Three hexes north, three northeast of Alakran.
The town of Gheenatru had always had a quietly sinister reputation even as it buzzed with life as a commercial hub for the plentiful fruit and nut orchards around it. A valley to the east had been filled with the tombs of high and low alike for an epoch of Urig rule, and the custom continued after that death-revering empire withdrew.
This made Gheenatru the ideal place for clandestine cults of necromancy in the last few hundred years, aided by the kindred interests of the lords of Nathrak over the plain. When the kingdom of Dulsharna collapsed, the death cults took over, six years ago. Now Gheenatru is the main power center of this group, with a secondary group following the necromancer known as the Embalmer, to the north, in the House of Carnelian Walls.
Today, the custom of the necromancers forbids their corporeal undead from entering the town of Gheenatru proper. It is a human enclave, ruled over by the haunted and increasingly out-of-touch governor Baru-Atam, who made a pact with the necromancers to revive his wife as a specter. The ten or so surviving landowning families form an aristocracy obsessed with fashions and trappings of the grave. Their ballgowns are billowing cerements and their everyday wear is linen wrappings and funerary masks, as they glide about in slave-borne palanquins reeking of attar and myrrh. The common people are mostly grateful to survive and keep their head down. The population of the town is about 1000; there are 50 heavy foot guarding it and 10 armored chariots with 3 men each.
In the valley of tombs is where the true power lies, the dark academies and experiments led by the arch-necromancer Dandanku. Each of the 13 or so necromancers of level 5 or higher has claimed a spacious tomb, although most of the treasures have been cleared out long ago by robbers, and only the rumored magically concealed tomb sites of the wizard-king Hadash and his descendants are intact. Each necromancer has a retinue of lower-level acolytes, undead slaves and allies, and the occasional demonic creature on loan from the patrons of the cult, the demon-gods Ereshkigal and Nergal. Least in power among these potentates is the dissident necromancer Shargata. She schemes with fellow discontents outside the Valley, and memorably made the acquaintance and uneasy alliance of the Band of Bronze in her cunning quest to revive the dracolich Dragotha.
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