A monastery is far more than the sum of its buildings. Most monasteries feature surrounding gardens, a graveyard, outbuildings and the like.

Generic Dressings

Use the list below, to add flavour to any outside locale:

A gnarled, twisted ancient oak tree stands amid a thick stand of brambles. The tree’s branches droop low making the bramble patch an excellent hiding place.
The bleached, weather-worn skeleton of a humanoid lies sprawled among the weeds. Even the most unobservant of characters can note the unfortunate’s smashed skull; clearly, whoever they were, they suffered a violent death.
Stands of weeds, brambles and small trees press closely in upon the rutted track leading to the monastery’s gates.
Tracks criss-cross the area, giving perceptive characters clues as to what might lurk in the surrounds.
Wind chimes of threaded bleached and cracked bones hang from the boughs of trees dotting the surrounds. The macabre wind chimes clack together, in even the slightest breeze.
A murder of crows roosts in the surrounds. Overly large, aggressive, and with a taste for warm flesh, the crows watch intruders intently and quickly swoop to feast on any newly slain creatures.
Rubble lies scattered about in the rough shape of a small outbuilding. Weeds grow through and within the rubble.
The foul sigil of a blasphemous power is burnt into the vegetation. The sigil is over 20-foot in diameter. At its centre, a pile of ash and splintered, scorched bones suggests a funeral pyre, aberrant ritual or burnt offering took place here.
An ancient burial cairn lies within the monastery’s bounds. Several shafts have been cut into the cairn in search of buried elder treasures.
An old campfire fills a small, sheltered hollow. Marks on the ground suggest three human-sized creatures slept by the fire.

The Outer Wall

Often, an outer wall protects a ruined monastery.

Ivy grows voraciously across the crumbling boundary wall. Here and there, stones have fallen from the top of the wall giving it an almost crenelated look.
Part of the wall has collapsed, creating a heaped pile of weed-cloaked rubble. Many other small holes pierce the wall; when the wind blows it whines and wails through the holes—sounding like a veritable legion of the damned.
Some of the wall’s foundations have sunk and parts of the wall lean drunkenly outward. Characters climbing the unsafe parts of the wall risk it collapsing atop them.
Sharp shards of pottery and glass top the wall. Unwary characters climbing the wall might not spot the hidden danger, covered as it is with moss and lichen.

Gardens

Most abandoned monasteries feature a now overgrown kitchen garden once used to supplement the adherents’ diets.

A riot of weeds grows across the once ordered kitchen garden. Pathways between the banks of beds are still just visible. Here and there, the remains of rotting tools jut from the chaos.
A rickety, worm-eaten hut yet stands upright. Its roof sags, and the whole thing leans precariously to one side. (Opening the hut’s door, causes the whole thing to collapse into a sodden heap of rotten wood).
A network of now weed-choked irrigation channels wends their way through the garden, lurking under the undergrowth to trip the unwary.
A shallow pool lies at the garden’s centre. Choked with reeds and weeds, the stagnant water is rank and unwholesome.

Graveyard

Lay worshippers, travellers and the sick (along, perhaps, with the occasional sacrifice) dying at the monastery are rarely granted a bier in the place’s crypt. Instead, they are buried, often anonymously, in the graveyard.

Thick clumps of dark-hued, noxious mud stud the ground, churned up as if by the tramp of many feet. Amid the mud, several weather-worn, crumbling grave markers jut drunkenly from amid the mire.
Heaped piles of earth and pieces of splintered, rotting wood surround an open grave. A mouldering (empty) coffin lies in the grave. Perceptive characters investigating the coffin discover scratch marks on the inside.
A wide, shallow hole serves as an unfinished mass grave. A tangled mass of bones, decomposing bodies and rotten clothes fill the hole. Perceptive characters can see wild animals have feasted on the remains.
Victims of subsidence and age, the graveyard’s weatherworn grave markers stand at haphazard angles. Many markers are illegible. Some graves have no marker

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This article is an extract from 20 Things #50: Ruined Monastery. Add the book to your GM’s toolkit today! Alternatively, check out the 20 Things Archive for more handy, flavoursome and time-saving 20 Things articles ready for immediate use in your campaign.