Oldfen

The Walled Grave

Steel and sacrifice—this is the way of Valkenmar. And today, you will give what must be given. These walls are not built in cruelty, but in necessity. They do not rise to punish, but to protect. If you suffer within them, know that your pain buys the lives of countless others.

You were once men and women, but the Blight has taken that from you. Now, you are only the sickness, the rot, the slow march of death. And death cannot be granted mercy. Death does not deserve freedom.

- Baron Malric Valkenmar

During the first year of the Rotmire Blight, the desperate rulers of Faulmoor attempted to contain the outbreak in Oldfen by constructing a wooden wall, encircling the entire town in a cruel perimeter. The walls were meant to keep the infection from spreading beyond Oldfen’s borders—but in reality, they became a prison of suffering and death. The remnants of these rotting wooden barricades still stand in places, their timbers warped by time and decay. They bear the scars of claw marks, bloodstains, and the deep grooves of desperate hands trying to climb or tear their way out. In some places, skeletal remains still hang from the spikes, grim reminders of those who made it to the top but not beyond.

Soldiers were stationed at these walls, ordered to kill any who tried to escape—whether infected or not. Some of these men and women remain to this day, twisted remnants of the past, either as shattered survivors who lost their minds, or as undead horrors cursed to wander their old posts. It is said that at night, one can still hear the echoes of old commands, the clash of steel, and the cries of the desperate. Beyond the walls, unmarked burial pits stretch into the nearby wilderness—places where soldiers once dumped the dead to prevent further spread. These places are unnaturally silent, as if the land itself remembers the suffering.

Despite its ruin, Oldfen is said to hold secrets beneath its decayed streets. Rumors persist that before the Blight, the town’s wealthier merchants and noble families hid their treasures away, burying gold, heirlooms, and valuables in concealed vaults and forgotten cellars. Desperate scavengers and daring smugglers risk the horrors of Oldfen to search for these lost riches, believing that wealth still lingers beneath the rot. Some claim to have found untouched caches of silver and relics, while others vanish without a trace, their fates unknown. It is whispered that the dead guard these treasures, drawn not only by the hunger of the Blight but by the lingering greed of their past lives. The town, once a place of trade and prosperity, has become a gambler’s folly—a place where fortune and death walk hand in hand.

Oldfen is more than just a town ravaged by the Blight—it is a monument to a terrible mistake, a place where mercy was abandoned in the name of containment. Now, the dead rule the streets, the ghosts of the fallen linger, and the few who venture within rarely return.

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