#elfmoon

Inside the Necropolis

No specific method of entering the Necropolis is given. A number of methods could work. A secret tunnel could be found inside the outer shelter in the stonewood. Or persistent characters could tunnel their way through the wall or burst an opening in the glass, they're not invincible. It is also possible that the characters are let into the city by an overly convenient opening in the wall, which promptly disappears after they have entered and can only be found again by knowing the pattern of its ever-shifting movements. Possibly it would be ideal for characters to encounter the Necropolis early on in their explorations, perhaps explore the leucrotta's lair described previously, but then be scared away and come back later better prepared for what waits beyond.

Inside the walls is a great stone city of thickly walled buildings formed seamlessly from stones of all hues. In the center of the city is a massive stepped pyramid, raised on an open central square and fronted with a great staircase. The plan of the city is squared, with broad central arcades sprouting a grid of tighter streets and passages. Aside from the pyramid, most buildings are squat one-story affairs, with some higher structures of two or three floors present. The atmosphere is swelteringly hot, regardless of the climate outside. Moreover, many of the outer stone surfaces are covered in a dense network of climbing liana vines. Broaf-leafed trees have also pierced the streets and passageways, forming further obstructions. Characters exploring the avenues may encounter larger-than-life beasts. These include hercules beetles, trapdoor spiders, and massive 40-foot pythons lounging in branches above the streets and eager to drop down on unwary adventurers.

Neither the plants nor the great beasts ever seem to enter city buildings, oddly enough. It's like someone has taken the time to trim away hundreds of miles of liana vines. Inside the structures characters will find a peculiar stone civilization. Most buildings are clearly recognizable as homes, but there are also institutions of civic life including libraries and theaters. These spaces are filled with carvings of furniture, clothing, food, discarded waste, and everything else needed for settled existence. The libraries and some homes have stone books left open with writing visible on the immobile pages. There is in fact a great deal of writing across the city, and any linguist could spend a great deal of time decoding and investigating these messages. This static tableau is further populated by thousands of humanoid statues representing the full range of a society. Every statue is pristine, with one exception: heads and hands have been roughly broken away from every figure the characters can locate. Aside from this damage, they are strikingly lifelike.

The Inhabitants

The characters are not the only fully sapient creatures in the Necropolis walls. Three factions of humanoids live within the buildings of the stone city, sharing space with the scarred statues. The most populous group are the Snuffkin, intelligent clothes-wearing mice smaller than human beings but a little taller than dwarves. Parties of adventurers may be surprised by a four-person mousefolk patrol, mostly carrying clubs with one Snuffkin sergeant wielding a surprisingly sharp marble sword and wearing a scavenged shale breastplate. The mice will attack if provoked but a melee is not assured, especially if the characters are sufficiently charismatic or intimidating (the latter is easier, mice are mice after all). The mousefolk will suspect the characters of being spies for or an arcane weapon produced by their bitter rivals but can be convinced otherwise.

These bitter rivals are the Viken, a society of intelligent foxes fewer in number than the Snuffkin but cleverer and taller, a little taller than humans in fact. If explorers head directly to libraries or other buildings related to culture and learning, they may find the foxes dwelling there. A first encounter with the foxes will also be fraught, with outsiders again being suspected of being in league with the enemy. Suave and obviously sharp adventurers will avoid an outbreak of violence. Compared to the mice the Viken tend to be more magically adept than the mice, though this distinction isn't black and white. The foxes also pride themselves on their thorough education through a culture of oral histories and songs. However, despite living in libraries almost none of the foxes can read. Their affinity for libraries is more symbolic than practical, to tell the truth. Relatively more mice can read, but they tend to use writing for pragmatic tasks such as communication instead of reading what portions of books could theoretically be read (in fact, Snuffkin messages carved on walls may be one of the first signs characters have of recent activity). Characters may think these groups are more similar than they are different. This is definitely true in some ways. They both hunt the large beetles and snakes and prepare pounded root mash for their meals, and both groups hoard moderate troves of the stranger and more obviously miraculous devices found within the city walls. But these two groups have been feuding for far longer than any living memory can tell.

The generations-long feud between the Viken and the Snuffkin stems from both groups believing that they alone are the builders of the Necropolis, that their species is the one represented by the headless and handless statues with which they cohabitate. For each faction, the other is an outsider creature which was either introduced after the downfall of "our ancestral country," or possibly even the malefactor that brought about the end of "our golden age." This is a battle which easily spans centuries, and it has taken on mythic proportions for the feuding species. The culture heroes for both the foxes and the mice are those legendary ancestors who carried out great victories on the mice or foxes respectively. Possibly related to this, neither species has very much information about the creation of this city or its reason for being, outside of highly metaphorical and contradictory creation narratives. Motivated adventurers could attempt to conduct research to try and get to the bottom of this, and may be able to piece together some of the history here (see a forthcoming post on the inside of the stepped pyramid for details on this). But both groups are equally hostile to the a faction of newcomers recently appeared within the stone walls.

This third group consists of around 20 aarakocra, sapient bird creatures. Some years ago, the aarakocra formed part of a diplomatic envoy associated with the Court of the Roc high in the mountains (another major adventure location, detailed in a future post). Coming upon the Necropolis, the diplomat insisted on investigating a secret door in the outer wall that she had discovered in her researches. Finding the door and exploring the city briefly, the diplomatic coterie was ambushed by a slime-horror and the diplomat was killed. As only the diplomat could pin-point the constantly shifting door, the group was trapped inside the walls. The aarakocra consist of the sky-knights tasked with the envoy's protection, as well as the more adaptable courtiers and hangers-on. They do not have the survival knowledge of the Viken or Snuffkin, and so they lead a more hard-scrabble existence and are concerned primarily with survival. The birds could probably have learned more from the other inhabitants of the city, except that the others tend to studiously avoid them because of the aarakocra's tendency to predate on deceased foxes and mice left behind after raids or skirmishes. It has even happened that an aarakocra has predated on a living mouse on occasion, a fact that could possibly shock the mice and the foxes into an uneasy truce against a common enemy if it became known. The birds are secretive but can easily recognize a common cause with adventurers when they see one.  Incidentally, the mice and the foxes will actively opposed concerted action to tunnel through the city walls for reasons of homeland security, and if a tunnel has already been made by painstaking effort they will oppose anyone leaving by it.

Characters should have their hands full dealing with what they find after breaching the wall of the Necropolis and exploring its bizarre stone city. There is fortune and glory to be had here, plenty of opportunity for adventure. But even greater danger and rewards wait for those who manage to find their way into and underneath the great stepped pyramid at the center. Players seeking to uncover all of the secrets of the Necropolis will have to put that on their to-do list. I'll detail the pyramid and the deeper levels of the Necropolis in a future post, hopefully with less a time span than between this one and the previous Elfmoon post! Thanks for reading if you've made it this far. :)