The Temple of the Snake God
July 20th, 2010
Hello everyone and welcome back to Grave Plots, where we endeavor to bring you new plot hooks and adventure ideas. As you all know, this is Fortress Week here at Necromancers of the Northwest, and so I’ve decided to provide you with a fortress idea ready to be molded into a full-fledged and fantastic adventure in dungeon delving. The fortress will be broken down into a number of different sections for clarity. Each section describes one of the four critical (or at least semi-important) areas of fortress development: the keep, the inhabitants, the boss, and the goal.
The Temple of the Snake God
The Keep: A fortified citadel, carved from a single piece of glassy obsidian and surrounding a step-style pyramid of cyclopean proportions, dominates the landscape in the sweltering mountain jungles where the savage races rule. The black stone reflects sunlight during the day, making the structure’s brilliant luminescence visible for miles even in the dense jungle. During these hours the surface temperature of the outer fortress is more than a little uncomfortable for most humanoids, though, oddly, the temples inhabitants don’t seem to notice the rise in temperature. At night the smooth black stone of the temple vanishes into the darkness of the evening, making it difficult to spot from a distance.
The pyramid’s interior is pitch dark save for where the large door arches allow in sunlight, creating a patch of scalding hot stone. Those who enter the base of the pyramid (which leads up unto the temple proper, which has no apparent entrance from outside) find themselves in massive high ceilinged hallways with plain smooth walls. The long hallways connect small, cramped square rooms, each one completely devoid of furnishings except for a single raised altar of obsidian. These altars are all of a single piece with the citadel’s floor, solid black but for a slight discoloration where the blood of many sacrifices to the dark god worshiped in the temple above has permanently stained the stone. Ramps rather than stairs rise almost imperceptivity to take the temple’s occupants from level to level.
The temple mounted on top of the citadel consists of 11 open chambers, one for each step in the pyramid. Each chamber’s walls are smooth and plain but are covered with the scaled skin of many different forms of reptilian life. The surface of each chamber is covered with live snakes, except where several featureless black obsidian altars rise out of the floor, again formed from the same piece of stone as the rest of the fortress. The remains of humanoid sacrifices (reptilian and otherwise) are slowly rotting across the tops of the blackened altars. The only apparent means of moving from level to level are the open shafts in the roof of each chamber, from which a snake will occasionally fall hissing to the ground. The first chamber features 10 such shafts, each large enough for 10 medium humanoids to comfortably fit through. The second chamber features nine shafts each large enough for around nine medium humanoids. The third floor has eight such shafts fit for eight medium creatures and so on, until the shaft connecting the tenth and eleventh floors is narrow enough to emit only one creature of medium size at a time. The eleventh chamber is distinct both from the rest of the temple and from the citadel in that it contains two golden altars carved with the forms of four nine-headed winged vipers soaring above a field of skulls; in addition, from the ceiling hangs a man-sized diamond representation of a two-headed cobra, which continually spills forth full-grown king cobras from its gaping, fanged mouth.
In addition to the temple above, a pair of ancient spell-sealed doors of an unknown black metal (blacksteel) lead to a system of ancient caves long abandoned by civilization, savage or otherwise. If the enchantment on the doors can be broken, or if they can otherwise be bypassed (stone shape, pass wall, etherealness, dimension door, teleport, greater teleport, etc, shouldn’t be sufficient to by pass these doors, unless for some reason you need them to be), the PCs will find the caves below to have been artificially, rather than naturally, created in an extremely orderly fashion. At the end of any of the perfectly round tunnels is a gateway, also made from blacksteel and leading to far-off locations on this and other worlds. Other than the gateways, there seems to be nothing else here.
The Inhabitants: On the fortress’s exterior, lizardfolk sentries tirelessly patrol the walls and balconies of the citadel, armed with obsidian spears and dressed in hide armor. These lizardfolk fight to the death with a grim silent resolve and fanatical fervor. Close inspection reveals that the sentries aren’t lizardfolk at all, but that they are in fact highly accurate replicas, constructed from steel and enchanted with an unfamiliar magic. (Add +2 natural armor, then apply construct traits to the lizardfolk monster +1 CR, add construct hit dice and templates to provide more of a challenge as necessary).
Once the PCs fight their way inside the citadel they must deal with the guards inside. These consist of more of the lizardfolk constructs, as well as the lizardfolk warriors and priests who reside within the stronghold. These creatures differ from traditional lizardfolk in several subtle ways, being more snakelike and possessing a more cunning intellect than their ordinary counterparts. The lizardfolk favor reptile hide armor, decorated with feathers from brightly colored birds, and prefer to attack with javelins before retreating to a better defended position, typically one where they can gather reinforcements for a more decisive strike against the PCs. Meanwhile the lizardfolk constructs attempt to halt the PCs’ progress by wading into melee without any hesitation, even against unreasonable odds. Lizardfolk clerics, who should make up about 1/5 the lizardfolk population within the citadel, hurl spells at the PCs in an attempt to weaken them prior to closing with their obsidian daggers; they focus on weakened targets before moving on to stronger opponents. The lizardfolk relish combat, and fight with a fervent and insatiable bloodlust, usually to the death.
The temple itself is home to dozens of snakes which litter the floor (about one snake per 20ft2). The snakes are all massive cobras with unlikely scale patterns, and they seem to act with an unnatural intellect (apply advanced and giant creature templates; add hit dice as necessary). In addition to the snakes, each level contains one cleric or druid conducting sacrifices every hour or so (primarily young lizardfolk, but other sacrifices are possible, particularly if the PCs have come here to rescue potential sacrifices; see The Goal below). Chances are, when the PCs arrive the priest is preparing a victim to be sacrificed (an activity that occupies most of the priests’ time; how convenient this might be for the PCs is up to your discretion). The lizardfolk victims cherish the opportunity to be made sacrifices and so will offer PCs attempting to “rescue” them nothing in the way of assistance. The priests fight the PCs with a desperate desire to kill them, both to spill blood in the name of their dark god and to keep them from interfering with the work of the high priestess on the upper levels.
The Boss: The lizardfolk high priestess, Thazzala, rediscovered this temple around ten years ago and received a vision from the dark snake god, Zanrasra, who appeared to Thazzala in the form of a two-headed cobra. The vision instructed Thazzala to bring her tribe here and make sacrifices to him, promising in return to make them the strongest of all the lizardfolk tribes. The experience left Thazzala forever altered, warping her physical form with more snakelike features. From that day forward she has been the loyal servant of Zanrasra, obeying his commands without hesitation. Using her newfound powers she took control of her tribe and relocated them to the obsidian ruins of the snake god’s temple, and has led their society to join in the bloody and long-forgotten ways Zanrasra expects from all his followers. After ten years of worshiping Zanrasra, her only desire in life is to serve her new god and spread his foul religion, first to the jungle provinces surrounding the temple and then to rest of the world.
The Goal: The PCs may have come to the temple ruins purely by accident, attracted by the exotic splendor of the citadel. They may have come here to rescue prisoners taken by the lizardfolk to be used as sacrifices. They may also have come to use the mythical transportation system found in the keep’s subterranean section. Finally, they may have come to speak with Thazzala for some reason or to join in worship of Zanrasra.