Terrinoth #34 - The Buried Palace

Campaign Diary

A sinkhole, Iwan explained, recently appeared in one of the bath-houses owned by Shazar. Shazar had sent some men into the sinkhole to evaluate the damage, but they had not returned. As Shazar did not want news of this to spread, draw the attention of the authorities onto his business, or even worse - affect the resale value of the property, he offered to help our heroes bring all the treasures they have found on their trip to Al-Kalim through the customs, if they would help him check out the sinkhole and determine if it was still safe for him to operate the bath-house. In addition, he would let the party keep all the treasures they find inside, except that he would have first pick on one of the items.

Our heroes accepted the offer, and the next evening they were at Shazar's bath-house. A rope, tied to one of the pillars, led down to the main pool, and from there through a five-foot wide hole. Looking through the hole, Percy could see that it was a fifty-foot drop.

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One by one our heroes descended the rope. For the first twenty feet they passed through earth, and then and they found themselves under the roof of a large porch. The porch covered an area about seventy feet deep and twice as wide. Twenty pillars, each thirty feet tall and made of flawless glass, held up a marble roof. In the middle of the porch was a large pond lined with colourful tiles. On three sides the porch was blocked by earth; on the remaining side a wide staircase, designed to impress, led to a doorway.

Passing through the doorway, they entered a large hall, and immediately found the bodies of two men on the marble floor, crushed and mangled. Standing at the other end of the hall stood a humanoid figure some eight feet tall, made entirely of glass. As the glass figure moved towards them, Strigoi switched his maul for his sword, and together with Gio and Perch they attacked it. Entana stood back, and hurled spells at it, only to find his spells reflected back at him! With his heavy maul, Strigoi soon destroyed the glass figure, which shattered into countless pieces as it fell.

The party now looked about them, and saw that the walls of the hall were covered in frescoes, painted in a different style from that which they had seen in their previous adventures. Were these perhaps made during the era of the Djinni?

The frescoes depicted scenes of sieges and battles, and while looking at them, Strigoi had a sense that they all  drew his attention to one figure in each scene and that the figures represented the same person - surely he was the king of this palace?

Passing through the doorway on the other end of the hall, the party entered a larger hall. On the roof of this hall were three domes; through each dome our heroes could see the earth that the palace is now buried under - the domes were made of glass, which incredibly withstood the weight of the earth above them.

Again the walls were covered with frescoes, this time depicting scenes of torture and execution. Again Strigoi got the uneasy sense that the frescoes drew his attention to one figure in each scene - the king overseeing the punishment. The first hall was meant to impress, and this hall is meant to intimidate, he concluded.

Opposite the doorway they came through were a set of double-doors. Passing through this, they came into a third hall, this one smaller than the other two. A glass statue of a swordsman stood on each of the walls to their left and right, and against the far wall was a dais, upon which was a marble throne, carved in intricate lattice work, and its seat shaped and smoothed for the comfort of the sitter.

On either side of the throne were matching frescoes: on one side the king, on foot and wielding a two-handed sword, hewed the neck of a giant bird; on the other side the king, mounted and holding a lance, speared a dragon. In the centre, above the throne, the king was depicted sitting in a throne, with a snake rising out of each of his shoulders.

Percy, from her time spent at the library of the Citadel of the Lamp, recognised the bird to be a simurgh, a mythical benevolent creature, and that the dragon too was held as a protector of men in Al-Kalim lore.

Investigating the statues, they soon found that they guarded secret doors that were behind them - the statues would turn and strike at anyone who attempted to open the secret doors with their swords. Circumventing the traps, they party entered the room behind one door, and found its floor gold and silver coins that had spilled out of the rotten wooden chests that once held them. So heavy were the haul, that our heroes had to divide the lot between them as not even Strigoi would have been able to carry all of it and still fight.

Entering the other hidden room, they found five stone pedestals, each upon which laid an item. They were: a garnet ring with the image of a winged lion with the face of a man carved upon it; a lapis lazuli ring with the image of a running antelope carved upon it; a pendant made from an unknown stone, that resembled an eyeball; a bronze arrowhead, set as a pendant, and a bronze shield, inlaid with gold and silver in intricate patterns. Our heroes took these items, and started back to the surface.

When they climbed the rope back to the bath-house again, they found Shazar waiting for them, alone. Seemingly in good humour, Shazar asked about what they found below, and Percy described the palace they found, and suggested that perhaps Shazar could use it for himself. Shazar listened with apparent interest, before turning his attention to the items the party had recovered. Entana, Gio, and Percy presented the rings and pendants they took, but Strigoi, hoping to keep the bronze shield for himself, tried to act as though he had it before he entered the sinkhole. Even as he tried to hide the truth, Strigoi once more had an uneasy feeling, as if his mind was being probed. At the same time Gio realised that despite his girth, Shazar bore an uncanny resemblance to the king depicted in the frescoes...

Shazar's smile turned from mirthful to sinister, and he asked casually:"Tell me, does my palace still have all of its twenty pillars?"

Our heroes' blood turned cold at his question.

Shazar reiterated his promise that our heroes could keep all of *his* gold that they found, but he would claim the garnet ring as was his deal, took the ring, and left the bath-house.

As soon as Shazar was out of sight, our heroes ran back to the Terrinoth compound, and risking being caught for breaking the curfew (for foreigners were not allowed outside their compounds after sunset in Al-Madena), banged on the door, begging to be let in. Belatedly Percy recalled who the figure depicted in the frescoes was: it was Zaddak, a powerful djnni who had snakes growing out of each of his shoulders; each snake were fed each day with a human brain, taken from the many human subjects in Zaddak's realm.

Gathering the elder Venier and Bram, the whole party set off at first light, eager to leave the city and the land far behind them.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on the module The Buried Palace, by Kobold Press.

The main campaign in the Al-Kalim arc had already been completed, but I wanted the PCs to have some adventure within Al-Madena itself, and experience what "modern" Al-Kalim had to offer. I initially wanted to run an Ebonclad adventure where the PCs have to sabotage and stop a political wedding between two families but not harm the bride or groom, but I came across The Buried Palace, and thought I would send them into yet another dungeon, but this time one built in the more recent past.

The original module featured an ancient palace buried beneath a "modern" city, with the twist that the quest-giver was in fact an ancient/immortal being whose face was depicted in paintings in the palace.

Once more I cut the dungeon down, leaving out the interesting giant ants which inhabited the original palace, but keeping the equally interesting glass golem that had the ability to reflect spells.

To decorate the walls of the palace, I looked for frescoes from the Sassanid era on google, and eventually settled on a series of illustrations from a version of the Shahnameh.

While looking for pictures of frescoes, I came upon Chehel Sotoun, and was impressed by its architecture. I was able to find plans of this small palace, and decided that instead of the map in the module, it would be more realistic to "bury" an actual palace underground. To make the palace more fantastical, I riffed off the glass golem theme, and gave it glass pillars and glass domes, intended to advertise the djinni "technology" that existed.

Also while looking for pictures, I came across several depictions of a man with snakes growing out of his shoulders. This turned out to be Zahhak, the greatest Persian villain whom I have never heard of. I decided to make him a djinn in my world (many djinni escaped banishment during the"revolution"), and changed his name to Zaddak. To make the appearance of the character less contrived, I decided that Shazar, an NPC quest-giver I made up on the fly in a previous game, was Zaddak all along! This, I thought, would make the players less suspicious of an "easy" mission, as Shazar had worked with them previously, and it would certainly make the reveal more impactful.

As it turned out I was right: the players decided at the end of the adventure that Al-Kalim a was screwed-up land and they wanted nothing to do with it anymore. I feel I managed the build-up to the reveal rather well - certainly better than I managed the build-up to Percy's temporary death - so lesson learned there.

Based on the account of the brain-eating snakes, I decided that I would stat Zaddak after a Mind-flayer. The Mind-flayer used its tentacles to grapple its victims and then eat their brains, something which I thought would work well for Zaddak's snakes too. I had previously described Shazar as being fat - had the players decided to fight him, they would find that the "fats" was actually two serpents coiled beneath his clothes. I also riffed off the psychic abilities of the Mind-flayer, giving the frescoes a psychic residue which told those who looked upon them who they were supposed to notice. When Strigoi's player tried to hide the shield of Zaddak, I used the Mind-flayer's Detect Thought spell and described how it "probed" Strigoi's mind, just like the spell description said.

As a side-note, the day after we played this game, this youtube channel which I follow published this video:

Talk about coincidence!

One of the other aims of running an adventure before they left Al-Kalim was that I wanted to give them more magical items, and when rolling up loot for the palace I decided to give them a lot of gold too - they would leave Al-Kalim more than 3000 gp richer than when they arrived. This was because we have decided to transition the game to a "domain" game in the next arc (which we will play after two or three other campaigns), and they will need the cash.

The coolest moment for me during the game came when Strigoi's player asked whether he knew what the frescoes were meant to communicate. I had him make a roll, and when he succeeded I told him, "drawing on your experience as a mercenary leader, you realised what these frescoes were meant to do..." and immediately he understood that they were meant to create fear in the viewers. This was exactly the technique Matt Colville used in one of his streamed games, where he gave out information to a player in the context of how his character would understand it. I am very proud of my player and myself for making this moment happen. Thanks, Matt.

All in all I am very happy with the session: the PCs explored an interesting dungeon and discovered its story as they went through it, they had a short but interesting combat (then avoided some traps and found some loot), role-played an interaction with an NPC - all three pillars of an RPG.

I will be wrapping up the Terrinoth campaign over the next few weeks, and from May to July we are planning to play a Sorcery! campaign using the Advanced Fighting Fantasy game. We may play a few B Team games at the end of July to mid-September, to complete the arc we started; after that we will likely play a Savage Worlds sci-fi campaign using the new edition of the rules. We will return to the A Team probably early next year, when we will play a "domain" campaign using some of the rules from Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers.

The next two sessions I play to run a scenario set in Torrue Albes, which the party will pass through on their way back to Terrinoth. I have an idea of running a more light-hearted, comedic game, so stay tuned!