeldric Voss, Explorer of the Lost Lands