Hex Crawl 23 #2: Scarp Pass, Raghru, and the Tomb of Narshish

1 hex north of Alakran.

This area has 3 features.

1. Raghru, Hyena Mother (captain) of a small pack of 8 female fighting gnolls, heavy hand weapon & longbow, and 4 males, weaker gnolls with spears, that maintains a camp by a natural well west of the Scarp. A hunting patrol with her and d6 of her warriors can be found by night at range 1 to the NW and SW or in the hex itself.

Raghru's pack was one of those that ravaged Dulsharna to the east in the past few years. Betrayed and defeated by former allies Leetakh and Junjeh, she escaped here through the climbing route and plots revenge, even willing to ally with humans - hence why she leaves Alakran in peace.

2. Climbing Place. The Scarp is 500 feet high and normally unclimbable, but known currently only to Raghru, there is a series of ledges and holds that allow climbing up and down, on the east side screened by a jagged badlands. Each climber on the west side must pass 2 easy and 1 moderate difficulty skill checks or fall; if roped together, more than 50% must fail to provoke total catastrophe. Falling distance is d12 x 10 feet to the next ledge below. The east side requires only 2 easy checks. Time each way is 90 minutes plus 15 minutes for each failed roll.

3. Tomb of Narshish. (triangle icon to the north) This is one of the damnation tombs of ancient Urighem, 300 feet up the Scarp behind a ledge, facing east so the dead cannot enter the land of the setting sun. Flanked by bird-headed apkallu statues, the name of the inhabitant has been chiseled off the door, as it was stricken from all records of the Urig Empire. The door, say the inscriptions, can only be opened by "no grown being nor child" -- that is, only by a person on their 13th birthday, a lock that is immune to all magic but a wish. Inside is a vrock (apkallu) demon seeking to kill and escape, This demon, Chuzema, will call out from within, pretend to be the wronged spirit of Narshish, and plead to be given proper burial rites.

Inside are wall paintings, a sarcophagus, and at its head and foot two coffers. The paintings, their hieroglyphs from the mid Fifth Epoch of the Urig dynasties, tell of Narshish, an Urig governor of Wahattu whose family was murdered. He sought revenge by summoning a vulture demon, using a small black stone, and sent it to slay those who, it told him, were responsible. Power went to his head and he sent the demon on many other murderous missions until the Hawks and Falcons seized him and he confessed all under torture. He was sentenced to be embalmed and buried alive under a damnation of his name and memory, but the demon and the stone were never found. In a coda, the real murderers of Narshish's family were found out soon afterwards; the demon having lied to slake its own bloodthirst on innocent suspects.

At the foot of the sarcophagus are three semiprecious stone jars, red, white, and black (500 gp each), which an inscription identifies as the unused embalming fluids for Narshish, while a curse warns that if anyone tries to give him the correct burial rites or steal the jars, "I shall seize his neck like that of a goose." The head coffer is lead-lined and contains the golden adornments of office shown in the first wall painting, but degraded and with their inscriptions erased (still worth 1500 gp, or twice that to an antiquarian). The curse against looters inside this lid is more elaborate: "May the crocodile be against them in water and snakes against them on land. May the hippopotamus be against them on water and the scorpion against them on land." The foot coffer has an unused jade scarab (500 gp) and gold funerary mask (2000 gp), protected by the curse "Their arm shall be cut off like that of a bull." These curses are real and the GM should interpret them severely.