Category Archives: Ancient Akaesia: The Perfect Dungeon
THE MYSTEREUM
This article (the one below) gave me an idea (although I also partially patterned it after the Library and Museus of ancient Alexandria) for a new adventure/dungeon site or complex. It sits right outside of a major city and appears as an ancient museum to the civilian population and for all public intents and purposes this is all that is known of the complex. It contains numerous replicas (and, it is claimed, some very real examples) of ancient and powerful devices, items, inventions, artifacts, and even some holy relics.
Visitors may enter the Mystereum by day, and during special occasions (or public festivals) at night, to see these things on display, to read descriptions of what they were or of their supposed history and ownership, the known chains of evidence regarding their authenticity, and to be given guided tours and to hear lectures given by the archivists, historians, sages, and “illuminated craftsmen and laborers” who inhabit or work at the temple. For it is indeed considered not only a museum and lecture hall and library, but also a sort of Temple of the Past.
Unknown to all but a few, however, is the fact that the Mystereum is actually built over the ruins of a much, much older sub-subterranean site and labyrinth (whose tunnels extend for miles in all directions) in the center of which sits the original (or is it?) site of a far more ancient Mystereum.
Not all of this (original?) and far older Mystereum has been excavated and cleared but in it is housed many of the true devices, artifacts, and relics of the above ground and public Mystereum. There are also many rumors that in the still to be excavated ruins of this older Mystereum are even more ancient and antique artifacts, items, and relics, some of supposed immense value and great power.
This underground Mystereum (called the Mega-Mystereum or the Magnaheiron) is slowly being excavated, maintained, restored, and worked by a small cadre of Cultists called the Lysterae, whose chiefs are called the Medikhee.
The Lysterae in general consider themselves the Guardians of what they consider to be a Holy Site of both Magic and Supernatural Mystery in the form of the Magnaheiron, but the Medikhee think of themselves as both the Oracles and Visionaries of this ancient site, as well as the explorers and employers of the fantastic items it houses and contains.
Because the Magnaheiron is so ancient and has only been recently rediscovered (and was lost to both history and memory) only the Lysterae and the Medikhee currently know of its locale. The only currently known point of entrance to the labyrinth lies underneath a closed off section of the above ground Mystereum below an abandoned display that leads into what is apparently an old well shaft. This well shaft led to the far north end of labyrinth which, if followed correctly, eventually led to the center of the maze which led to the long abandoned ruins of the Magnaheiron.
Who first discovered this well shaft, the labyrinth, and the Magnaheiron (if indeed it was the same individual or individuals) the Medikhee will not say, however soon after exploring the site and upon realizing just how large it was the Medikhee began to swear to secrecy certain loyal servants and companions to secrecy and thus formed the Lysterae.
The Lysterae were told by the Medikhee that eventually they wish to fully restore the Magnaheiron and open it and the many benefits it might possibly contain (if only in part) to the general public. However the Medikhee have aims and an agenda of their own which does not include making any of their discoveries widely known.
At the moment secrecy, armed Lysterae guardsmen, the large underground maze complex, lack of historical records, and some of the artifacts that the Medikhee have already discovered provide all of the security necessary to prevent any knowledge of the Magnaheiron from reaching the pubic.
Although a few bizarre rumors do circulate regarding something strange being associated with the Mystereum nothing really concrete is known and few if any suspect the underground Magnaheiron. Thus, so far, and as far as is known, it has never been infiltrated or penetrated by any except the Lysterae or the Medikhee.
Because I like this idea so much (turnign a Museum into an excavation/exploration site) I am thinking of making the Mystereum not only a stand alone adventure but also incorporating it into my Megadungeon Complex which I call Akaesia, or, The Perfect Dungeon.
As a matter of fact I like the idea so much that I might also turn it into a short story or simply integrate some of the ideas and a modified version of the complex/site straight into my mythological fantasy the Kithariune.
Well, I’ve either worked or traveled all day. Except for my morning training routines. Although I usually don’t watch TV during the week I’m tired enough to want to relax now. So I think I may go watch The Flash with the wife and daughter, and then do some more moon watching and star gazing tonight with my telescope.
Have a good evening folks…
Corpus Museum
The world’s first interactive human body museum also serves as a chair for a giant orange man.
In the outskirts of Leiden in the Netherlands, there rests a giant, 115-foot-tall man colored orange. Sitting on a two-story platform beside an eleven story glass building, this towering orange man welcomes you to the Corpus Museum, the world’s first museum to take visitors through the entire anatomy of the human body.
The giant orange body at the Corpus Museum is cut in its center by the glass walls of the building, making it appear to be a silhouette. In reality, the orange man is a full body resting half inside and half outside of the museum. The sculpture immediately catches the eye of cars passing down Leiden’s A44 Highway, beckoning them to the unusual museum.
The Corpus Museum’s hour-long tour begins with an escalator ride up the leg to the knee, where visitors will step inside an open wound. Next comes the genital area, where visitors will put on 3D glasses to witness a sperm cell fertilizing an egg. Further up the giant body come the intestines, where you can witness the digestion of a cheese sandwich before your eyes. After passing through the ventricles of the human heart, visitors reach the head. Here, adults can observe pulsing neurons in the brain, while children can jump atop a giant tongue as a burping sound erupts from a speaker system.
The museum’s upper floor features multiple interactive activities and a cafeteria. As visitors eat, they can look at the giant orange man jutting through the glass walls beside them.
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ARSOGINSERL’S APOTROEV: THE TERROR TROVE
ARSOGINSERL’S APOTROEV
So I’ve been working on some other things in my spare time while not working on my novel The Old Man for NaNoWriMo. One of those things is I have been continuing with design work upon The Perfect Dungeon (working title).
One of the ideas I had this week was for the Terror Trove. (That’s the working term – it is a sort of obverse image of the Treasure Hoard as I’ll explain in a moment.)
The Terror Trove originated as a secret mountainous cave area in the wet-desert just outside the main ancient city ruins around which the Perfect Dungeon story primarily revolves.
A man who was both a powerful Cleric and a powerful Wizard decided that he would take it upon himself to seek to discover and “hoard” every evil artefact and relic he could locate.
His original intention was to construct an “Apotroev” (a reverse treasure hoard – one that was magically and physically separated from our world and one that could never again be plundered) so powerful and so carefully hermetically sealed that the powerful items he placed there would be in effect forever cut off from and removed from the rest of the world. Thereby sealed away, never to be discovered or employed as a threat again these items were magically exiled from the world since the Cleric Wizard (named Arsoginserl, though also sometimes called Insarl the Illuminare) could find no method of destroying most of these things.
“Arsoginserl’s Apotroev” worked very well for centuries after his death, but eventually, due to earthquakes and due to the fact that some of these artefacts and relics were so powerful they began to consume and absorb one another the Apotroev weakened. The evil and magic in them thus multiplied many times in power and force effectively “irradiating evil and magic out into the surrounding world” just as a shielded bunker designed to store radioactive waste might leak if damaged or overwhelmed.
Eventually this was one of the reasons that led to the demise of the original and ancient city of Pesharan.
Anyway Arsoginserl’s Apotroev will be one of the potential sandbox areas attached to the Perfect Dungeon (which is actually a campaign series) if the players want to seek to find and explore it.
However by this point, nearly a millennium after it was originally populated and sealed most of the items have been consumed by the more powerful artefacts and relics and the “survivors” are at war with each other. All of the survivors are by this time either artificially intelligent or sentient or inhabited by evil spirits, or all of the above. And all of these surviving “items” desire to escape back into the wider world. Making them incredibly cunning and dangerous and desperate. Even exposure to the still sealed Apotroev itself has powerful, malignant, and long lasting side effects upon anyone approaching it.
Also buried in the Apotroev, in a secret compartment never discovered by even the most powerful artefacts and relics trapped there, are a number of preserved relics from Arsoginserl himself, such as his robe, his mitre, his crooked staff, his Roseheart, a book of Arsoginserl’s prophecies, a book of his personally created spells (otherwise unknown), his Communion Rod, other valuables, and the Benegemm (an experimental gemstone Arsoginserl himself had created with the help of an angelic ally) with which he hoped to one day cure evil and nullify evil magic. No one knows how far Arsoginserl got in the development and perfection of the Benegemm but it was reputed to have many marvelous capabilities and properties (even if it was still unable to cure evil) by the one account that ever mentioned it. Such as soft-burying and freeing the souls of certain undead creatures. Or encouraging certain criminals to take up a monastic or religious life. Or even to become a Cleric.
The story of the Benegemm is supposedly indirectly related to the famous tale of the thief Tarand Moirloss who later converted from his life of crime and became the famous Cleric Larlfast Urlinger. Moirloss accidentally touched the Benegemm hoping to examine it for potential value and was immediately struck “dead” for seven days. Moirloss recovered in his tomb chamber and was able to dig his way around the setting stone of his tomb and escape his premature grave. Moirloss then sought out Arsoginserl who gave him the legendary Seven Penances of Supernal Peril to complete after which Moirloss converted and was renamed Larlfast Urlinger the Upright. Urlinger is the same cleric often credited with having created the “quill of the thrice inscribed god.”
Though some say that Urlinger became a wandering Cleric-Wizard like his mentor and abbot Arsoginserl, and that the quill was actually constructed by another, a Sage and Hermit named Ramonil the Righteous.
http://nanowrimo.org/forums/all-ages-coffee-house/threads/270499
Tome and Tomb 