Arvin lays out the job.
"We're going back to the valley, Astra...the Tomb of Queen Zdeska..."Valley I am referring back to the "Valley of the Dead" that you visited last time. So all the relevant details are the same. Here they are again in case you want to review them:
0. It was created by a duel between Abolar, the God of Fishermen, and Seneope, the First User [of Magic] (they were annihilated by the ensuing reality whiplash)
1. Over 1000 generations of Nobles, Kings, Queens, Concubines, Merchants, Warriors, Scholars etc. are buried there. It is the largest cemetery in the world.
2. There is only one entrance: a staircase that leads directly down into the depths
3. For every person buried (i.e thrown down the staircase along with all their possessions) a personalized tomb is created by the distorted reality and the body is stored appropriately
4. A map is then "revealed" to a "Seeing-Cartographer" through a dream, who then writes the map down and sells it to the ancestor of the tomb (i.e highest bidder)
5. Without this map, the Valley is an endless, ever-shifting, random sequence of rooms; a collection of chaos
6. With the map, the Valley changes itself to match the contents of the map (more-or-less; the Valley is fickle)
7. Anyone that steals from a tomb (even with a map) without permission from an ancestor, is cursed (or so its believed)
8. Anything can happen in the Valley; magic is so concentrated there that reality is less strict (+1 to max RT)
Wizards' dens are an appropriate term. Their inhabitants have seen little natural sunlight, shut up with their books, their pipes, the occasional bag of smuggled herbage. They are creatures with crazed eyes, suspended forever between genius and insanity, with unkempt beards, un-brushed hair and teeth, uncut fingernails. They stand, hunchbacked, weak-limbed and slow - turtles challenging time, and winning.
Here they live, amid paper and wood. No longer practitioner's of magic, they are the transcendent masters of the "True Art", at their fingertips roll the God-magic, the Old-Power; they are walkers of the nameless path. They speak seldom, but their materials are always open to the public. They do not charge for this service, but a donation is customary. You visit several of the den's in town. The smell takes some getting used to, but after a few hours of research you find several interesting leads. After a few more hours of fact-checking and cross-referencing, you've narrowed your count...
3. Another map of the Valley, this one of Queen Zdeska - so cunning in politics she was said to be Sabi, the goddess of guile, incarnate. Some even believe she's still alive, waiting for a chance to return to the surface.
...You speak to several of your fellow mages around town, following leads, exchanging coin and drink for information, perusing old scrolls. At the end of several days of searching your results are less than stellar. There are many theories, many more rumors and few concrete facts. Everyone with a tongue and a wet throat has a story about the Valley. It is difficult to tell the hogwash from the truth.
Old diaries and journals mention unending bad luck, diseases, even divine retribution. Yet in each case, it is difficult to tell whether the misfortune was caused by any sort of "curse" from the Valley, or just coincidence. On the other hand, you do remember the ancients of your tribe telling you stories about the gods, how they manipulate the world so subtly that no one can tell whether they've interfered, but through their soft touch great wonders come to pass. They told you it was the purest form of magic. You didn't believe them. Magic is anything but subtle.
Several of your contacts have advised you to obtain permission, others to abandon the enterprise entirely, and some to ignore, what they regard as foolish superstition. The only thing that seems to be certain, is that the curse, if there even is one, is neither obvious nor immediate. Which probably means it is the result of fear mixed with imagination.
But who can say? The world is too strange for narrow-mindedness.
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Topic: Tomb Raiders: The Forum Game (Need Puzzle-Solvers!) (Read 27917 times)