A Brief History of Corpses
https://icastlight.blogspot.com/2026/01/crypts-of-dolmenwood-using-timeline-to.html
For the North Wind version of Hyperborea, roll 1d10 for vintage:
Common Era
Common folk appear, blending features of all human races. Roll on Table 66 (p. 114) for inhabitants.
Dark Ages
‘Lesser’ races of Pict, Viking, Kelt, &c. arrive alongside Hyperboreans. In this period of conflict, weaponry and martial images dominate in battle-friezes and trophy arrangements. Grave goods are identifiable by their material culture. Match occupants to the most populous in that region.
Green Death
Mass graves of corpses were piled indiscriminately. Viridian stains mark the construction. Apotropaic marks appear throughout: double eyes carved above doorways, waisted shields outlined on floors and walls. Grave goods are nearly absent. Undead are numerous, plague-marked, and aimless; They stumble through the environment.
Hyperborean Decadence
Stonework features spiral tower motifs and lotus carvings, fine workmanship for debased subject matter. Grotesque pleasures are revealed: surgical instruments used decoratively, ithyphallic votives of gold and silver. Slaves and paramours were interred alongside their masters. Traps are inventive and cruel, designed to maim rather than kill. Ghouls, vampires, and lamia haunt these halls, their palates grown sybaritic. Undead are vain and contemptuous.
Ashen Worm
Bodies are preserved perfectly in frost. Ice still clings to the lower levels. Many signs point to a hasty retreat before the glaciation. Life was interrupted mid-course and valuables abandoned. Many are accidental entombments rather than burials by ceremony. Undead crave the warmth of life.
Xathoqquan Cult Period
Toad-bat iconography predominates in masoleums of Hyperborean oligarchs. The disc of Kyranos set above doorways. Oneiric imagery: a moon in three phases simultaneously, water flowing upward, staircases ascending to nowhere. Reposing figures – corpse and effigy alike – lie in an eldritch dark. A pervasive, drowsy stillness permeates. Undead are somnolent rather than stalking, and wake only when disturbed.
Hyperborean Golden Age
Tombs of rulers and wealthy citizens favour polished white stone, solar discs, and emblems of eternal spring: carved flowers, birds, zephyr-faces. Offerings are exquisite musical instruments, jewellery, and exotic tributes from Atlantis and Lemuria. Undead are sorrowful, not wrathful.
Vhuurmis
Stonework is crude but massive, with beast-men totems and Spiral Mountain iconography. Grave goods are tools, not art. Hazards are blunt: falling stones, pits. Bones litter every chamber; they entombed their dead in the walls. Undead are brutish and anthropophagous.
Snake-Men Empires
Carvings portray palm-fronds and lotus impossible in the current climate. Scale-pattern friezes depict fish-men in subjugated poses. Scientific apparatus sits alongside sorcerous glyphs. Defences are mechanical and elegant. Air is mephitic and sumpy despite the depth. Undead are powerful mummies or liches.
Extradimensional Precursors
Elder Things, Yithians, or Mi-Go raised these structures. Construction features strange geometry and enigmatic writings that afflict the eye when scrutinised. Biological specimens are preserved in unknown fluid. Traps are indistinguishable from tools. Humming metal spheres, crystalline matrices, and other weird technology litter the chambers. Any living creatures are alien. Undead are not haunting but purposeful.