Friday, March 29, 2019

1d6 things that might happen when you lie to Skeleton Interrogator



Turns out, there is a patented invention, an aid for police work, which is basically a skeleton with glowing red eyes, used to break a suspect on an interrogation.

The suspect cannot see his human questioner, though. Instead, as soon as the examiner flicks a button, a curtain lifts within the chamber, and the unlucky interrogee is suddenly faced with “a figure in the form of a skeleton,” surrounded by a “diaphanous veiling” and illuminated from both above and below by “a plurality of electric lights.” 
(from Atlas Obscura


Without further ado...

1d6 things that might happen when you lie/don't answer to Skeleton Interrogator! 

Written by a good friend (1,3,5) and me (2,4,6) :
  1. You take on an aspect of the skeleton (e.g. glowing eyes, sickly thinness, extreme dry skin, vulnerability to turn undead)
  2. Turns out, the skeleton was the good cop. Bad cop gator-interrogator takes over the session, good luck.
  3. Your lawyer arrives, provides an alibi and you are cleared. However, now they want their fee.
  4. The skeleton interrogator glitches out and starts speaking in random non-sensical syllables. There is a 3-in-6 chance these syllables are a random magical spell, which goes off
  5. ZOOM BACK CAMERA! the studio lighting comes on and the film crew is revealed. You are actually on the set of your favorite police procedural/crime drama.
  6. The interrogator skeleton breaks free, and turns against its oppressors - the police!



Friday, March 15, 2019

Variations on Vampiric Drain



Some ideas on modelling "draining" attacks in old school games:

Attribute Drain

The drain targets and changes an attribute. Bloodsucking usually decreases physical characteristics, energy drain or psychic vampirism affects mental characteristics, but it's always interesting to have unusual leeching, e.g. if your system has a Luck attribute, why not drain it?
There are a couple of different ways to do it mechanically:

  1. Decrease the attribute by a numeric value (1, or roll a dice). Recalculate modifier and any related secondary attributes.
  2. Bump the attribute down to the next modifier level. E.g. if the character's Strength attribute gives them a +2, lower it to the closest value that would give only +1. Then 0, -1, -2, -3. -3 is bumped down to death. (I think I took this from the LotFP Referee Book)
  3. Re-roll the drained attribute using the standard character generation method (e.g. 3d6). Take the lower result. Recalculate modifier and any related secondary attributes.
  4. If your system doesn't have a designated Luck attribute, but you want to model the draining of a character's "luckiness", how about applying a negative modifier to attack roles or Saves?

Advanced Psychic Vampirism

A psychic drain can either target an attribute (see above), or change some other "mental" thing.

  1. Draining the spellcasters: 
    • An ability that gives the caster spell usage is affected, e.g an unused spell slot becomes expended or spell points are drained.
    • A memorized or prepared spell is erased from the mind of the victim for the day. A more severe version is removing the ability to prepare a spell at all (the spell might be re-learnt with effort).
  2. Draining the Clerics:
    • Mwhahahaha... 
    • Remove the ability to Turn Undead for a set amount of time (based on the HD of the draining creature).
    • Disable or reverse certain Clerical spells for a set amount of time (based on the HD of the draining creature). Forcing reversal is an interesting choice: fluff-wise, for example it makes a "good Cleric" a vampiric agent: cannot cast Cure Wounds, can only inflict pain, healing spells become curses and so forth.
  3. Non mechanic-based draining:
    • Drain memories: the character forgets something. The higher the HD of the draining creature, the more important is the memory. It can be a personal memory, or a piece of knowledge, depending on the flavor of vampirism.
    • Drain "capability": the character forgets a learned/trained/nurtured skill, like fancy fencing moves, riding a bicycle, swimming, arithmetic, etc.

Level Drain

A classic! Feared by everybody. Perhaps too severe to some DM's tastes. You can try draining experience points instead (e.g. creature HD x 1d10 x 100 ?), or model the loss of "experience" by draining memories and skills, as above.

Parasitism

The effect isn't constrained to a one-time drain. The creature latches on to the victim, forms a bond or channel between them (this can be physical, but also psychic, sympathetic, magical). Through this channel, the creature can constantly feed on the victim even when they are not present. This connection stays until severed by magical means or until the initiating creature is destroyed.
Some possible effects:
  • The victim cannot naturally heal.
  • Once in a given period (week, month, during every full moon) the victim suffers the effect of the drain, e.g. loses hit points, loses an attribute point, or suffers memory loss.
  • The victim is drawn to the creature (classic vampirism!)
The parasitic connection can have a visible / detectable sign on the victim (change in skin or eye color, clothing preferences, sunlight sensitivity, mental disturbance, sickness, etc.).

Withering & Weakening

Draining hit points ( = doing damage) is okay, but perhaps kinda boring? Weakening attacks can target Constitution too. I personally like using the HD attribute in various ways. For example:
The drained character must immediately re-roll all their hit dice. Constitution modifier applies only if it's negative. Take the new value if it's lower than the previous maximum hit points. Current hit points drop down to equal the new maximum or remain unchanged if already lower.

Aging

The victim rapidly ages. Roll a number of d10's equal to the HD of the draining creature. The total is how many years the victim ages. For each full 10 years, the victim loses 1 point of Dexterity. For each full 20 years, the victim also loses 1 point of Constitution.

Benevolent Leech

The bloodsucking creature drains 1d6 hit points worth of blood. If the victim is diseased, poisoned or has a similar ailment, they may roll a Save against Poison with a bonus equal to the amount of hitpoints drained; on a success, the victim is cured of the condition.
Alternatively, a psychic vampire takes away insanity, nightmares, etc.




Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Suspirian School of Ballet

How about a procedurally generated dungeon (akin to The Gardens of Ynn & The Stygian Library) set in the surreal and murderous dance school of the 1977 Suspiria?



During the day, the Suspirian School of Ballet (or the Chthonic Academy of Choreography?) is a tough place, where you have to put up with the cruelty of the teachers and the other aspiring ballerinas.

But at night... everything changes to even worse. You wake up screaming and sweating in your dormitory, only to find that the building is completely different. Corridors twist into a maze of madness, new rooms or macabre dimensions and unfathomable purposes appear. Unnatural lights shift around, and the curtains sway in the air as thousand phantoms. Shadowy silhouettes on the walls chase after you.

Somewhere in the very heart of this labyrinth is the Source of it all, a terrible, terrible secret... To escape this madness, you must find it and fight it.

Gameplay


Nighttime

Nighttime is crawling the vast labyrinth of the School. Only the Dormitory is fixed. Every night all other locations are generated randomly.

One exclusion: the characters can form a bond to a Nighttime location or encounter, to make it permanent and revisitable. Perhaps it's a dead girl's ghost who wants revenge. Or a hallway where healing water is tricking from the statue of a nymph. This has a cost: any place or entity the characters are bonded to will attract the attention of the unkind forces of the school.

This exclusion mechanic lets the players to define little goals or quests for themselves.

Daytime 

Daytime is downtime. Lick your wounds. Survive the torturous dance lessons. Find new weapons and do research in the library. Nighttime events bleed into the day, and each time you bring back more and more darkness. But perhaps certain Nighttime encounters are solvable from this side (kill the teacher who bullied that girl into suicide?).

Locations


  1. "Normal" areas of the School, but twisted by the unkind forces (school rooms, offices, halls, staircases, dance rooms, bathrooms, library, cafeteria, dormitories, storage rooms, small gardens, orangeries...)
  2. What was here before the School (Inquisitorial torture rooms, prison cells, dungeons, magic laboratories
  3. Nighttime-born areas, lairs of the unkind forces, intrusions from other dimensions

Illumination


One of the strongest visual driving forces of Argento's Suspiria is the use of lush, baroque, unnatural lightning in each scene. I think it's possible to implement this in the game as well.
In each location, the Referee rolls for random illumination. This color influences what events or encounters happen, and how they play out. Some locations or circumstances call for two or more illumination rolls, and the influences bleed together.

  1. RED is blood, aggression, death
  2. PURPLE is madness and witchcraft
  3. GREEN is poison, mutation, sickness
  4. YELLOW is pain and torture incarnate
  5. BLUE is deception and lies
  6. DARKNESS is the Void you wish you could fill with any of the above



Encounters

  1. Ghosts of pupils tortured and bullied to death
  2. Mean girls
  3. Living shadows
  4. Phantom force
  5. Dancing plague
  6. Black-Gloved Killer
  7. The Witch

Ideas for Extra Flavor

  1. Language of sighs & whispers
  2. Blades signal death
  3. Spells contained in shards of stained glass

There's a lot to work out here, but at least I jotted down some basic ideas. Emmy Allen's stuff is a constant source of inspiration for me, and so are horror movies, weird fiction... I think this combination could work pretty well.





Sunday, March 10, 2019

[Actual Play] Back to the Stacks! The Stygian Library, Revisited [LotFP]

Picking up where we left off: a second run at the Stygian Library (see the first report here).

I broke the number 1 rule... You are supposed the generate the Library from scratch every time the players enter or re-enter. However, I decided to use last session's general layout, and only modify and "re-stock" it, as one would do with a regular dungeon. Overall, I think this was a good decision for the game, because the players were eager to explore the paths not yet taken.

So I kept all the Locations, re-rolled certain Details that made no sense anymore, and of course kept encounters, events, and new rooms completely random.

The session was shorter then the previous, because we had less time on our hands --- but also because we got close to a TPK and the group (wisely) cut their losses and retreated! But let's see how it went.



Krulo the Goblinboy, Elf 1 (former side-show attraction, former thief's apprentice, current free elf)
 & Unnamed laborer retainer...
Machteld Mercki X, Magic-User 3 (witchy type)
Ishimura Kobayashi, Fighter 1 (Machteld's bodyguard)

Downtime activities: After their last adventure, the group spent about 30-40 days in town, recuperating, copying spells, researching the weird items they acquired, mourning their fallen comrade. Krulo went carousing, and ended up with a cool tattoo (an upside-down cross on his temple). Having spent all their money on these activities and shopping, the group looked for new employment. They were approached by a professor, who wanted to procure a rare book on alchemy (which used to be in Rudolf II's occult collection).
So back to the Library they went!

0: Mausoleum
The library section / mausoleum was of course now void of treasure. But there were some new books on the shelves, mostly genealogical surveys and social almanacs. Krulo the Goblinboy wanted to look himself up (he is an orphan and knows nothing about his origins), and he found information about Courlandian nobility, to which he think he might be related (because Courland -> Krulo, that's his logic). There was a heartbreaking story about a young noblewoman disappearing for two weeks, then giving birth to a malformed son 9 months later.

But soon, a fight spilled over into the room!

Four huge spiders were terrorizing four obsidian monkeys. 

The group decided not to take sides in this melee, and retreated to a neighboring room, which they knew to be the cafe / tearoom.

1: Tearoom + Oriental Rugs
Like last time, the room had food and drinks laid out, however the expensive cutlery and porcelain dishes were replaced by simple ceramics and wooden trays... (looting adventurers! that's why we can't have nice things!). The group wanted to check under the floorboards again, because last time they'd found a potion hidden there, but this time only buzzing could be heard from under the floorboards, so they decided against opening up the hidden compartment again --- the memory of their encounter with the Paper Bees proved to be quite traumatic! So they rolled up a couple of rugs to take home later, and went into a new direction instead.

2: Skeleton Collection + Oriental Rugs
This part of the library is made for comfort! ...And for displaying bones... Glass cupboards with posed bird skeletons lined the walls. Machteld's meticulous search turned up an extraordinary book, which she felt was vibrating with inner power: a misplaced collection of spells! The group didn't linger here longer, and went to check what's deeper.

3: Ossuary + Gas Lamps
More bones and teeth in display cabinets! Sorted by type, size, origin... Lots of rare stuff, too, including dinosaur fossils. Krulo found a secret door, that lead onto a dark staircase. Machteld thought the rare fossils from the cabinets would make a good addition to her laboratory, and, using the Rust Moth antenna they salvaged last time, the group opened up the lock...

...and out came of the Bone Beast!

The whirling tornado of teeth and bone fragments caught the group off guard. The poor nameless laborer was torn to pieces almost straight away, and Machteld received a serious injury. Ishimura tried to fight them off, but his spear (despite being magical!) was of little use against the swarm. Machteld managed to cast Hold Monster, slowing down the tornado of death. This gave Krulo the opportunity to open the secret door, jump inside, and pull it closed. On the next round, Machteld nearly died as the bones and teeth slashed her neck arteries open. Gushing with blood, she stumbled towards the secret door, and Krulo managed to let her and Ishimura into cover. The Bone Beast started scratching at the door... So the group quickly applied some first aid to Machteld (there was one very lucky Medicine roll), and fled. 

The small, narrow corridor led to another secret door, which they carefully opened, only to arrive into...

0: Mausoleum
Yes, the secret passage led back to the entrance. The door opened behind the vertically propped up sarcophagus. From this vantage point the group saw the spiders finish off the obsidian monkeys, wrap them in webs. Only two spiders were left alive after the combat. The monsters wrapped their prey in webs, and carried two marmosets out of the room.

The group used this short time window to leave the secret passage, pick up the two remaining dead marmosets and two spider corpses, drag out three oriental rugs from the Tearoom, and leave this wretched place, licking their wounds...


Future plans include going back into the Library (they still have a month to fulfill the alchemist's request, and they are in a dire need for money!)...

Friday, March 8, 2019

Embedded random generators

All the cool kids are inserting random generator buttons into their blog posts!

I'm writing a gothic cemetery-crawl adventure, so here's my work-in-progress "what's in the coffin / what's in the urn" table, turned into an automatic randomizer!

I search the coffin / urn!






(Note: I tried to make it into a weighted list: thus "regular content" comes up more often than "unique item" etc.)


Thursday, March 7, 2019

[Actual Play] The Stygian Library [LotFP]

Finally! A test run of The Stygian Library!
Here's a recap, with Referee-side commentary in italics.

The game was ran using LotFP with some houserules (including the deadly wounds system from Wolf-Packs & Winter Snow) and VAM!-style magic. Setting - late 19th century historical Europe.


Source

Characters:

Two players, with a Level 3 main character and a Level 1 Henchman each:
Johnny Tealeaves, Specialist 3 (all-around bad boy)
Krulo the Goblinboy, Elf 1 (former side-show attraction, current thief's apprentice)
Machteld Mercki X, Magic-User 3 (witchy type)
Ishimura Kobayashi, Fighter 1 (Machteld's bodyguard)

The group entered the library through an old, forgotten wing of the British Library. The goal of the quest was the theft of a book with supposedly true information on lycanthropy.
(I set the difficulty of this task as 25. The players started at 17 due to the highly intelligent Magic-User.)
0: Mausoleum + Treasure Pile
The first room had shelves and shelves full of religious literature. In the middle, one shelf section was instead covered with a yellow curtain. The group carefully pulled the curtain, to reveal a vertical open sarcophagus with a skeleton inside. A small altar before the sarcophagus held artifacts and various offerings (a spearhead inscribed with runes, candles with magic sigils, a bunch of spell scrolls, unknown potion in smoky glass vial).
The characters started looting, but were interrupted as a fight spilled over from the next room. It was a whirling tornado of dust and a strange huge flying thing, a Rust Moth.
The Rust Moth avoided some attacks, then went straight for the biggest metal objects in the room, and ended up ruining Johnny's sword. Finally Ishimura killed it. The Dust Elemental didn't care about the group and swirled out of the room.
Johnny salvaged the Moth's antenna, after seeing that it had the ability to instantly turn metal into rust.
(A lucky start for the group, with a combination of two treasure-heavy elements. And a lucky reaction roll - after the death of the Rust Moth, the Dust Elemental wasn't interested in them.)

1: Auditorium + Candles
The group entered the horseshoe shaped stepped lecture hall from below. They instantly noticed a big rusty looking nest attached to the wall, which they carefully avoided. A quick search turned up a book, perhaps left behind by the lecturer? The books was locked, but Johnny used the Rust Moth antenna to "pick" the lock.
Their investigation was cut short by the emergence of another aggressive Rust Moth from the nest! Johnny tried to squash it with the heavy book, but missed. The moth ruined Ishimura's halberd blade, but the bodyguard managed to kill the creature with the blunt end.
(I added a Rust Moth nest on the wall, to explain the fight in the previous room. Then when the encounter roll gave an aggressive monster... I rolled Rust Moth again! Nice coincidence.)

1: Tearoom + Oriental Rugs
From the auditorium the group retreated back to the entrance area, and decided to explore an alternative path. They found a cozy little chamber with soft rugs, comfy armchairs, and food and drinks set up on tables. Kurlo the Goblinboy went straight for the food, rather incautiously... but turned out everything was perfectly edible and drinkable. The group stole some cutlery, and found a second potion in smoky glass vial under the floorboards.
They continued their journey deeper into the library.

2: Chapel + Fireplace
The next space was quite unusual: the interior of a sizable church without any windows. The chapel also had a fireplace, with a roaring fire. Johnny, the experienced burglar, assumed that although there are no windows, the fireplace's chimney MUST lead somewhere - but it's for a future expedition to find out where. Johnny also replaced his rust-eaten sword with a poker from next to the fireplace.
On the altar lay an extraordinary book written in Arabic or Persian - something the characters couldn't read just yet, but decided to take.
At this point, a figure entered, clad in black clothes: the first Librarian! The Black Librarian was neutral, didn't notice that the book was gone from the altar.

3: Reading Lounge + Phosphorescent Lamps
The room adjacent to the chapel was a reading lounge, illuminated by weird glass spheres. The players climbed up and cut down one lamp to use as lantern. They browsed through some of the books, but found nothing of interest.

4: Display Case + Stacked Papers
Display cases with minerals.
The players wanted to loot the cases, but 6 Black Librarians entered the room. One of them was injured. When asked, they told about being attacked by a dangerous Ogre Spider deeper in the stacks of the library. They came here to make medicine out of the minerals.
Johnny stepped forth and offered one of the unknown potions to the Librarians. The Librarians accepted it, and the injured one was healed!
As a token of gratitude, a Librarian agreed to lead the party to the Catalogue of Contents.
(For the event, I rolled an encounter with a creature at disadvantage. This became the 6 Black Librarians, one of them injured. I rolled a random creature to see what caused the injuries ( = Ogre Spider), and thought it would make sense that the Librarians came to the display cases to use the minerals as ingredients for an antidote.

Johnny's player did a very clever thing: offered the unknown potion to the Librarians, who are locals, and might know what it's for. Not only did the Librarians identify the potion as a healing serum, but accepted and used it. I thought this was clever enough, and as a reward the Librarian took the players safely 1d6 layers deeper, to the Catalogue of Contents.

In the adventure as written, the Catalogue is actually a rare occurrence - it's #2 on the Locations list, which means it's only accessible on Depth 0 or 1, with a very lucky roll.)

So the players ended up on Depth 7. While traversing the corridors, the Black Librarian also told the group about the various librarian orders.

7: Catalogue of Contents + Chained Books
A majestic, enormous hall, with chained books on the shelves, and the man-sized tome of the Stygian Catalogue in the center. The group engaged in research and learned that the book they are looking for is somewhere two layers deeper.
Then combat erupted: a Hungry Book broke its chains, and attacked a group of unlucky Black Librarians! The players joined the fray, and managed to subdue the book. However, the hungry tome did suck out the brains of one of the Librarians...
(This was the third time I rolled Black Librarians on the random chart!!)

8: Paper Bee Hive + Gas Lamps
The next room was a simple book storage, but with a huge papier-mâché beehive in the corner.
Disaster. The group went in with a lit torch, the bees got agitated and attacked the torchbearer (Krulo), stung him, Krulo went into allergic seizure, dropped the torch on stack of books and woosh! everything went up in flames. Johnny gave the second healing potion to Krulo... Then more bees emerged from the hive, and swarmed Johnny, causing massive poison damage and killing him. Johnny used his last "dead man walking" round for a kamikaze act, grabbed some burning books and threw himself on the hive, setting it on fire, killing the Queen inside. The others fled into the next room. The gas in the lamps exploded behind them...
(Before this encounter, I decided that the paper bees are obviously very much afraid of fire. I telegraphed the dangers of this room quite meticulously, asked the players what they think what might get the bees angry. When they entered with the burning torch, I rolled a reaction for the bees, and the bee soldiers attacked... Krulo's player said Krulo's first reaction was to drop the torch... the rest is history...)

9: Phantom Pump + Negligible Gravity
Not fled - the remaining explorers almost flew into the next room, propelled by the explosion and swimming in zero grav. The room was full of complicated, huge machinery manned by a White Librarian. The Librarian was very busy and very angry: it was trying to counter the consequences of the explosion via complex mechanical means. It gave the players 10 seconds to get out of the room...

10: Printing Press + Smoking
A room with a huge printing press. The room was also filled acrid smoke was from the still burning beehive room. Krulo almost died of smoke poisoning again, so he sneaked back to the machine room and hid behind a giant hydraulic arm.
The printing press was manned by two Yellow Librarians. They were busy creating replacement pages for a book... the very book about werewolves the party was looking for. Machteld risked choking in the smoke, and stayed behind for enough time for the Librarians to finish the work, and managed to sneakily snatch the tome when the Librarians went back to the printing press.
(There are so many coincidences when running the Library or the Gardens of Ynn! When the detail "Smoking" came up, I had no problem weaving it into the story, because it just meant the this was a consequence of the fire and explosion the players caused earlier.

At this point, the players were deep enough in the Library, and their progress meter also reached 25, so I gave them the book that was the object of their search.)

On the way back, they were attacked by the White Librarian, who cast a spell and almost blinded Ishimura (lucky magic save!). There was some more quick backtracking, and finally the three remaining adventures exited the deadly Stygian Library, with their desired book and a nice heap of treasure!





Sunday, March 3, 2019

Cheat sheet for The Stygian Library

I'm finally running The Stygian Library tomorrow (which I reviewed earlier)!

I prepared a cheat sheet, with the main random tables and creature stat blocks (see my cheat sheets for the Gardens of Ynn).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=180UKSEvIDN_sZ6BN8UsgC2urRxKS8Z2R

Sheet 1: Locations, Details, Events
Sheet 2: Encounters, Rumors
Sheet 3: Extraordinary Books
Sheet 4: Treasure, Weapons
Sheet 5-8: Bestiary
Have fun!

2019.03.24: Automatized generator:
https://technicalgrimoire.com/generators


Friday, March 1, 2019

[Dungeon] 30-minute dungeon: The Chaldean Archives

My take on the 30-minute dungeon format initiated by Tristyn. There are already a couple of other people posting these: Michael Raston, Shane Ward, and possibly many others!

The goal is to provide a dungeon adventure with more or less these items:

A Hook General Background 3 Combat Encounters 3 "Empty" Rooms 2 Traps 1 NPC 1 Weird Thing To Experiment With Some Treasure A Magic Item
30 minutes is... not much, I tell you that! I did waste 15 minutes on the map. Although I knew I should't. Then spent 30 minutes on the description, so I broke the rule...

But here's what I got. I think it's a good outline, and perhaps in the near future I can flesh it out! It's an ancient Mesopotamian themed ruin complex.


The Chaldean Archives

General background: Middle East, circa 700 AD. It is the time of the Omayyad Caliphate. But this empire is not the first to rule in the area, and some people are eager to explore the remnants of civilizations much more ancient and powerful – the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes.

Hook: Abdul Alhazred, the renowned Damascene scholar (not yet known as “the Mad Arab”) hires the party to explore the ruins of an ancient Chaldean palace, find the archives, and bring back as many clay tablets as possible.

The ruins of a once glorious palace, now buried under the sand. A small part is accessible. There are two entrances, 1. from the east (visible) and 2. from the south (barely visible, covered by rubble, but easy to clear if noticed).

Outside the ruins

A nomad tribe has set up camp next to the east entrance.
They never delve deep into the ruins (sometimes go into the courtyard), just use its walls as defense against the sandstorms.
However, they also don’t want to let anybody else in, unless payment or reason is provided.
6+2d6 nomads (HD 1, armed with scimitars and slings) and their leader Sardar, who tells wicked ghost stories (HD 2, armed with Damascene steel)


Areas:

Courtyard

Open area that grants access to the various parts of the complex.

Storage rooms

Grouped around the Courtyard. Many broken clay vessels. Their ancient content (sesame oil and honey) coalesced into 1d4 deadly Lubricious & Viscous Oozes (HD 3, engulfing pseudopods, weapons get stuck in them).
Treasure: each Ooze’s body holds 1d100sp worth in assorted items and medieval coins, and one Ooze holds an ancient Egyptian faience amulet (+1 to saves against Magic if worn).

Chapel area

Entered from the west side of the Courtyard, through a small vestibule.
The entrance is flanked by stone reliefs, depicting two winged genies with human heads. The genies each hold a small container and raise a pine cone towards the entrance.
In the vestibule there is a locked chest. Contents: gilded pine cones, a small container with a sweet smelling oil (enough for 1d8 smears), silver cups and plates worth 200sp.
To pass through the door, one must be first anointed with the sweet oil.
Anybody not anointed is struck by searing light from the toppled statue in the next room. 3d6 damage (save against Rays/Devices for half damage).



The main chapel room

Toppled statue of a male divinity, opposite the entrance. Heavy (combined Strength of 40+ to move). If restored to its original upright position, an otherwise invisible compartment opens in its base, holding a gold bar worth 100gp and the personal Seal of the High Priest (small cylinder seal, depicts a nude hero battling a bull-man; can be used to open containers safely in the Sacred Archive area; provides protection against the Bull-Man).

Chapel storage rooms

Guarded by a Bull-Man (HD 7, very strong, bonus to grappling). If shown the Seal of the High Priest, bows and doesn’t attack.
Treasure: votive statues, furniture decorated with gold and ivory.

Archive area

Entered from the north side of the Courtyard, through a small vestibule.
The entrance is flanked by stone reliefs. When first seen, there are 4 winged genies with bird heads and vicious beaks. The head of one of them was damaged. When the spectators turn away, the three undamaged genies disappear from the reliefs. These three active winged genie guardians will then invisibly stalk and attack the intruders at the most convenient moment.

Winged Genie Guardians (HD 6, 2 attacks, limited flight [long jumps])
The genies have to be defeated, or, alternatively, their stone slabs can be broken (by at least two blows dealing 4 or more damage). If a slab is broken, one genie disintegrates.



Main archives (North part)

Myriads of clay shards. For each turn spent searching, 1d20 complete clay tablets can be salvaged, up to a total of 100.
The tablets contain economical records, hymns, epic stories, historical annals.

Sacred archives (West part)

Five limestone chests. Sealed with wax – the wax has the imprint of a cylinder seal (nude hero battling a bull-man). If the wax is broken, the perpetrator takes 1d8 damage and must save against Magic. On a failed save, the word THIEF is burnt into their forehead (in cuneiform Akkadian).
A person holding the Seal of the High Priest (see Chapel area) can break the wax without any consequences.
Each chest holds 1d12 complete clay tables. Descriptions of rituals, hymns. Every fifth tablet from this room is also a random spell “scroll” (written in cuneiform Akkadian).