Random Encounters Maps

Hook: The red-robed dervish ahead of you motions for you to stop as you approach the basalt bridge... It seems stable enough, to you... Beautifully-carved, two still-burning, highly polished braziers flank the entrance to it. It rises upward to a gap in the rocks on the other side... The man's body is tense and alert, the hand upon his curved sword's hilt tightens as he peers over the chasm of cooled lava. '... Something is wrong, here. Someone has been to this place. No one should have been here... Look...' He gestures with an ebony hand and a finely-manicured forefinger indicating the massive, polished gold doors tucked back in the shadow of the cleft in the volcanic rock face in front of you. They were open! Wide open, in fact. Folded inward upon their hinges, further lost in the shadows of the mountain... 'This is uncharacteristic... I cannot go forward.' He makes a gesture of protection over his chest, and continues, 'I am forbidden to enter this sacred...

  The Hook: 'Well, yes...' The man in the hood answers you uncertainly. 'This is The Historium... We weren't expecting anyone... What is your business? We are busy...' The last a slight increase in pitch and a flash of annoyed anger to accompany it. You stare hard at the individual before you... Certainly even the scribes here knew of your errand? It wasn't secret... The man's eyes shift to the left, suddenly, and he changes the foot he's standing on. You're looking up at the portly scribe with the pock-marked face . He's waiting for you to answer  at the top of a marble staircase . Half of him is peeking out of a crack in the massive, heavy double doors leading into the white marble structure. His brown robes seem uncomfortable. He keeps pulling on them. What is this?  You ask yourself...  The Historium is well known, but, you thought it would be different... Your friend, the wizard is still, staring at the man like a hawk... He nods at the man...

  ENCOUNTERS Special - See below FEATURES The sandstone complex was built by the bird people of Lintu (LEEN-too), small, sparrow-like humanoids the size of small children. They bury their kings and other royalty in beautifully-carved cliff-tombs with open, spacious (for them) rooms where they can 'flutter' up, excitedly, if desired, and gain some air. The tunnels of this complex are made of cut sandstone with peaked ceilings. They are 8 feet in height, generally. The air is dusty and cold inside, since these tombs are located so high up in the mountains in northern lands. Most metal is bronze or gold Traps  - Wherever there is an [x] inside a box, there is a trap. These are usually in front of statues. Pressure plates that can be deactivated, in some way, by a clever thief. When stepped on, if the check to avoid it isn't made, these plates wake the statue near it, which is a sandstone bird king bearing a short, curved, scimitar-like weapon and round shield. The statue steps...

  Hook: The rumours are true! The Ghûl Cult has returned! Its members have built a redoubt under the old fortress in the heavily forested southern hills! Its robed human members are accompanied by savage ork mercenaries the Ghûl Lord hires as guards, scouting patrols, and slave labour... No one was prepared for the news. The old fortress was the cult's former stronghold, but, it was razed to the ground and left in ruin at the end of a long war, hundreds of years prior. Apparently, the orks carved a complex underneath the old ruin, out of sight of nearly everyone, under guidance by the new Ghûl Lord. Skeletons have been seen occasionally wandering the woods, though no one took those rumours seriously. Not until your group visited the maze-like structure, and discovered the truth, at great personal cost. Details: It is true, the cult has returned... The new Ghûl Lord has been amassing a force of undead, monsters, and men, to attack the local settlements, starting with the nearby fore...

Hook: You stand before the dais, arms outstretched, a pull so strong you don't think you are sure it's right... A hand grabs you and pulls you back, but, you fight it... Another hand, and shouting... What? Why? The sword... it calls to you... Details: The Dreaming Blade of  is an ancient artefact from the days when the creatures of Faerie were more numerous.  was a tyrant whose hand was harsh and full of power he could not tame within himself. In an effort to know discipline, to cool his head, mostly in war, so he would not lose by way of his extreme temper, he sought help from the Faeries, from the forest where he knew a guardian of the Old World would be waiting to receive him.  was well-known to the Faerie world. He was an old enemy who had done great harm to many of the creatures belonging to it. He had subjugated and burned forests and the people and beasts within them. When they heard that infamous  was looking for Faerie magic to heal him of his titanic anger and vio...

  Hook: The four rune stones, when placed into the bases of the minotaur caryatids located int he tomb chamber, trigger a release somewhere nearby... A grinding, moaning scrape of stone-on-stone fills the room. Turning, you see the entirety of Rŵnos's sarcophagus, as well as the stepped dais it rests upon, moving slowly backward. After it retreats about ten feet, a hole in the granite flagstones is revealed. A stone stair spirals down into the darkness. Stale air drifts upward as you peer into the opening... No sound emanates from it. It is eerily silent... Details: The ecology, here, is unique. There are forces opposed to and allied with one another within, struggling for a place and dominance in the maze. A clan of imps led by their aggressive leader, a larger imp of impressive stature and strategy (but, still an imp, and still a coward), rules a portion of the upper maze. The imps are ultimately controlled by the Rat King and his pestilent, cruel, rat people living in the caves ...

Hook: Wandering down the granite stairs to the water maze is much the same experience you had descending the steps that led to the air maze. There is a light ahead that seems but a pinprick at this distance. It's warm, steady, like a pole star, only below you instead of above. The sound of rushing water greets your senses, as well. Using the light as your guide, like a moth to a flame, you descend until you reach the light, the rushing water sound becoming a thunderous sound that fills your ears and blocks out most other noises the closer you get. You approach the light through a portal flanked by the minotaur statues you have grown accustomed to seeing. Like the other maze entrances, it leads into a natural granite cavern that opens wide. Before you stretches a vast chamber filled with a tumultuous sea, and a sky hanging over it that is much like that from the mountain chamber, only less cloudy, at present. Sun light beams down pleasantly upon you, and the air, though cool, is ple...

Hook: As you reach the end of the dark gray granite stone stairs leading down into the earth from Rŵnos's tomb, you are greeted by a strange and frigid sight. A large hole surrounded by a ridge of hard blue-white ice and a few stray, connected icy stalagmites, occupies the majority of the chamber. Your torchlight reveals the lip of the hole. No sound emanates from it, but, as your shock wears off, you realise you are freezing... Details: This maze is located deep under the earth, many hundreds of feet down cut, dull granite stairs. They are cool and grow colder, as does the air, the deeper one goes, until, eventually, the ice tunnel chamber is reached. It's temperature is below freezing. Ice reaches up from the floor around the ice hole's lip, and dangles from the ceiling directly above it. This is the entry to the maze, below. There is a long corridor to the left and right that circles the entirety of the upper area. The minotaur wakes as soon as the characters enter the i...

Hook: The granite steps leading down into darkness behind the eastern bronze door greets you with the smell of damp, but, cool, air. It's dry enough not to bother anything... Just cool and fresh... You even hear what sounds like rushing water somewhere ahead... What could this steep, dark stair lead to? As you're about to descend, determining whether to light a torch, or not, an unusual thing catches your eye. Light... Somewhere ahead, far down. A gray ambiance seeps into the stairwell... Details: This cavern is even more massive than the other one. Though the entry is underground, the maze, itself, is unusual. It's a winding, dangerous pathway up a small mountain contained inside the cavern, itself! Complete with a series of limestone caves and a swirling vortex of condensation that blocks any view of the upper cavern from below, most of the time. However, the entire area is bathed in gray, ambient light,   as of a day shrouded in cloud cover,  and, rarely, bright daylight...

Hook: The stairs inside the bronze double doors leading south under the main tomb entry to the Maze of Sand, the fire maze, are rough-hewn sandstone... The air is dry, arid, and dark... It smells of stale dust, but, little else... Your torchlight reveals the rough-hewn stairs disappear downward, steeply, into the earth... A gentle breeze stirs the sand at your feet and ruffles any loose hair and clothing, gently... Unsure what that means, you continue, cautiously...  Details: The Maze of Sand is a treacherous place. The air is always in motion, except right before a 'storm', when it grows absolutely still for 10 minutes. Randomly, 'dust devils', invisible djinni, crop up, rip at clothing and loose objects, blind with sand, and cause great 'dust'raction to those experiencing them. They sweep down corridors, and disappear quickly. The ground outside the maze is loose dirt, rock, and sand. Inside, the firm ground is sandy enough to be considered light terrain, but...

Hook: Rŵnos... a powerful, good, wizard whose last known whereabouts were somewhere in the steppes of the far North, is rumoured to have died. Just rumours, mind you. Whispers on the lips of old tavern-goers and would-be thieves of all stripes eager to get their hands on his treasures... Everyone has heard of Rŵnos. Even you... Well, now, you find yourselves approached by an old beggar claiming to possess a map to the ziggurat, and parts of one of its mazes... He says the last apprentice of the old mage, driven mad by his experiences inside the tomb, died clutching a ragged scroll with a map he scrawled in ink and charcoal. Runes and passages and a regional map scrawled at once legibly and frantically... The man was barely intelligible when he appeared before the beggar... gibbering and crying for his absent mind and spouting fragments of disjointed thoughts and memories of the tomb from dry, cracked lips, before he died. The old beggar doesn't want the scroll. Fearing for his safe...