"For as long as any man can remember, evil tales have been told of this forsaken place; and the odds are that if ever a tavern bard recites a grim ballad or a court poet inscribes a story of horror, the setting is this dire place."

A depressing and dismal realm of peat bogs and trickling waterways, towering mountain ranges, and mist shrouded woods of twisted, half-rotted trees and forests covered in lichen, moss, and fungi. It's sluggish rivers carve through desolate moors and bleak hills are strangled by an unnatural fog that creeps in from the highlands.

Ghastly creatures stalk the land and packs of ravenous, perpetually hungry wolves roam the countryside: snatching up unsupervised children and livestock. Lycan skin walkers howl at the moon as the skies above writhe with swarms of bats and other leathery-winged monstrosities. The caves and hollows below crawl with horrifying beats, feral ghouls infest places of the dead and dying, and reanimated corpses shamble from their resting places; arisen from their graves by the necromantic energies that pollute the land. Vengeful spirits possess the living and manifest into spectral horrors. Worshippers of foul deities and unknown gods perform their sacrifices and witch covens gather in the forests; the fires from their ceremonial rituals glowing in the dark of night.

Transvlakia is a dreadful place plagued by pestilence, famine, and lawlessness and has suffered under centuries of misrule by its many noble houses; its very soil soaked in blood, cruelty, and despair.

Most famous for its ruins and places of death, Transvlakia is filled with vast, sprawling, centuries-old cemeteries that have developed into oceans of headstones and gravemarkers interwoven by miles of wrought iron fencing as the extravagantly embellished hilltop mausoleums and columbarians of nobles float on the parodic seascapes. The eldest sections of these graveyards have become overgrown and slowly reclaimed by Transvlakia's forests. Sepulchers and elaborate mazes of underground crypts, barrows, tombs, and overflowing ossuaries have become lairs and dens for the lands nightmarish creatures who emerge at dusk to feed on passerbys and roaming livestock who fail to make it to safety before the sun's dying light. All must be manned by Grave Wardens; and it is their duty to cleanse these places of the dead and to shoo ghouls back into their sanctuaries. In times of great despair, mass graves and plague pits must be dug to meet the demands of the dying populations.

Rumors persist of a secret aristocracy of vampiric overlords who rule these lands from the shadows. This has never been confirmed nor denied...