Where The Evil Dwells

In The Shadow Elves, The Desert of Lost Souls is known to the titular pointy-eared protagonists; but it is the furthest land of all the lands noted on the map. It also the furthest by player character level.

The desert is long, extending east to a narrow cave fringed by the badlands "of Doog". Before it gets to that narrow part, it gets more wasp-waisted still. The main cave, with the main ruin Starwind, pinches also to the south. But not by nearly as much. This part opens up to the fertile and populated (by the living) Elmglow Forest.

My change to the southwest has warped the Lost Souls caverns. The DM may as well run with that: consider a network of haunted caverns. We can keep Starwind in the desert's southwest, where the Crown or its components be found... but Shallatariel, I'd move to the cavern(s) south of Renathys. Which subcavern, we can still adjoin to The Lands Of Doog. Also I'd wipe all the elvish settlements off the south (though not the southeast), except Sylaros the forward-keep and plucky Gilaen. And the Elmglow doesn't exist.

Currently this waste serves as the great southern barrier, between the Dragon Lake - Alfmyr run, and the rest of the south. As long as nobody wears the Crown, which bane the elves rate with the old wives' tales anyway, the undead are just as annoying to outsiders as they are to the elves. The elves are content to let the dead rest, as it were.

Unless and until some idiot actually goes looking for the Crown, that is.

At that point the Elmglow gets its settlements, Durdael and Selinae. Shallatariel has kidnapped them from the north and southeast. Cattle for the living dead.