Old Misty Village

Archive Classification

Alyndorian Borderland Desolation, Blightspawn-Era Settlement Extinction, Unresolved Eastern Cavern Record

Known Location

Old Misty lies in the neglected outer reaches of Alyndor’s Royal Capital Province, where the last cultivated holdings surrender to the dense woodland and fractured hills bordering the Shattered Crest. A disused cart road leads into a shallow, perpetually misted valley, passing abandoned orchards, collapsed boundary walls, and the remnants of the village’s western approach. Beyond the easternmost cottages, the ground rises toward a network of limestone caverns whose deepest passages have never been reliably surveyed. Older provincial maps still identify the settlement simply as Misty, though modern roadwardens have ceased marking it as an inhabited place.

Known Condition

Abandoned, structurally deteriorating, and suspected of harboring persistent Blight contamination. Old Misty remains largely intact in its arrangement, though scarcely in its substance. Roofs have collapsed, woodland growth has swallowed the cultivated fields, and the village well stands choked with debris beneath a broken stone canopy. Traces of pale fungal matter occasionally emerge from the lower foundations after prolonged rainfall, while reports of movement within the eastern caverns have discouraged every serious attempt at resettlement. The Crown has never conclusively established whether the original infestation was destroyed or merely driven underground. Among the surviving families, an older concern persists: the first signs of corruption appeared in the hills before the village was attacked, suggesting that whatever destroyed Misty may have been present beneath its homes for generations.

Associated Factions

Old Misty once fell beneath the provincial authority of House Valenross, its inhabitants owing allegiance to Alyndor while governing most village affairs through hereditary elders and the informal Misty Hearthwardens, a small body of hunters, roadkeepers, and household heads responsible for maintaining woodland boundaries and settling local disputes. Following the Blightspawn massacre, the Alyndorian Royal Guard conducted limited inspections of the settlement, while provincial roadwardens gradually abandoned its eastern approaches. The Silent Veil retains an interest in the village's unquiet dead and the suspected corruption beneath its foundations. Its most enduring association, however, is with the Blightspawn, whose presence in the eastern caverns remains unconfirmed in extent, and whose infestation may have begun long before the settlement's destruction.

Associated Faith

The Astral Faith of Alyndor, practiced through the older Seven-Night Vigil of Misty. The villagers honored the Astral Tree, but their devotion had little of the ceremony favored in the capital. They kept candles beside the dead, covered water vessels during mourning, and spoke a departed person's name at supper for seven consecutive evenings, believing remembrance helped the soul find passage beyond the living. These customs belonged to an older borderland tradition in which burial was both an obligation of love and a precaution against restless spirits. Particularly feared were the Unshriven of the Eastern Hollows, the unnamed dead believed to inhabit the caves before Misty was founded. After the massacre, surviving families continued the Seven-Night Vigil in exile, though many refused to speak the names of relatives whose bodies had never been recovered, fearing that those souls might still answer from beneath the village.

Related Figures

Haldrin Voss, former roadwarden of Alyndor's outer provinces, remains one of the last men known to have traveled regularly through Misty before its destruction. His surviving journals preserve an unusually intimate account of the village's ordinary life, including its harvest disputes, suspicious elders, and the peculiar behavior of the fog descending from the eastern hills. In later years, Voss became convinced that the first warnings of the catastrophe had been dismissed long before the Blightspawn reached the settlement. Mother Yseld Marr, the village's elderly midwife and keeper of the Seven-Night Vigil, was regarded as an authority on burial customs and the superstitions surrounding the eastern caverns. Local tradition holds that she forbade the reopening of several abandoned cave entrances after livestock began sickening near them. Her fate during the massacre remains uncertain, though surviving refugees remembered her insisting that the corruption had entered Misty long before the creatures appeared. Toman Rusk, the last appointed Hearthwarden of Misty, was a former border soldier responsible for the settlement's modest defenses and woodland patrols. Accounts of the final night place him near the village bell, organizing resistance while families fled westward. His body was never recovered, and the conflicting testimonies of survivors have left uncertain whether he died defending the settlement or descended into the eastern passages in pursuit of the first infected villagers. Provincial Magistrate Edric Vael, an officer of Alyndor's outer administration, oversaw the subsequent inquiry into Misty's destruction and the removal of its name from active settlement registers. His surviving orders emphasized quarantine, road closures, and the destruction of contaminated property. Yet several pages of the original investigation were reportedly withheld from provincial circulation, particularly testimony concerning disturbances beneath the village before the outbreak. Whether this reflected political caution, incomplete evidence, or deliberate concealment remains a matter of dispute among the few scholars still examining Old Misty's history.

First Recorded Appearance

Echoes of the Past

Threat Level

Threat Level — At the Time of the Fall: Extreme / Blightspawn Massacre — Provincial Extinction Event The destruction of Misty was a concentrated outbreak of extraordinary violence, in which a settled community was overwhelmed before provincial defenses could intervene. The infection spread through households, corrupted the living, and turned familiar faces into instruments of slaughter. By morning, organized resistance had ceased, the surviving population had fled, and the village was effectively extinguished. Threat Level — Present Day: Catastrophic / Deep-Rooted Blight Corruption — Condemned Territory Old Misty has deteriorated into one of the most grievously contaminated reaches of Alyndor's outer province. The corruption is no longer confined to the creatures that destroyed it; it has entered the foundations, the waterlogged soil, the abandoned burial grounds, and the cavern systems beneath the eastern hills. Diseased fungal masses spread through ruined interiors, while the deeper passages harbor generations of Blightspawn whose numbers and mutations remain beyond reliable assessment. The surrounding woodland has begun to suffer the same degradation, with animals found malformed, water sources fouled, and entire stretches of vegetation dying beneath pale, invasive growth. The Royal Province no longer considers Old Misty recoverable through ordinary military intervention or cleansing rites. Its danger has passed beyond the boundaries of the original settlement, and the greatest concern is no longer what survives within the village, but how far the corruption has traveled beneath the surrounding country.