#158 Ghost Tunnels of Cold Helibore

Age: 500 years

Hidden or Lost?: Hidden

History: As the plague swept through the once thriving town of Hellibore and its victims succumbed to the strange, shivering sickness, the graveyard grew to overshadow the town. But unknown to all, the plague was actually a contagious hex that separated the spirit of the infected from their corporeal flesh, their new ectoplasmic ghost forms sloughing off through their skin even after they were buried and dead.

Unfortunately this led to the scared and confused ghosts of the town’s populace frantically clawing their way out of their coffins. The semi-corporeal phantoms created blind tunnels beneath the graveyard, sometimes meeting and linking with other tunnels, creating a network of haunted halls beneath the soil. While some of the spirits broke through to the surface they found that the daylight melted away their spectral forms and they were driven back beneath the dirt.

The town above, now known as Cold Helibore, died off and decayed, eventually crumbling to naught but piles of rubble and vine choked gravestones. In the desperate tunnels beneath the surface, the trapped phantoms grew strange. Resigned to their fates some became vengeful, attempting to lure the living into their tunnels to be murdered in the dark; while others focused on their connection to the spirit world, exploring the outer realms and returning with odd artifacts and elixirs from the land of the dead. Some began trying to solve the mystery of their cursed fate, attempting to contact living agents who could help unravel the mystery or find some way to bring on a true death.

Centuries have passed since the damned citizens of Helibore awoke underground, and today only a handful remain, and of those there are even fewer who retain their sanity. The majority of the ghosts roaming the smooth earthen tunnels are deadly and ravenous. They owe allegiance only to the powerful spirit residing in the furthest depths of the tunnels known as the Phantom Duke. This undead horror is either a townsperson’s spirit that has gained power from the land of the dead or a demon which is simply taking advantage of the trapped ghost army. Either way, until the mystery of Cold Helibore is solved, the tunnels remain a deadly trap.