Palace of the High-King

A great ziggurat of blue-painted stone looms above the island of petty temples, omen reading huts, and medicine drinker shacks that girdle it.

This'll do until I get the commission in.

Armies of god tenders bustle about, performing tasks to keep the divine happy. They are slaves and they are servants and they are the happiest of the Bless’d for they have both purpose and safety bestowed upon them by their masters.

Hundreds of shrines and offerings are left upon the sides of the ziggurat. Four sets of stairs wind their way up. The more desperate the prayer, the more steps you take. Never do you enter the zenith temple. It is made of clay and reed and appears a shack itself, but inside is where gods dwell and you are no god nor their tender.

This is the Palace of the High-King, this shack that sits a top majesty. When one enters, they are taken into a seperate world inside the Heaven Bless’d. Here, in the presence of gods, miracles are forged and the Heaven Bless’d is made safe.

Why Visit the Palace of the High-King?

Roll, choose, or create a reason.

1. A god tender approaches you, telling you that one of the gods has summoned you for audience.
2. You wish to view a god, but have no permission to enter the Palace. Thus, you sneak in, and search the god out for their blessing.
3. Your place of work surrounds the Palace, and a god tender calls on you for aid.
4. You’ve heard great treasures lie unattended inside the Palace and you wish to steal them.
5. There is a Hanging Garden locked away in there, and you wish to hunt in it.
6. Many god tenders have died as of late, and you wish to replace one of them.

ROOM SUMMARY OF THE PALACE OF THE HIGH-KING

This is a basic summary of what will be found as you explore the Palace. Detailed sections below. Numbers correspond to rooms. Connecting the rooms are hallways, where the floors are stone, and the curved ceilings and walls made of reed.

1. Blood-Stained God Foyer. The opening foyer of the palace. Leads to rooms 2, 3, and 4.
2. Heliograph Epics of All Heavens. A room covered in heliograph murals. Leads to room 5.
3. Pyre-Beds. The pyre-beds of the god tenders. Leads to room 6.
4. Throne Baths of Heaven’s King. The audience chamber of the former High King and current Steward-King. Leads to rooms 8, 9, 10, and 11.
5. Symbol Graves, Untended & Unworn. Where divine symbols are gathered and stored from the dead and forgotten gods.
6. Bloodletting Sanctity Chamber. Where the god tenders perform auto-sacrifice.
7. Sealed Gate of the Hanging Garden of the High King. Leads to the appropriately titled Hanging Garden.
8. Torture Room of the Four Oracles. Where the god’s four personal Handless Priests live and rant prophecies.
9. Union of the Palace Heavens. The nexus that leads to the personal domains of each of the gods. Leads to rooms 13, 14, 15, and 16.
10. Heart of the Radiant Heretic. Where the Radiant Saint who tricked the High King is sealed away.
11. Prison Where Hells are Made. The torture-prison where the worst criminals are interred.
12. Where Sunbeams Meet and Guide. Directly above room 4 is a glassed opening. Touching it transports one to any location within the Heaven Bless’d that the sun can touch.
13. Half-Grave of the Half-Sun. The Palace Heaven of Half-Sun Sintotec.
14. The Sobbing Grotto. The Palace Heaven of Veiled Weeper Allalotl.
15. Empty Space Beyond. The Palace Heaven of Gatekeeper Metamm.
16. Where Crucifixions are Worshipped. The Palace Heaven of Blood Dream Xoash.

HEAVEN’S GUARDS

When exploring the palace without a god tender guide, there is a 3-in-6 chance that every hallway and room will have 2d6 palace guards. These guards are 1st level fighters and wear the gilded skins of animals they’ve hunted and had blessed by Half-Sun Sintotec. When reduced to 0 hp, they transform into beasts of your choosing, such as wolves, lions, tigers, jaguars, etc. When reduced to 0 hp in this form, they cry out, summoning another 2d6 palace guards in 1d4 rounds to the area.

Additionally, every room has a 5-in-6 chance of having a god tender inside. If the god tender sees the party has no guide, they will interrogate them. If the party does not convince the guide otherwise, they will run and find 2d6 palace guards and return with them in 1d8 rounds.

Palace guards will imprison player's reduced to 0 hit points and stabilize them so that they do not die. Player's will be imprisoned in the Prison Where Hells are Made for 1d12 days before being taken for trial before Half-Sun Sintotec in the Throne Baths of the High-King.

ENCOUNTERS IN THE PALACE OF THE HIGH-KING

Roll 1d6 for every room entered. On a 5 or lower, there are god tenders in the room if it is daylight hours, or a 1-in-6 chance during night time, with exceptions. If there is an encounter, roll a d6 on the chart below. Replace used options with your own.

1. 1d4 god tenders are secretly discussing how to best introduce dragon worship to the Heaven Bless’d. Act suspiciously when discovered.
2. 1d10 god tenders are kneeling and praying. They are oblivious to what goes on around them, increasing sneaking odds by +1.
3. 1d6 god tenders are doped on opium and hashish. They will see the party as gods and begin to follow them around, cutting themselves and filling the parties footsteps with the shed blood.
4. A senior god tender is tutoring 2d12 neophyte god tenders on the history and purpose of the current room. The senior god tender, if cowed, will lead to the neophytes being made docile as well.
5. Two god tenders are petting each other in this room. Embarrassed, they will run off when discovered. It will be an additional 3d8 rounds before they find the courage to call the guards.
6. 4d10 god tenders are holding a meeting in this room, discussing various matters of state and faith. There are already 4d6 guards gathered here to protect them.

ROOMS IN THE PALACE OF THE HIGH-KING

Objects considered treasure if removed from the Palace and taken to safety have their value beside them in parenthesis. The value represents an individual item; if there are multiple, each is worth the listed amount. Treasure here is only considered treasure if stolen and taken to a place for personal use or benefit outside the Palace. Brackets contain numbers of rooms that hallways lead too.

1. BLOOD STAINED GOD-FOYER

Enter through the shack’s only doorway. The chamber is twice the size it should be. Brown-red stains cover the stone floor and fill the foyer with the metallic smell of spilled blood. Statues at the corner of each room shaped like strange creatures (400sp). They whisper your secrets as you approach them. Three hallways yawn before you--one on the north wall, one on the east, and one on the west [2, 3, 4]. From the ceiling hang 400 tecpatl daggers (20sp).

2. Heliograph Epics of All Heavens.

Western hallway spits you out into a chamber the size of a small island. Thousands of 60-foot tall, 120-foot wide stone tablets (1,000sp) lined up in rows. Each has been burned with heliographs telling the complete history of the Hunter’s High Heaven and the Heaven Bless’d & Burned. Touching one allows you to see that moment in history play out in real time. 1-in-100 chance you find the moment in history you are looking for, increasing to a 1-in-2 chance if guided by god tender. Where are the missing moments in history? Stairs in center of chamber descend underground [5].

3. Pyre-Beds.

Eastern hallway leads you to god tender living quarters. At any time there are 60+1d20 god tenders sleeping on litteral pyres. The flames are golden and do not burn, but instead lull one into a sleep where they can lucidly dream at will. Some god-tenders are talking, others kissing, others making featherwork. No privacy anywhere to be had. Somewhere, someone is throat singing. A stone hallway leads eastwards [6].

4. Throne Baths of the High-King.

Northern hallway takes one to the audience chambers. Massive, with marble galleries on the sides for Midnight Plumed and god tenders to watch. Thirteen pools, each 30 feet in diameter, cover the ground. At the back is one bigger than the rest, with a throne built into part of it. Here, the kings listen, decree, and bathe. Bathing in any pool heals all missing hit points and makes one weep blood into the water. If bathing without permission, be cursed, and reduced to 1 hit point until service has been performed in gods’ name. Four hallways stand in the back of this chamber [8, 9, 10, 11]. 1-in-6 chance of audience currently being held.

5. Symbol Graves, Untended & Unworn

Down the stairs one will find a stone antechamber, barely lit, cold, smelling of blood, urine, and sex. God tenders are only allowed to enter here when their eyes have been stitched shut, and can only crawl on hands and knees. Decorating the walls are countless Heavenly Gears. See Appendix A for a listing of them, and tables to create your own. Touching a Heavenly Gear requires a save vs magic or be possessed by the god’s dying moments. Fly into a rampage, killing everything as death pains wrack your body and the apocalypse claims your mind.

6. Bloodletting Sanctity Chamber

Yawning eastern hallway leads to individual chambers encased in stone half-domes. Smells of wet meat and flayed skin. Weeping comes from different chambers. Inside, god tenders lean over bowls and penetrate themselves with needles and slice their genitals to create god-wine. Drink the fresh blood and reset your miracle die as if it had never been used. All god tenders here are  too high to recognize others.

7. Sealed Gate of the Hanging Garden of the High King

The gate is broken to pieces and scattered throughout the rooms. Each room has a 6-in-6 chance of holding a gate piece, requiring a thorough search to find, going down by 1 for each piece found. Arrange all six pieces in the Throne Baths of the High-King [4] to create the gate. Instructions and spells needed to activate it found in the Heliograph Epics of All Heavens [2].

8. Torture Room of the Four Oracles.

The most western hallway leads to a stone chamber sectioned into quarters with reed walls. Within each room lies a Handless Priest, mutilated, filling their quarter with the stentch of death. God tenders come in, torture, and ruin these oracle liches to extract futures like venom from a snakebite. Inflict 20 points of damage onto a Handless Priest and roll on the Prophecy table. Receiving a prophecy more than once indicates an increase in truth and urgency with each hearing.

1. Gurgle the blood of a god and spit it on the eggs of a woman and know then at that moment a thousand breaths will pass between the setting of the Half-Sun and the rising of the moon and the murder of your enemy.
2. Feathers sprouting from your ears will let you know that the Mystics are near and when they are near they will sneer and say to themselves let us take that one’s heart and bring it here, to our home which all things fear.
3. Obsidian glass will cut your feet. Look into the blood then. Stir it with your finger. A flower will blossom. A dragon will roar. On the horizon will sit what you search for, or something worse still.
4. Listen. Look with eyes unclouded by faith. Forgive her, and she will let you live, and will see you home.

9. Union of the Palace Heavens

Hallway opens up on a great cathedral. Featherworks decorate walls and shrines (100sp). Underneath a sky window and situated in a beam of bright light are four clay tablets that stand as tall as men. Each is emblazoned with another god. Smell incense and entrails as you touch them and are warped to one of the four Palace Heavens [13, 14, 15, 16].

10. Heart of the Radiant Heretic

This dark chamber is filled with the stank of animal breath and the sweet smell of pollinated flowers. He hangs from the far back wall. From the reeds sprout four flowers and from each flower blossoms a tiger’s head and each head holds a different limb. The Radiant Saint hangs from them, he who led to the High-King’s death and the High-Queen’s theft, impaled upon three glass spears through his chest (1000sp). Speaks not, the Radiant Saint, beyond a prayer to Tiamat. Gods will torture him for pleasure and god tenders do as ordered. If presented with a Radiant Mystic, he will awaken and tell them what must be done to free him--a kiss from a Dragon Wife and the forgiveness of a Medicine Drinker.

11. Prison Where Hells are Made

A vertical prison lined with stairs. Feather-decorated obsidian bars slice the hands of those who touch them without the Steward-King’s summons. Inside each cell is a criminal who has gone too far to be tried by the masses. Or, they know secrets they should not, and draconic heresy has envenomed their hearts and minds. Each cell is small, fits one body, must stand and not sit. Piss and shit mix with flowers up and down the prison. Fed honey, water, blood, and executed flesh.

12. Where Sunbeams Meet and Guide

Above the Throne Baths of the High-King [4] sits a sun-window. Stand underneath it, pray to the gods, and be born to any location in the Heaven Bless’d that the sun touches. Happens fast, but at a cost. Skin burned badly, eyes blinded for an hour, and body radiates an authoritative lume. No encounter rolls are made here.

13. Half-Grave of the Half-Sun

A vast lake of liquid gold stretches out before you. No borders, horizon burns with sun flares. Islands of giant, gilded skulls float and are covered in weapons sheathed hilt-deep(500sp). The sky is the color of a bruise. It is hot, sweltering, and the air smells of a forge. Half-Sun Sintotec walks across the surface, inspecting weapons. God tenders follow after him, their legs gilded and their bodies horribly burned. When they die they become gilded skull-islands and Sintotec sticks weapons into them as reminders. 1-in-6 chance standing on liquid sun every round to die as your body is vaporized from the heat. If without a guide, Half-Sun Sinotec will engage in combat on sight.

14. The Sobbing Grotto

Mangroves flooded by water a foot deep. Butterflies dance from branch to branch and perfume the air with jasmine and rose. The deeper one goes into the mangroves, the thicker the water becomes until it transforms totally into blood. Weeping can be heard from virtually every part of this Palace Heaven. Its source is Veiled Weeper Allalotl, sitting in a tree, weeping, her god tenders catching the blood dripping from her feet and staring into it for prophecy and blessing (5000sp). If without a guide, her Heavenly Gear swarms you.

15. Empty Space Beyond

From here, one can see all of creation. The Shattered Crowns, the Ashpits, the Pyre Cities, the Radiant Auroras--all of it. You are falling. The air is cold. You are thousands of miles above the surface of heaven, but you will not lose consciousness as you fall. Rare is it that Gatekeeper Metamm can be found here, and when you finally hit the ground, you wake up inside of the Union of the Palace Heavens, hardly a minute having passed since you left [9].

16. Where Crucifixions are Worshipped

Behold Blood Dream Xoash. He is crucified before you in a chamber black. The only lights come from the torches that hang from the crucified corpses of executed prisoners that surround the god. He sleeps and will not be awoken through any less than the death of the host the symbols are divinely welded too. Crucified prisoners who still draw breath sleep as well, their dreams feeding the great Blood Dream. Feathers pin their hands into stone, wood, and glass. They stretch deep into the abyss. God tenders kneel before their god and will guide anyone who appears, guided or not, into the Hanging Garden of the Blood Dream with drugs and auto-sacrifice.