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→Part 3 The City of the Pillars
At some point the hooded figure starts chanting in a strange language.
Action : Knowledge, he speaks in Aramaic, he is quoting the bible'''Exodus 10:21-23.'''
"So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or move about for three days."
They are now in front of a gigantic city carved in a mountain with hundreds of pillars covered in gold.
The players are now completely dehydrated, they start to hallucinate and see shadows inhabiting the city and the city is in very good condition.
The king start whispering in they ears, louder and louder.
Everyone now has a whispers of madness timer of 5 minutes (and stop their current timer), if they fall into madness, they become a shadow themselves.
Adjust this time to 10 min if everyone is already very low in Feats.
They are lost in this labyrinth of pillars, where should they go ? They know the king is triggering this madness, but they don’t know where he is.
Action : Remember in the dream where the black statue was. (as long as they don’t bring this up, the time is running)
They now arrive at the heart of the city.
They arrive in an underground chamber with a forest of dark pillars.
Each engraved with Hieratic filled with gold and between each lines in the translation in the local language Nabataean Aramaic.
In the middle of the room is a black statue with one hand missing, the other hand had a black and red stain in the hand (no philosopher’s stone of course)
He is sitting on a pile of bones made of pure gold (they’re actually just coevered in gold)
Just like in their dream !
In front of them is a very tall 3 meters figure in a big hood with a crown.
It lowers the hood, it is Roncelin !
He quotes the bible.
'''Exodus 12:29-30'''
"At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well."
And he starts attacking the players.
Hitting him doesn’t do anything ! Every hits just makes him bleed sand, as if they had just hit sand.
Action : To hurt him they should hit the statue. It contains the corpse of Shaddād bin ʽĀd, the legendary king of Iram. As they strike it, they see that it’s his name written on the statue.
He starts screaming and and army of shadows are rushing towards the players trying to strangle them ! As the letters on the pillars start to glow of an evil red.
Even the sun is now painfully red.
No matter what they do, attacking them only turns them to sand.
Action : The players have to start reading the letters in the columns.
The shadows are now terrified as the wrath of god is brought upon them, a storm flow fire falls upon them.
'''Music : Danse Macabre'''
And the players wake up in the ruined deserted city. Those that were killed are dead and dry.
Know knows how long they’ve been here.
It’s Roncelin who wakes them up giving them something to drink.
He franctically start to copy the content of the pillars on a blank book.
He also takes the little remains of the black and red liquid in the hand of the king.
TODO : Re-write the final quote.
Finally, I have found it !
Those columns have the oldest Alchemical text known to mankind, the Apocryphon of Jannes, the Pharao’s magician from the Old Testament !
And those remains of the Philosopher’s stone ! This will make a proper Materia Prima.
Take the bones of the king, I have to make a proper cover for my book !
At the end, of the book there’s a drawing o Roncelin’s face and short retranscription of parts of this book, if the players decide to read it, they can gain Whispers of Madness as their level up Feat.
Epilogue, they receive a letter, the Red Knight has been found by a spy, the spy follows him discretely now, he is in Rhodes.
=Epilogue=