THE WAILING SCRAPYARD
Seventeen years ago, two dwarven sisters named
Targa and Delilah Smithsong opened a scrapyard for
reclaiming and reusing bits of broken machinery. The
yard was successful for five years until disease took one
of them. Grief destroyed the other sister, who wandered
off into the Mana Wastes, never to be seen again.
Since its abandonment, inventors and manufacturers
around Alkenstar have continued to use the Smithsong
Scrapyard as a dumping ground for their failed
experiments and destroyed constructs, creating
towering heaps of discarded materials. Before long,
a small society of goblins who called themselves
Nailgobblers moved into the neglected yard and began
to organize the scrap. They cleaned what they could
and started selling it back to the citizens of Alkenstar
to purchase food, clean water, and other supplies they
couldn’t salvage.
For many years the Nailgobblers have been relatively
successful—they’ve learned which parts of the yard to
avoid and which still have valuable materials to gather.
Other scavengers or treasure hunters have attempted
to drive the Nailgobblers away, but so far with little
success. To deter would-be usurpers from destroying
their metaphorical kingdom of trash, they use traps
and scare tactics to drive away longshanks and other
troublemakers. To pull off their most famous and
successful ruse, the Nailgobblers use a crank-box
device to make their voices sound loud and hollow.
The resulting stories of wailing ghosts and mechanical
spirits have given the scrapyard its current moniker,
“the Wailing Scrapyard,” along with an dangerous
reputation that deters anyone with an ounce of sense.
Recently, a pack of monstrous gnolls calling
themselves the Sludgespines have made their camp in
the scrapyard, using the junk piles as a hideout from
which to kidnap locals and murder them for sport.
The Nailgobblers are attempting to drive these killers
out of the Wailing Scrapyard, but the best they’ve
been able to manage so far is making the scrapyard
difficult to traverse by setting up blockades to keep
the gnolls contained. In the process of this conflict,
the Nailgobblers uncovered yet another disparate
faction in the motley collection of junkyard dwellers:
a band of malevolent fungus leshys who make bloody
sacrifices of their captured victims.