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A. Town Square

A simple wooden gazebo at the center of a grassy circular plaza serves as the hub for Ravengro’s major festivals and gatherings. The town council also uses the gazebo as a platform for major announcements. When their labor allows it, farmers who have musical talent often converge here, forming impromptu bands. The town square is also where the local farmer’s market gathers every Wealday.

B. The Posting Poles

C. The Laughing Demon

This is the local tavern, known locally for it's eccentric owner and the mysterious dishes served on a nightly basis.

D. Ravengro Town Hall

E. Temple of Pharasma

This temple is devoted to Pharasma, the Lady of Graves. Ravengro’s only religious structure, the temple is also the town’s most elaborate building. Its eastern facade displays an intricate stained-glass mural depicting a stern Pharasma judging Count Andachi, one of Tamrivena’s most infamous previous rulers. Vauran Grimburrow is officially in charge of the temple, but the day-to-day tending of the flock and maintenance of the temple and the Restlands are largely seen to by a dozen acolytes.

F. Ravengro General Store

Goods of all kinds can be procured here, especially tools and everyday items such as pots and pans. Luthko and Marta Avanaki run the store with their five girls. While the store caters to local needs, the Avanakis keep in stock most typical adventuring gear.

G. Ravengro Forge

Jorfa isn’t the oldest person in town, but she’s certainly lived in Ravengro longer than anyone else. She’s kept to herself for the past century or so, though, and despite her long life has relatively little insight into the inner workings of Harrowstone. While the majority of her work for Ravengro consists of tools for farmers and fisherfolk, she often forges weapons and armor as well.

H. Jominda's Apothecary

I. Ravengro Jail

J. The Silk Purse

K. The Outward Inn

L. The Unfurling Scroll

M. Council Member's Homes

N. The Lorrimor Residence

This modest home was, until recently, the home of Professor Petros Lorrimor and his daughter Kendra. With the professor’s recent death, Kendra has been left the house as her inheritance — whether or not she chooses to stay in Ravengro is an unanswered question, though, for she yearns to see more of the world.

O. Harrowstone Memorial

Other than the looming ruins of Harrowstone on a nearby hill, Ravengro’s most distinctive landmark is a 25-foot-tall, moss-covered stone statue that overlooks the river. The statue depicts a proud, muscular human man dressed in leathers and wielding a truncheon — a depiction of Warden Hawkran. A total of 25 names — the guards who died in the fire of 4661, as well as the warden’s wife, Vesorianna — are chiseled into the statue’s stone base. The memorial is a popular meeting spot for late-night trysts among Ravengro’s young lovers, for it has just the right mix of tragic romance and spooky ambience without actually being on Harrowstone’s supposedly haunted grounds.

P. The Restlands

Behind the Funebrial is a large stretch of moorland reserved for interring Ravengro’s dead. Thanks to the Pharasman church’s influence in town, Ravengro’s graveyard is large and well tended.

Q. Ramshackle Home

R. Harrowstone

This reminder of Ravengro’s original purpose looms over the town from atop its bleak hilltop, a constant inspiration for tall tales and bad dreams.

Originally, Harrowstone housed only local criminals, but as the prison’s fame spread, other counties and distant lands began paying to have more dangerous criminals housed within this prison’s walls. At the time of the great Harrowstone Fire, the number of particularly violent or dangerous criminals imprisoned within the dungeons below was at an all-time high.

The five most notorious prisoners in Harrowstone at the time of the great fire were Father Charlatan, the Lopper, the Mosswater Marauder, the Piper of Illlmarsh, and the Splatter Man.

Of the five notorious prisoners, only Father Charlatan was not technically a murderer, yet his crimes were so blasphemous that several churches demanded he be punished to the full extent of Ustalavic law. Although he claimed to be an ordained priest of any number of faiths, Father Corvin was in fact a traveling con artist who used faith as a mask and a means to bilk the faithful out of money in payment for false miracles or cures. He became known as Father Charlatan after his scheme was exposed and his Sczarni accomplices murdered a half-dozen city guards in an attempt to make good the group’s escape.

When the Lopper stalked prey, he would hide in the most unlikely of places, sometimes for days upon end with only a few supplies to keep him going while he waited for the exact right moment to strike. Once his target was alone, the Lopper would emerge to savagely behead his victim with a handaxe.

Only 5 years before his hometown of Mosswater was destined to be overrun and ruined by monsters from the nearby river, Ispin Onyxcudgel was a well-liked artisan and a doting husband. When he discovered his wife’s infidelity, he flew into a jealous rage and struck her dead with his hammer, shattering her skull and his sanity with one murderous blow. Wracked with shame and guilt, Ispin became convinced that if he could rebuild his wife’s skull she would come back to life — but unfortunately, he could not find the last blade-shaped fragment from the murder site. So instead, Ispin became the Mosswater Marauder. Over the course of several weeks, the cunning dwarf stalked and murdered nearly 20 people while searching for just the right skull fragment. He was captured just before murdering the daughter of a visiting nobleman from Varno, and was carted off to Harrowstone that same night.

Before he snatched his victims, the Piper taunted his targets with a mournful dirge on his flute. He preferred to paralyze lone victims by dosing their meals with lich dust and then allowed his pet stirges to drink the victims dry of blood.

Professor Feramin was a celebrated scholar of Anthroponomastics (the study of personal names and their origins) at the Quartrefaux Archives in Caliphas. Yet an accidental association with a succubus twisted and warped his study, turning it into an obsession. Feramin became obsessed with the power of a name and how he could use it to terrify and control. Soon enough, his reputation was ruined, he’d lost his tenure, and he’d developed an uncontrollable obsession with an imaginary link between a person’s name and what happens to that name when the person dies. Every few days, he would secretly arrange for his victim to find a letter from her name written in blood, perhaps smeared on a wall or spelled out with carefully arranged entrails. Once he had spelled his victim’s name, he would at last come for her, killing her in a gory mess using a complex trap or series of rigged events meant to look like an accident.

The Whispering Way is a sinister organization of necromancers that has been active in the Inner Sea region for thousands of years.

Agents of the Whispering Way often seek alliances with undead creatures, or are themselves undead. The Whispering Way’s most notorious member was Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant, although the society itself has existed much longer than even that mighty necromancer.

The Whispering Way itself is a series of philosophies that can only be transferred via whispers — the philosophies are never written or spoken of loudly, making the exact goals and nature of the secretive philosophy difficult for outsiders to learn much about.

Exact details on the society are difficult to discern, but chief among the Whispering Way’s goals are discovering formulae for creating liches and engineering the release of the Whispering Tyrant. Agents often travel to remote sites or areas plagued by notorious haunts or undead menaces to perform field research or even to capture unique monsters. Their symbol is a gagged skull, and those who learn too many of the Way’s secrets are often murdered, and their mouths mutilated to prevent their bodies from divulging secrets via speak with dead.

Harrowstone is a ruined prison — partially destroyed by a fire in 4661, the building has stood vacant ever since. The locals suspect that it’s haunted, and don’t enjoy speaking of the place.

Harrowstone was built in 4594. Ravengro was founded at the same time as a place where guards and their families could live and that would produce food and other supplies used by the prison. The fire that killed all of the prisoners and most of the guards destroyed a large portion of the prison’s underground eastern wing, but left most of the stone structure above relatively intact. The prison’s warden perished in the fire, along with his wife, although no one knows why she was in the prison when the fire occurred. A statue commemorating the warden and the guards who lost their lives was built in the months after the tragedy—that statue still stands on the riverbank just outside of town.

Most of the hardened criminals sent to Harrowstone spent only a few months imprisoned, for it was here that most of Ustalav’s executions during that era were carried out. The fire that caused the tragedy was, in fact, a blessing in disguise, for the prisoners had rioted and gained control of the prison’s dungeons immediately prior to the conflagration. It was only through the self sacrifice of Warden Hawkran and 23 of his guards that the prisoners were prevented from escaping — the guards gave their lives to save the town of Ravengro.

Ten Years Ago:

The Whispering Way is more than just a cabal of necromancers. I see that now. Undeath is their fountain of youth. Uncovering their motivation does not place me at ease as I thought it might. Their desire to be eternal simply makes them more dangerous.

Two Months Ago:

It is as I had feared. The Way is interested in something here in Ravengro. But what could it be?

One Month Ago:

Whatever the Way seeks, I am now convinced their goal is connected to Harrowstone. In retrospect, I suppose it all makes sense — the stories they tell about the ruins in town are certainly chilling enough. It may be time to investigate the ruins, but with everyone in town already being so worked up about them, I’d rather not let the others know about my curiosity—there’s plenty of folks hereabouts who already think I’m a demonologist or a witch or something. Ignorant fools.

Twenty Days Ago:

It is confirmed. The Way seems quite interested in something—no, strike that—someone who was held in Harrowstone. But who, specifically, is the Way after? I need a list of everyone who died the night of the fire. Everyone. The Temple of Pharasma must have such a list.

Eighteen Days Ago:

I see now just how ill prepared I was when I last set out for the Harrowstone. I am lucky to have returned at all. The ghosts, if indeed they were ghosts (for I did not find it prudent to investigate further) prevented me from transcribing the strange symbols I found etched along the foundation — hopefully on my next visit I will be more prepared. Thankfully, the necessary tools to defend against spirits are already here in Ravengro. I know that the church of Pharasma used to store them in a false crypt in the Restlands at the intersection between Eversleep and the Black Path. I am not certain if the current clergy even know of what their predecessors have hidden down below. If my luck holds, I should be able to slip in and out with a few borrowed items.

Seventeen Days Ago:

Tomorrow evening I return to the prison. It is imperative the Way does not finish. My caution has already cost me too much time. I am not sure what will happen if I am too late, but if my theory is right, the entire town could be at risk. I don’t have time to update my will, so I’ll leave this in the chest where it’ll be sure to be found, should the worst come to pass.