[WIP] Inside the Temple of Fah
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 250 images Mapmaker
A few months ago, I posted the Temple of Fah, a ziggurat I created to play with the CA209 Stairs and Steps annual. At long last, I have finally designed the interior.
I know this map is ridiculous. Egyptian pyramids only had a handful of rooms for the tombs of a pharaoh and their treasure. Sumerian ziggurats also only had a handful of interior chambers. But I decided to go whole hog and create a sprawling interior complex reminiscent of the classic dungeon crawls I first experienced with D&D in the early 80s. (My first introduction to the game was December of 1979.)
Here’s a side view of the exterior to give you a sense of the entrances:
There are two landings before reaching the very top of the ziggurat. The first is on level 7, standing on the roof of level 6, and the second is on level 13, on the roof of level 12. The entrances on each landing are to the left and right of the exterior stairs continuing up. The 10 feet wide doors are designed to be concealed for aesthetic purposes, blending in with the side of the ziggurat when shut, but they aren’t exactly hidden or secret.
The landings divide the ziggurat into three sections. The top-most section is primarily used by priests and religious leaders. The middle section has chapels and shrines that the royal family, wealthy nobles, and elite government workers are invited to for private religious celebrations, including weddings and coronations. The general public is never invited inside. Instead, religious leaders stand on the first landing of the temple to lead the masses gathered before the temple in their religious ceremonies. The lowest section contains the tombs of great pharaohs and powerful religious leaders.
I decided to design the interior rooms and passageways using the color key knockout effect that @amerigoV describes in this thread. The walls are granite from the CA149 Beaumaris Castle annual. Most of the other fills and symbols come from the CA150 Ancient Tombs annual.
Here’s an example of a level with the effects turned off:
Each level of the ziggurat is 10 feet above the level below. The rooms and passageways inside are mostly 8 feet high, leaving two feet of stone for the ceiling (or the floor for the level above).
Let’s go inside!
Comments
Let’s climb up to the second landing, where we are standing on the roof of level 12 facing the side of level 13. There are eight entrances, one on either side of the four exterior stairs. The entrances in the northwest and southeast quadrants go straight ahead into level 13, while the entrances on the southwest and northeast quadrants immediately descend down 10-foot side stairs to level 12.
Level 13
No one actually lives in the temple. There are no kitchens or similar facilities. Even so, occasionally people are allowed to spend the night there. High ranking priests may sleep there after a late-night religious rites, or the night before an early morning religious service. Pharaohs sleep there the night before their coronations, and sometimes on other occasions. Level 13 has four bedrooms set up. Towards the center, there are interior stairs ascending to Level 14 and descending to Level 12.
Let’s go up, and then we will make our way back down.
Level 14
This level has three more bedrooms, plus a fourth room with a strange design carved into the floor tiles. (Is it a summoning circle? A teleportation portal?) Stairs in the center ascend to 15 and descend to 13.
Level 15
This level has three treasure chambers, all connected through a central room where guards are stationed. Stairs ascend to Level 16 and descend to Level 14.
Level 16
This level has a large 30x30 foot chapel in the center of the level. Three side rooms are dressing chambers for the priests. They are sparsely furnished, but have chests containing the priests’ vestments.
The chapel is 20 feet high, cutting into Level 17. A crude representation of the sun (looking more like a bullseye target) is painted on the floor in gold leaf. There are no stairs going up, because there is nothing above this level except for the upper half of this chapel. Here’s what it looks like from Level 17:
There is nothing on Level 18. It’s just solid stonework.
Let’s make our way back down to Level 13 and use the interior stairs to descend to Level 12.
Level 12
The Temple of Fah is also a repository for a great number of religious and government documents. Many of them are mundane and boring: records of flood patterns and agricultural yields, of famine and other disasters. Vital records for the population: records of live births, marriages, and deaths. Historical accounts of the pharaohs and their accomplishments, and of great wars and battles. Bestiaries, zoological treatises, and other studies of the natural world. Transcriptions of religious documents. Every official government and religious document is stored in the temple, along with a great many other written works.
On Level 12, the senior scribes have private offices to do their work and manage the work of junior scribes in the levels below.
Level 11
On this level, there are six libraries, each equipped with rows of bookcases and numerous desks for junior scribes to maintain records and transcriptions.
Level 10
Level 10 has three shrines to different gods of the pantheon. These shrines may be visited by the pharaohs, top nobles, and senior government officials, but not the general public.
Level 9
Level 9 has two shrines to different gods, and a small room for priests to get ready. Most of the level, however, is occupied by the top third of a massive circular room dedicated to semi-private religious ceremonies such as coronations and royal weddings. At the cardinal points of that chamber, this level has 10-foot wide balconies (with railings) to look down upon the religious practices below.
Level 8
This level has five shrines to the gods. Although the great religious hall described above cuts through this level, there is no access to it from Level 8.
Level 7
This is the main level that non-priests are allowed to enter. It has four entrances from the first landing of the ziggurat (where, outside, there are also four more entrances that descend to Level 6). The central chamber is the 28-foot-high chapel where coronations, royal weddings, state funerals, and other religious ceremonies for the powerful elite are held. Three connected chambers are shrines to the three-part triplet god, with a fourth unconnected shrine dedicated to their mother, the feline-faced cat goddess. Two other chambers are used for the priests to dress or prepare for religious services, or for elite guests like the pharaoh to wait in privacy.
From here we can descend to the tombs in the lowest third of the temple.
Level 6
We are now in the lowest of the three sections of the temple. Most of the tombs contain two chambers: a treasure room and a burial chamber. A few will have multiple treasure chambers, and occasionally there may be more than one burial chamber in the suite.
Great pharaohs used to be buried with their wealth, but centuries ago, a new pharaoh decided to keep his father’s wealth, and instead buried his father with colored glass replicas of his jewelry. The pharaohs are generally entombed in a sarcophagus on a raised platform. Other sarcophagi in the room will usually be upright along the walls, but may be occasionally laid flat on the floor, a sign of great honor to the decedent. These are for the final resting places for people important to the pharaoh: spouses, valued concubines, children who did not themselves become a pharaoh, and occasionally even favorite servants like nannies who are treated as family. Those who predecease the pharaoh are reinterned at the time of pharaoh’s internment. For those who live after the pharaoh’s death, the tombs are opened to admit their remains, sometimes decades after the pharaoh’s internment.
Also of note: in this section, the stairs up and stairs down are generally far from each other, perhaps as a way to confuse and confound intruders intending to loot the tombs.
Level 5
This level has more tombs, but there are a few things of note.
On the west side, there is a burial chamber where the entrance to the treasure chamber and burial chamber have been destroyed, and the treasures and sarcophagus have been looted. The passageway to this section has been sealed but otherwise left untouched. It is the only looted section in this active temple.
Another burial suite is empty, waiting for a future pharaoh.
In the southeast corner, there’s a chamber with a great number of sarcophagi, some still empty. This room is the final resting place for high priests who have been honored to lay at rest near the great pharaohs.
One mad pharaoh had his burial chamber and three treasure rooms hidden behind a trapped secret door. The passageway also contains a covered pit that drops unwary intruders 20 feet to Level 3.
Level 4
More burial chambers. (Note the shaft for the pit from Level 5 that descends to Level 3.)
Level 3
More tombs. (I noticed that some of the raised platforms don’t have a sarcophagus on them. Not sure if I forgot to place them, or if I placed them on the wrong sheet. I guess one of them might be for the reigning Pharaoh, and already contains the remains of predeceased loved ones, but that would only make sense for one of these tombs. Maybe the mummies just walked away?)
The pit trap from Level 5 ends here. Those who survive the 20-foot drop may discover a secret door that leads to another hidden chamber, where another secret door allows escape to the rest of the temple. The skeletal remains suggest that one poor soul either didn’t survive the fall or never found the secret door to allow their escape.
Level 2
More burial suites, along with some storage rooms for unused pots and urns.
Level 1
More tombs, along with stairs that descend to subterranean levels of the temple. (What, more levels?)
Basement 1
This level contains catacombs with 64 crypts for wealthy individuals who were not entombed with their pharaohs. There are 16 vacant spots.
This level also contains two chambers with the temple’s treasures, which connect to a circular chamber inscribed with eight hieroglyphics. The original purpose of this chamber has been forgotten. (The truth is, this was towards the end of my designing and I realized I hadn't used the hieroglyphs yet, so here are some.)
A secret passage leads to a chamber with a teleportation portal. Another circular chamber has both of its doors destroyed. The chamber beyond has a 15x15 pit. The heat, stench, and red glow suggest that it drops into a bed of lava.
A locked door provides access to a set of stairs that descend 30 feet to Basement 2.
Basement 2
The 30-foot descent brings us to an octagonal chamber that appears to be used for secret religious rites, perhaps by priests who are part of a forbidden sect? This connects to a large meeting room. A secret door provides access to two more chambers.
A secret door on the northeast wall of the octagonal chamber provides access to a wide passageway that descends 30 more feet down a series of staircases to a narrow chamber. There on the west wall, more stairs descend another 10 feet into caverns carved into the bedrock.
Here the pit from Basement 1 does indeed drop into a bed of magma, encircled by a platform of cooled lava rock. A raised bridge provides access to a platform with glowing runes inscribed in a circle.
I’m really pleased with how the lava turned out here. I used two different fills that I think came from Monsen’s Mines. The darker one is on a sheet above the lighter one, and then I used the color key effect to allow brighter parts of the magma show through in spots.
That is SO magnificent. Any chance of being interested in putting it into the Atlas, if I can find a place?
Yes, absolutely. I’m looking for a little corner somewhere to be a little playground, some place where I can develop cities and village and what their structures. I’m going to search for a place to create a country, but if you have recommendations for this, please let me know.
I think it would be fun for DMs to use for a classic dungeon crawl. Maybe it’s in the ruins of a collapsed empire, and a necromancer moved in to take advantage of the bodies. Or maybe a lich moved in…. Putting it in the Atlas would allow others to find it and use it. That would make me happy.
OK. I will help you look. How big an area do you want to develop your country. And what sort of climate - tropical, temperate or cold.
I was thinking something that is about 500x400 miles would be enough to give a wide variety of terrain and let me do large area maps, smaller areas, and then cities and towns, and also large enough to have a variety of terrain: beaches, mountains, forest, maybe a small desert. (California has all of the above!) Temperate climate seems good. Does something off of the west coast of Doriant seem appropriate?
https://atlas.monsen.cc/Maps
How about this bit - 1000x1000 miles, temperate, coast, mountains, desert, oasis. West coast Doriant. The grid squares are 100x100 miles, if you want to cut it down further.
Or cut the bottom two rows off, and get the default Overland map size of 1000 x 800 miles.
Just a suggestion, based on what you mentioned. The red dots represent large and medium sized cities.
That’s perfect! I know @Monsen is out of town but I will submit it to him when I’m up (it’s not even 5 am right now but I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep).
Awesome work