Ophidian’s temple

[Mine, 29-6-1024 — 04-7—1024]

Af­ter rest­ing and re­fresh­ing in Sil­ver­town you re­turn to Mine and the buried tem­ple.

Deep be­low the earth you fol­low a small­ish rox­or care­ful­ly avoid­ing patch­es of its stone eat­ing acid. The rox­or stop­s, up ahead the eerie green of force dome dim­ly il­lu­mi­nates the tun­nel. The tow­er­ing co­bra head stat­ues stare solemn­ly for­ward as the black drag­on cir­cles around and dives slam­ming it­self against the bar­ri­er just be­fore you pass through. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly you hear grind­ing of stone, as if what­ev­er force moved the tem­ple here is still driv­ing it through the earth. You hear an­oth­er tun­nel col­lapse.

Quick­ly pass­ing to the rear of the tem­ple the par­ty en­acts it’s plan to rip away the rest of the false floor. Which, as ex­pect­ed, caus­es more snake­men skele­ton’s to emerge from the col­umns. Be­ing pre­pared for this the skele­tons are dealt with. More than a cou­ple get pushed down the shaft. The paint­ings of snake­men on the col­umns from which skele­tons emerged be­come fad­ed and start to peel. Sev­er­al col­umns with pris­tine paint­ings re­main. Some de­sire to burn the paint, oth­ers think that might not be so wise. Since all of the false floor is now gone it’s de­cid­ed to leave them be and head down.

Care­ful­ly low­er­ing your­selves down the shaft you re­trieve Qazir’s staff, deal with the fall­en snake­men and smash up ev­ery last snake skele­ton. This room is sup­port­ed by 10 col­umns. That, you note with con­sid­er­able trep­i­da­tion, are paint­ed with gi­ant snakes and more snake­men. On three walls are pas­sages 10ft off the ground. Pick­ing one you dis­cov­er it is dead end and a trap! The back wall moves for­ward push­ing you back in­to the cen­tral cham­ber were, as you feared, gi­ant snake and snake­men skele­tons await. Sev­er­al peo­ple near­ly do not sur­vive this en­counter but ev­ery­one bare­ly makes it back up the shaft.

Af­ter that the bur­na­tors win all ar­gu­ments. Sev­er­al flasks of oil, drag­on snot, and nu­mer­ous torch­es are used to cre­ate an in­fer­no of skele­tal de­struc­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly it al­so cre­ates acrid poi­sonous smoke that fills the shaft and most of the tem­ple. Some char­ac­ters must be dragged un­con­scious from the force dome. Ev­ery­one spends the next week re­cov­er­ing in House Ma­jid(­Va­reef’s old house claimed in their tribes name by Djinn and Tariq)

Re­turn­ing you find a dead small winged lizard spiked on a pole near the mine shaft. Ask­ing Eri­boea “Yeah I fi­nal­ly caught that pest out in the open and nailed it with my xbow. Re­al­ly hard to spot those an­noy­ing lizard­s, ya know. Who’s the great hunter, eh Djin­n?” When it be­comes ap­par­ent you don’t know what she is talk­ing about. “What? I told you about that, I must of. Did­n’t you hear it’s voice, in your head. You did? Well what the hell did you think it was. You for­eign­ers and city types sure are weird”

The tun­nel and the dome still reeks of foul smoke. It gets stronger as you make your way once more down the shaft. Oth­er than sev­er­al char­ac­ters get­ting nau­seous there are detri­men­tal ef­fect­s. You are sur­prised to see a cou­ple charred but still an­i­mat­ed skele­tons me­an­der­ing about. Eas­i­ly dealt with. The paint on the col­umns and walls is black­ened and burn­t.

Pick­ing an­oth­er tun­nel you find a rox­or nod­ule and sev­er­al more fur­ther along. The mu­rals paint­ed along the walls stylis­ti­cal­ly de­pict a cave or nat­u­ral tun­nel. Along with the usu­al as­sort­ment of hu­mans and snake-hu­man hy­brids there are huge snakes and large hu­mans with tall curved hel­met­s. Djinn points “That’s them, the gi­ants that at­tacked the car­a­van, those hel­mets are the same”. Qazir and Ian both rec­og­nize sym­bols and styles of earth mag­ic. As you con­tin­ue down the pas­sage cough­ing and retch­ing from the lin­ger­ing poi­son your hair rais­es as a sense of dread over­whelms the group. One char­ac­ter re­fus­es to con­tin­ue for sev­er­al min­utes but even­tu­al­ly re­cov­ers his wit­s.

Short­ly the pas­sage opens up in­to a rough­ly hexag­o­nal shaped room. The floor is cov­ered by hun­dreds of nod­ules, gath­ered up one side due to the tem­ple’s tilt. There is a “band” rough­ly 6’ tall af­ter which the walls slant in­ward to­wards the floor and ceil­ing. Along this band are sev­er­al al­coves and nich­es. On one side much of the con­tents have spilt out on­to the nod­ules. On the oth­er the al­coves are ob­scured by them. The back wall has a gi­ant mu­ral[hand­out I’ll have to give you]

Sus­pend­ed from the ceil­ing by four green met­al chains is a shal­low met­al “bowl”. In the bowl are sev­er­al large and un­usu­al rock­s. Float­ing above this is a large glow­ing green crys­tal sim­i­lar in shade to the force dome. Wisps of green “smoke” rise from the rocks to this crys­tal. Next to/with in this bowl is some­thing in­de­scrib­able, some­thing that should not be, can not be. The air is split open for about a foot. It looks like a wound or rend. Even though look­ing in­to the rend you see churn­ing rock­s, peer­ing at it from the side it is thin and flat, in fact it is on­ly two di­men­sion­al.

The air vi­brates with pow­er, the crys­tal slow­ly spins cast­ing shad­ows that seem to leap and claw at the char­ac­ter­s. Those not sick from smoke be­come dizzy & dis­ori­ent­ed or col­lapse passed out for sev­er­al min­utes. You Fight the urge to flee for your lives be­cause even in Ian’s blue torch­light the amongst the de­bris spilled from the al­coves glint of gold is un­mis­tak­able. A hor­ri­ble, pierc­ing noise of gnash­ing rocks emits from the rend and you see a rox­or nod­ule push­ing it’s way out of the rend. Slight­ly too large, the rend stretch­es with a mighty groan rat­tling the shal­low bowl. Slow­ly the nod­ule grinds it’s way and then rock­ets out at in­cred­i­ble speed pierc­ing the wall with­out a trace. It is fol­lowed by an­oth­er nod­ule which, be­ing small­er, emerges and plops out in­to the pile of nod­ules on the floor.

[Even­tu­al­ly the rend un­stretch­es and re­turns to a more ver­ti­cal slit. The first nod­ule is not found with­in the force dome.]

[Ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion most­ly from Ian us­ing ar­cane mag­ics to read the heiro­glyph­s] It is not a tem­ple. It is a tomb for a “re­gion­al gov­er­nor”, his wife and ser­vants, in some­thing called the Sun King­dom. He and his wife are the two huge co­bra head stat­ues out­side. “Uro-o-Nu­bi” - the goven­er. “Nu­bi-a-Haf­sah” - his wife. A ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was aid­ing agri­cul­ture, col­lect­ing/­tax­ing the har­vest. Hence all the agri­cul­ture scenes and scenes show­ing trib­ute(the har­vest) giv­en. There are de­tails of the gov­er­nor’s life/­ex­ploit­s/his prop­er­ties/how much he was loved by sub­ject­s/how much he loved his God-K­ing ‘Sa’.

You find noth­ing and no one out­side the tem­ple that knows of Sun King­dom, ser­pent men, etc. Af­ter de­scrib­ing ar­chi­tec­ture/writ­ings a few think you are talk­ing about Sunesh. You learn about Sunesh mum­mi­fi­ca­tion and how they bury their dead in tombs with dead­ly trap­s, sur­round­ed by ser­vants, and stuff need­ed in af­ter­life. Sev­er­al men­tion all the snake type and green met­al ar­ti­facts in the mar­ket­s. Some of which de­pict snake men (and ar­en­t’ ob­jects your group has sol­d) You even pressed Dyrk­ius to in­quire with his con­tacts at the Am­phipo­lis Tri­cade­my, noth­ing.