Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Finder’s Archives.
In this column, we take some of the lands from Magic: The Gathering and turn them into something you can use for your fantasy games.
The stats given in each entry assumes that you’re using Pathfinder for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we turn our attention to the Ancient Tomb.
The Ancient Tomb
The Ancient Tomb isn’t nearly as ancient as the name proclaims. In fact, it’s only just 20 years old. It is, however, a giant hoax created by nearby villagers hoping to capitalize on the money that passing adventurers and explorers bring with them. As such, they created this elaborate hoax, carving a gigantic tomb out of the bedrock of a nearby mountain, after several failed attempts at mining the mountain. They then sent out messengers across the land proclaiming that an ancient cursed tomb had been found, and that anyone entering lived only for a single year thereafter, and that this village needed their help.
Explorers and adventurers streamed to the town, where they purchased supplies and headed into the gigantic tomb complex. They, of course, found nothing, but the villagers managed to convince the ones who failed that this was merely due to bad luck on their part. For years they prospered in this manner, the whole town basically living off the purchases of these hapless individuals. But 2 years ago their stories started coming true. Anyone who entered died (though not a year later) or were lost, never to be seen again. At first, they thought that the adventurers simply left without telling anyone due to shame, but then villagers started disappearing too. Now they’ve put out the call once more, this time a desperately real one.
Lay of the Land:
The area near the ancient tomb is devoid of resources. There are no minerals to mine, and while the land around it can be farmed, it’s not great for any type of crop, as it’s too cold and windy for anything but the hardiest crops to survive.
The town near the tomb is small but wealthy, having gotten rich and fat off gullible visitors in the 2 past decades, and most types of goods can be found there now. Ironically, in spite of the imminent danger to the town, it’s never been better off economically, and it’s become a large trading hub in its own right, to the point where it earns more money from traders and caravaneers than it does the people exploring the tomb (though no one has realized this yet).
The leader of the town is Mayor Windall, a sneaky and just past middle-aged man (N male human Aristocrat 4), who was also the brain behind the grand deception. He’s now charged with finding a way of putting an end to the dangers, while not revealing that the whole thing was a hoax to begin with. (He’d been considering ending the hoax for a while now in any case, and has decided that this is the time).
Dangers:
The ancient tomb was originally empty but the corridors have become the home of a spectre, an adventurer who fell foul of the scam, and died penniless a few miles away from the town, exposed to the elements, one winter. The spectre is smart enough to realize that within the tomb it has free reign, as natural sunlight cannot reach it, and it uses its incorporealness as best it can, often diving into coffers, pillars and other items to avoid being detected or seen. Of course, it leaves its victims behind, but it seems to relish in the horror that it inflicts in such a manner. So far it has refrained from creating spawn, as it fears this will reveal it, but as victims stop coming into the tomb, it’ll head out into the town and surrounding countryside, and start converting some.
Kim Frandsen
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