"Soon all of Neverwinter would feel the touch of the Wailing Death..."
- The very premise of Neverwinter Nights is Nightmare Fuel on its own: the once prosperous city of Neverwinter, the "Jewel of the North", is brought to its knees by the plague known as the Wailing Death. The disease, incurable and deadly, quickly spread through most of the city, as it fell into a spiral of chaos, panic and violence. The narration is filled with background coughing, screams and desperate cries for help.
And it gets worse after the Prelude: the Waterdhavian creatures, indispensable for the cure, are gone, and the Academy is destroyed. The narrator remarking that "the weight of the terrible sickness pressed down on the city once more" (cue a woman screaming as she escapes from an unknown threat) makes it very clear how desperate the situation is.- The context of a D&D world makes this worse; while not always able to do so on a large scale normally several types of spellcasters can cure diseases with a single spell and even if someone dies a high ranking cleric can bring them back to life if the body is reasonably intact. Where victims of the Wailing Death are concerned neither option works.
- The sound design can be rather creepy too. Take this track
from the OST, which gives off a demonic vibe complete with hellish chanting. - As the Hero of Neverwinter starts adventuring in the city, the Peninsula district, location of the city prison, is ravaged by prisoners, released from their cells and now wreaking havoc in the district. The Docks district is at the mercy of the Bloodsailors, an army of pirates. The road to Blacklake district, one of the few safe places of the city, is under the control of thugs, the strongest of them a half-orc. The Beggar's Nest, where the epidemic began, had it even worse: it's overwhelmed by an undead infestation started by a local necromantic cult.
- The situation in the Peninsula district deserves special mention due to some of the small details easy to overlook: The Head Gaelor has been taken over by an intellect devourer, and subsequently freed the prisoners. Torturing and killing the guards as it pleases, there are a small handful it keeps in the lowest levels of the prison in a perpetual haze that serve as more hosts if the player kills the body it presently occupies.
- Luskan in the latter half of Chapter 2 isn't much better off than Neverwinter; the ruling High Captains have started warring with each other, and only two are left. Their massive destruction to the city has left them so desperate to shore up their manpower that one side has purposely infected themselves with lycanthropy and the other has summoned demons for help.
- One particular sidequest shows just how barbaric the High Captains have gotten in their personal feud. A former noblewoman relates how her husband was killed and her children kidnapped by Baram's forces and asks you to discover their whereabouts. Either by delving into Baram's lair or by killing Kurth for him the truth is revealed: the smallest were butchered, and the oldest were turned into wererats to aid in the street battles in the city.
- The cutscene between Chapter 1 and 2 kicks off with two executions: Desther's and Fenthick's:
- Desther is shown close-up as he's burning at the stake and screaming, while horrible shrieks of pain are heard during the narration. Granted, he was The Mole who helped spreading the plague in Neverwinter and an Asshole Victim who totally got what he deserved, but there's no denying it's pretty shocking.
- Fenthick's is visually less frightening: he's first shown hanging on a tree from a distance, then the picture comes close to a tearful Aribeth, kneeled before the hanging body, of which we only glimpse the legs. But what makes it worse is the narrator referring to him as "a sacrifice to appease the bloodthirsty mob." It really tells how the plague made Neverwinter's populace completely enraged at this point: they're looking for anyone to blame at all costs, and innocents aren't safe from this collective anger. Fenthick wanted sincerely to find a cure for Neverwinter; he was only guilty of being close friend to Desther, but he wasn't the only one who fell for his deception.
- In Chapter 3, you can find a Cultist's journal describing the execution of a traitor. The journal recounts one of their number was quiet as they walked one day and then suddenly asked if they were really doing the right thing. The leader had her stripped and tied between two trees, and whipped her until flesh hung from her back. She cried out for forgiveness and he was considering letting her live, until she begged for Ilmater to help her. The leader then cut out her heart and burned it as a sacrifice.
- To get one of the Words of Power, the player has to travel into a Pocket Dimension contained inside a snow globe, where a group of dwarves and dryads are perpetually at war. Neither can stay dead, and are perpetually ressurrected upon sustaining lethal injuries. At the center of the snow globe world is a white dragon, who reveals that his magic keeps one side or the other in a bloodlust frenzy depending on who he wants to serve him at the moment, and that he's kept the dryads and dwarves in perpetual warfare for centuries. The worst part is that both the dryads and dwarves know something is wrong and sincerely wish to stop constantly killing and maiming each other, but due to the dragon's magic, are unaware of how to break the cycle of violence. If the player successfully kills the dragon then the two begin living in peace, but are trapped in the snow globe permanently.
- Klauth, the red dragon. He's powerful enough to intimidate an entire tribe of fire giants into serving him, and terrifies the other dragons in the area.
- The Charwood. Do not adventure in this region shortly before bedtime. We mean it. It becomes more of a Tear Jerker once you find out the backstory, but it's still pretty scary.
- After getting through the initial forest area populated by wraiths and skeletons, arriving at the village of Charwood you're greeted with the sight of several corpses, some impaled, some that are merely severed heads on a pike, right outside the gates. Quint Jhareg, one of the two local lords, then talks to you, babbling nonsense, and disappears in a bloody mist.
- Talking to the random citizens of the town, you'll find that they're in a perpetual haze and can't seem to remember anything past five minutes. Talking to them a second time has them acting as if they've never met you before. Bring up Quint and they start shouting about something that happened between him and the village children before they promptly forget. If the player chooses, they can attack the villagers and watch as they continuously respawn, none the wiser to your efforts to slaughter them. Once you track down the cultist you need to find in the area and kill him, his journal describes how he would kill the villagers dozens of times to no avail, and began slowly loosing his sanity in the process.
- Once the player explores Castle Jhareg a Guardian of Lathander will explain that the castle, surrounding village, and brothers Quint and Karlat Jhareg are trapped in time thanks to an unspecified crime involving the children of the village and the Jhareg brothers. After exploring the respective towers of the brothers - helpfully punctuated by the sounds of children crying for help - you learn that the crime was the slaughter of the village children by Karlat Jhareg, done at the behest of the demon Belial in order to create a phylactery for Karlat (if the player summons Belial, he reveals that he deliberately misled Karlat and that the killing of the village children was pointless cruelty). From there the player can choose to judge Qunit, Belial, or Karlat as the one most responsible for the crime.
- While judging Belial or Karlat to be guilty of the crime yields a good ending where the people of Charwood can rest in peace and the woods are no longer haunted, the player can choose to maintain the time loop in order to keep Belial permanently trapped, but this comes with condemning the rest of the village in perpetuity to the same fate. Judging Quint to be guilty leads to the worst outcome, where the former village of Charwood is destroyed by fire elementals and the ghost of the town mayor excoriates you for your choices and tells you everyone is suffering in burning agony.
- In Shadows of Undrentide, there's an archaeological site on the Netherese you have to travel to to discover the true purpose of the tower crystal. When you arrive, he entire team is dead aside from one person who conveniently dies right after he vaguely warns you about the person who attacked the camp unless you cast a healing spell on him, in which case he survives and gives a bit more information then runs off). Upon entering the temple, you're treated to the sounds of dozens of flies in your ears and several corpses. Throughout the entire temple, there are suits of armor around the Temple,most of which do nothing, but some attack you.
