Many centuries ago, the nation state of Burnbrook was at war with their rival, Fernhook. A battle that seemed to go on for decades, no side was nearer to being the victor after all the blood that had been split between them. As a separate act to finally end the battle, Burnbrook called upon any mages who were willing to help them finally gain the upper hand. Over time, this small cabal of scholars became obsessed with the art of necromancy. Betraying the gods from which they inherited the power of the ethereal world, they began to raise their own dead, along with their fallen enemies to grow an army so immense it could never be stopped. Lost to time, no one quite remembers how the war finally ended, except that Burnbrook was defeated, and their hordes of undead were destroyed, at least so it may seem.

Some say that till this very day, remnants of the once undead army still carry out their daily toil. Unable to return to their well deserved rest, they’re stuck reenacting their duties of life; patrolling, standing guard, and not letting anyone pass through. There are rumors among the high scholars of the arcane arts that some of their own disgraced students decide to travel to these lands of battle in an attempt to regain the lost knowledge of necromancy. Could there really be a wizard that’s gone mad and is building a legion of undead out of this fortress?

Dried Marrow Fort is an independent product published under the Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License and is not affiliated with The Arcane Library, LLC. Shadowdark RPG © 2023 The Arcane Library, LLC.

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.

Dried Marrow Fort was made with the help of the Classic Explorer Template by Explorers Design which is under CC BY 4.0.

Public domain artwork originally created by Gordy Higgins

Maps created with Dungeon Scrawl (https://dungeonscrawl.com) — used under CC BY 4.0 license.

Some art assets within Dungeon Scrawl maps contributed by: Mark Gosbell – (https://markgosbell.itch.io) — used under CC0