Pharaoh’s Tomb
An ambience of decrepitude lingers within this low-ceilinged room. Upon the walls, unnatural flames flicker inside rune-etched sconces, but their crackling flames exude no heat. Gem-encrusted chests placed around the perimeter of the room sparkle in the dim light, and numerous burial urns have their throats sealed with blood-red wax, clay skins marred by soot. […]
Grand Opera House: Auction
The main curtain has been raised, unveiling the opera house stage, a broad swath of well-trodden wood floorboards. The house lights illuminate center stage, where the lots up for auction await bidders. Each lot is displayed on its own table or appropriate support, and a folded card in front of each item indicates its lot […]
Grand Opera House: Underwater Shell
The opera house, a place dedicated to the performing arts, is itself a mesmerizing masterpiece. Thousands of velvet-covered seats fill the cavernous auditorium: curving rows in the orchestra section, seats on the elevated mezzanine level and galleries, up to the exclusive balconies. The latter have the best view of the crown jewel: the stage, framed […]
Tomb of Sand
The ritual sand paintings on the floor continue out onto the stage, which is flanked by curved platforms. On them are low-bordered niches for the preparation of the dead. The stage looks over the long dromos—the walkway that crosses the sand-strewn floor—marked by the stages of the dead’s journey.
This exquisite map depicts the exterior of […]
Endless Dungeon 41: The Ouroboros
The passage leads away to either side, eventually curving out of sight. A charge dances on the cool air, carrying with it the scents of ozone and charcoal. It pulses in time with the rise and fall of the rippling sea-green radiance issuing from the masonry lining every surface—which gives the impression of being underwater. […]
Endless Dungeon 14: Desecrated Sylvan Sanctuary
These shadowed corridors, lit sparingly by the embers in black-iron braziers, harbor discordant secrets. A hum of old magic stirs: the hint of something wild, old, and green hanging in the stale air. Burly roots break through tiles and walls, cracks winding like veins of lightning through the stone. Doors and furniture lie smashed upon […]
Mountain Totem
Though you’ve never set eyes on it before, this place feels both familiar and abhorrent, like seeing some hated enemy you’d thought long dead. Wind whips across a grassy clifftop roughly encircled by a deep crevasse. A natural bridge of stone crosses the gap and connects to a much-used muddy path that leads between rib-like […]
Shrine Entrance
A pair of braziers flicker eternally beside the entrance of the shrine, their flames unmoved by the breeze whistling through the valley. As you approach the towering doors set into the rock, you feel a weight pressing down upon you, as if you now carry a great burden. Two figures—eroded beyond recognition—stare down from the […]
Temple of the Couatl
At the top of the temple stands an archway, shadow obscuring the entrance just enough that one must approach on foot to see whether the portal inside is open or shut. The shadow is cast by an enormous effigy of a king of the feathered serpents, fully twelve-feet tall at its uppermost point. A semicircular […]
Beneath the Temple of the Fallen
The cool night gives way to balmy air just inside the ruined walls. Across the floor, snakes slide in the grooves between the odd tiles. Large and small, they hunt and bask amid the rubble as if on a warm day. Some emerge from holes that open at every tile’s corners. The place radiates the […]
