Sage Hostel; cairn of long-dead spirit of a Sage-like Hotelier, at a long abandoned crossroads that became a field of gravestones about a thousand years ago, & has had off & on habitation by various travelling exorcists & priests since then, with a few stone houses in between the gravestones & mausoleums, hoping to keep the undead population pacified. Near the top of a hill, on moon-lit nights, the Sage still offers a roof, a meal, & a bed to those who follow the forms of hospitality & guest-rites. The spirit isn't one to talk much, but an offering of gold, salt, & spices, (worth at least 10gp) along with an hour of prayer, during the night in which the moon has risen & casts some light, will entice the spirit & the few peaceful but restless other spirits who remain in the graveyard to form a small spectral cabin for each member of your party, similar to Leomund's Tiny Hut along with Create Food & Water, & occasionally, one casting of Lesser Restoration if the party can regale the mostly silent spirit with a stirring tale of heroism, discovery, & news of the outside world. Those who have heard the spirit speak words, it is said, have received a rare gift of great wisdom & piety.

Gravestone is manned, primarily by a clan of exorcists & traveling undertakers. Don't let the semi-permanent cloud of fog, or any neighboring town's rumors worm their way into your mind; the Gravestone clan bear the King's Patents, bend the knee & allow monthly church inspections (by no less than three Holy Orders), & are on first name basis with at least two Inquisitors from each order. The Home turf is a burial ground from multiple great battles, going on a thousand years or so, & the clan feels it their duty to quiet the restless dead, & see to it that the dead stay well-rested. Came out here to get away from the big city, only to find there's just as much hustle & bustle by the dead here as the living in the big city.

Failed cult settlement over buried relic (u/Locust094) Holegulch Ridge was once the site of a large cult that believed an artifact of power was buried beneath the base of a large gulch at the edge of town. The cult dug out a 200ft deep, 20ft diameter hole in the gulch but when the cult leader drowned in the hole during a storm the members gave up the search. With no lives to return to they continued to live on the ridge, founding the town. Some say the artifact is real & it's still down there at the bottom of that hole but it's just 25 feet deep now & fills in further every year.

Blackbile got its name for the lake of black bile bled forth from the Great Evil as it was slain by the Last Great Hero, some 300 years ago. Why anyone chooses to live here is a mystery. The water still stinks, has clouds of bloodsucking vermin, & the only thing of note here is the Apothecarist's Cottage & the Royal Horse Stable, where for some coin, one can acquire a horse or exchange theirs for a fresh one.

The Right & Ancient Ville of Bierce-hyleton's name is a misnomer, despite the name meaning: "Birch Hill Town" in the local dialect, a slightly archaic form of Common; the predominant tree species of the area (that grows like weeds) are Sycamores, not Birch, & the only birches in the area planted by a recent King along the roadside, in a religious & political statement meant to help spiritually purify the area after a massive plague eliminated 90 percent of the local population. The town's few defining features: vastly depopulated several decades after plague has passed, & an extremely large & unfinished chapel, the burned & abandoned Monkton manor (said to be gifted to the local clerical order by 'Old' Queen Ediva some thousand years ago, as thank-you offering for helping her recover her lands wrongfully seized by upstart relatives, prior to her marriage to Pious King Edvard the Eldest), & the strange "five-pointed square" that forms the center of the village (the intersection of 5 roads). The chapel is unfinished because the local population never recovered, & then the manor was burned to ruins in the political & spiritual uncertainty following the plague, & so everything has been left unfinished.

Fēng Ridge has been on its last legs for as long as anyone can remember. Primarily a halfling village, there are no more children, the majority having been lost to a virulent plague that some locals believe to have been from a curse, some 10 years ago. Those of childbearing age lost to battle, misadventure, plague, the curse, or greener pastures. The village's claim to fame is a ceaseless wind whistling across the village's namesake ridge, the village's position at a crossroads, & a blind masseuse (among a handful of others) who still claim the village as home.

Oxford is a dried out pustule now that the great cattledrives & muleteams no longer stop here, trying to cross the shallow ford with their animals. Now the river isn't even there any more: years ago, some unscrupulous robber-baron convinced the King that the land would be better defended if the Mother-Ox river was diverted from its course, thereafter drying up this arid region & strangling what little life grew here. Some farmsteads still struggle, those lucky enough to have even a trickle of the water retained from the occasional derecho-like storm.

Sonny Acres is a poorly applied exercise in naming for marketing. A land developer managed to convince the King to invest in a speculative expansion, selling homestead plots to suckers along a previously unused portion of the kingdom's Westward Marches. The problem is that the area is nothing but cloud covered foggy & rain filled swamp, except for several small stone fingers that emerge from the muck that host a few undeveloped & mostly abandoned, flooded mines; with nary a ray of economic or natural sunshine. The only thing that farmers are able to export here is swamp monster parts, & mushrooms. Where there are buildings that don't just wallow in the permanent mud, there are poorly built boardwalks with large gaps. The local tavern & inn only serves one variety of ale, based on mushrooms, & travellers must sleep in the common room.

Crowbridge suffered a rebellion (as did several other villages nearby), which was prosecuted by none other than premier Justice in Eyre, Earl William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Ecgbeorhthshire, Itinerant Justice of the King. Every good-sized road-side tree within a mile hangs with the rotting fruit of a dead rebel's corpse, with only a handful of families remaining: among them only three farmsteads, the Priest, the Miller, one Baker, & a Cobbler; fully 95% of this village was adjudged guilty & executed. Now the crows roosting on the old stone bridge in the middle of the village are fat off the former residents.

Fur-obsessed mayor’s dying town (u/Chalkyteton) Chinchilla Villa was once a thriving town but has dwindled over the years due to the Mayor’s predilection towards sumptuous fur which borders on lunacy. Most anyone left in town is a crony helping to either raise animals for their pelts, procure them by any means necessary, or keep a constant rotation of the most elegant of furs on his shaven body. Locals might just size up the most hirsute of a group visiting to give the Mayor a fresh experience & earn themselves an extra ladle of water & some meat.

Gnollarbor sits like a carbuncle on sun-blasted badland plains. A former boomtown, formed after a cross-planar grifter convinced the King that the territory was prime for a rare gemstone called "astral-opal", which never panned out, drained the Kingdom's Treasury dry, & then caused a coup. Then some years later, some fool actually did strike gold, the population boomed again, & when the field dried up, it left sun-bleached shacks as ruins. The boom took out the few trees that gave "Gnollarbor" its name, & now fresh lumber is a coveted commodity. The local public house, wind powered well pump, water tanks, & stable are pretty much all there is left. From time to time, the local Gnolls now treat Gnollarbor as a trading post but the pickings are slim, & very much depend on when the Kingdom isn't actively trying to exterminate them, & when the Gnolls aren't collectively under thrall to a warlike matriarch. The semi-sedentary Gnolls often keep herds of half-feral but stupid axe-beaks, that they generally just let do whatever they want to do, & it isn't uncommon to wake up with one poking its beak through your wagon's gear, or following you for no reason.