The Grave

Death is a part of life everywhere, a fact that doesn't really need to be repeated too often, but in the shadow of Big Charry, death manages to outdo itself and be several different parts of life.  The dead don't always do the best job fulfilling their part of the "lie still and trouble not the living" bargain, and sometimes they rise.  Sometimes they rise in numbers, and sometimes they rise in such numbers, from such a wide area that you'd be forgiven for thinking that the people in the mountain's shadow just buried their dead where the poor devils fell and that was every inch of ground.

There's a courtyard in Cold Water Academy, along the banks of Three Corner Reservoir, which was dug down, once, to bedrock, with carefully screened and baked and shriven soil replaced there.  Cold Water was a school that, before it was abandoned, had necromancy on its curriculum, and part of the tests was pulling a body up from that courtyard.  Those who do (and Cold Water had a very impressive graduation rate, no mistake), say that it's only harder to do there because it seems like it should be harder, because of expectation.

The Cold Water resurrection test was one of a number of long-running experiments designed to test for the existence of an Otherworld that usually goes by the colloquial name of the Grave.  The Grave is theorized to be... well, it's tricky.  It was hypothesized to be a holding area for the bodies and the fragmented cast-offs of consciousness, but folks have identified roaming dead in the shape of those whose funerals included cremation, and the bodies so identified show no sign of such disposal.  In fact, some stubborn risers have been burned a number of times, only to return in a form that suggests earth burial.  The risen dead have only fragmentary consciousness at best, and then only rarely, so interviews about their dwelling arrangements remains a challenge.  Channeled spirits will recognize their likeness in the faces of the dead, but report that it is very much like seeing a twin or doppelganger.  Many departed spirits become quite uncomfortable in the presence of what are ostensibly their resurrected corpses and flee their channelers.

There are some signs that lead to the Otherworld hypothesis.  The soil of the Grave is loose and dark and wormy, often in contrast to the normal ground in an area.  People have reported that, during a mass resurrection, there are paved and cobbled areas which appeared to be soft and loamy as a murderer's back garden.  Spontaneous growth of watermelon and pumpkins, vine, flower, fruit and all, in or out of season, is common in areas touched by the grave.  Adventurous souls, often looking for a "source" of the resurrection in the mistaken hope that they can turn it off like a water spigot, find deep pits shored up with the bodies of the dead, limbs grasping one another in an endless knot, or branching catacombs in soft earth, apparently shored by the frescoes and friezes that decorate them and the occasional twisted root.  Folks have brought back grave goods from their explorations, which find their way into the hands of collectors and necromancers.

Of particular note are hinges.  There are not many doors, nor coffins with hinged lids in the living-accessible portions of the Grave, but there are some, and it has been discovered that hanging a door with such hinges, knocking three times and opening said door, will give a person access to explorable catacombs within the Grave.  For this reason, such hinges fetch high prices with necromancers and other similarly-inclined folks.