The Boneyard

In the far western domain of the Savage Lands lies a clearing where the jungle gives way to rot and silence. The skeletons of immense, prehistoric creatures rest there, half-sunk into foul earth. Rib bones rise in broken arcs, and skulls scowl from the cloying ground.

Few agree on how the bones came to be. Today, the Boneyard is known only for what it does. Across the Savage Lands, Brute tribes enact the Carrion Rite. Signs of the ritual have been found throughout the jungle, but the largest packs favor the Boneyard for the strength it infers. To heap your kills here is to announce your ferocity to every prowling rival and hungry scavenger downwind of the stink.

Shamans smear crude altars with blood and ash, and lash feathers and hide to splintered bone. They score the dirt with harsh symbols and raw handprints. Hunters pile their prey into a mound of meat. When the midden is deep and the heat bubbles fat from muscle, the carrion begins to move. Flesh swells, pulses, and splits. Brute cubs claw free from their birthplace to take in their first breath of the hunt.

In recent seasons, Chief Ruk'utan's tribe has held the Boneyard, only allowing other packs if they pay tribute. Still the tribes gather. The strongest step forward. Some leave scarred. Others feed the altar. Each carcass thickens the rot, each fresh death swelling the mound, until the Boneyard bears new weight in bone and gore and the tribe bears new weight in numbers.