The mounded hills north of Heathford, where the old dead have begun to stir, and strange fogs loom.

The Gravehills are what the folk of Heathford call the barrow-country that begins where the forest. The hills roll on for miles, dotted with ancient burial mounds, the tombs of peoples of the ancient Vel, who lived on this island long before the kingdom, long before the empire. They say the dead do not rest here, somewhere beneath the largest mounds, the Velgrym, ancient dead lords, wait in their sealed chambers for reasons no living scholar has been able to determine.

The hills have a particular reputation around Heathford for the disappearance of folk, particularly brides upon their wedding nights. It happens with enough regularity that the town's older folk whisper of it as a curse, or a tribute, that something in the mounds calls out to women on the eve of their weddings, drawing them north into the fog. Most are never found. A few have returned wild-eyed and unable to or unwilling to speak of what they saw.

The most recent was Diera of Dahia, bride-to-be of Earl Aldhelm of Dunmarch, who vanished the night before her wedding when a strange fog rolled into Heathford. She was traced to a great barrow deep in the hills, its doors thrown open, its guardian stirring. A party of adventurers descended into the dark, discovered that it was the tomb of an ancient lord - Caedwin the Red King. They drove off the Velgrym within, and brought her out alive.

This has not quieted the dead any further. If anything, their sightings have only increased.