Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Thursday, 11 April 2024

New Dungeon Just Dropped! (Ancient School)

We interrupt Night's Dark Terror for a brief interlude in the real world.

Astoundingly, a third of the city of Pompeii has yet to be excavated. The work continues, and recently a villa was unearthed with dramatic frescoes on black-painted walls, and this layout:


Folks, it's a pretty hefty level 0. Surely skeletons can't be the only monsters? There's the weird paintings on walls and ceiling, a slave cell, workrooms, the sinister "black room." And somewhere, the incredibly rich and powerful man who owned the villa must have stashed his treasure ...

Tuesday, 10 October 2023

Hex Crawl 23 #268: Petitioners of Fate, North of the Kathithi

Eight hexes northwest, five north of Alakran.

  

North of the river that begins to be called the Kathithi, a line of ancient kings, priests, sorcerers and other notables is carved from the rock formations. Almost all of them are depicted on their knees, if not hands and feet, in reverence to the line of Gods that march from the south to meet them.

F. Facing the great Hurru and Sutekh is the first Ilu-Barag of Urighem, Hurzak, on one knee but even so 150 feet tall, almost the equal of Hurru were he to stand. Behind him, on both knees, are twelve of his early and long-lived heirs, the First Epoch for those who can reckon history. These are 100 feet tall, and the retainers, counselors, and queens accompanying them are only thirty feet high in their full prostration.

G: Here the queue faces westward, and four mighty heroes of the early days of Urighem -- Ishkur, Zabab, Yamanu, and Messha -- stand 120 feet high, confronting the great 200-foot red stone statue of five-headed Tiamat with swords drawn. The main maw of Tiamat, reached by a winding stair of carved scales, was a place where criminals of Wahattu and the earlier empire were thrown down, there to suffer in a labyrinthine inferno of torment, haunted by devils, the ghosts of previous victims, and other fell creatures and devices. So tortuous is that maze that only three damned men in all history have escaped from one of the other mouths, which hang open and can supposedly be reached from below with great endeavor. Kneeling generals and viziers of the empire, each only 40 foot high, stretch backward and forward from the four heroes.

H. Touching the ground with one hand and one knee are twenty great Ilu-Barag of the Second Epoch, varying in height from 60 to 120 feet according to their magnitude in life. Each is followed by a retinue of fully prostrated priests, sorcerers, queens, and advisors, these statues only 30 feet high.

I: The queue swings eastward, then back west again, to accommodate a similar retinue of six Ilu-Barag of the second epoch and twenty of the Third, with their followers. Of note near the end is the figure of the early Third epoch god-monarch, Menteptekar, who with puckish wit is sculpted holding chisel and hammer and liberating himself from the stone formations. It is he who ordained the Petitioner figures of Hurzak and Hurru to first be made, while his successors added to the collection a handful of statues at a time.

J: Here, with dwindling material as the stone formations grow shorter, the final thirty-eight monarchs belonging to the Third Epoch kneel and bow, none rising higher than forty feet. Time catches up with the project, so that the last god-king depicted, Tihatewe IX, could be sculpted from life. Unusually realistic and world-weary, he is shown sitting, thirty feet tall, head over his shoulder in a fond gaze at Eryptos, the city it is said he ordered his son to build when he was out of epic statues.

Additional note: The designation E, which appears in this hex but south of Kathithi, represents a group of six demon lords, 80-120 feet high, carved out of a single outcropping, who menace the lines of gods and mortals. They are carved to represent no known demons, out of prudence and respect, but somehow have landed on the appearance of the Goetic entities known to other worlds: Paimon, Asmoday, Bifrons, Eligos, Astaroth, and Haagenti. Surrounding them, carved ten to twenty feet high, are lesser demons of equally fanciful design.

Sunday, 8 October 2023

Hex Crawl 23 #266: The Northern Meadows

Six hexes northwest, seven north of Alakran.

 

Herders from Kin-Yan eastward, and the river lands northward, take their flocks to these pastures, watering them from natural wells and thin rivulets flowing northwest. The meadows are called the Blood Fields by old people who remember tales of a mighty battle fought there. Indeed, rooting around the tufts of grass that are bone-pale in the dry season and a shy green in the rainy season, might (5%/ hour) reveal one of these finds (d6):

1. A skeleton hand gripping a sword hilt stuck in the earth. Just the hilt.

2. An arrow head with a magical one-time blessing to ignore armor, apparently never activated

3. A skull half-set in the ground where a family of jerboas has made their nest, and are hoarding two gold and eight copper coins. 

4. Flies buzzing around a haunted, indelible, ever-wet patch of blood in the ground.

5. A ring of green corrosion that marks the rim of a chariot wheel. Buried a finger's depth under the earth at the center of the ring is the bronze hub, also corroded but much of it intact.

6. A place where the wind, if it blows from the west, carries ghostly shouts of triumph, and if from the  east, carries the ghostly tumult of routed men.