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 or 5e for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we dive beneath the waves and head to the Cephalid Coliseum for a sacred ceremony.
Cephalid Coliseum
The Cephalid Coliseum predates the Cephalids themselves by centuries, and once belonged to the merfolk. These merfolk followed an ancient religion wherein they, when their cycle came to an end after 50 years, would ceremoniously sacrifice themselves to strengthen the unhatched children from their eggs, passing on their knowledge to them. While these merfolk were only a sect or cult, they still numbered in the thousands, and their kingdom was strong.
That was, until the arrival of a strange, octopus-like humanoid creature who gained the high priest’s ear. Outwardly, nothing changed, but within the halls of the sacred temples, the acolytes whispered of how some of their sacred rites had changed and now seemed obscene, and how this octopus-creature, this Srrussk, personally attended to the unhatched eggs himself.
Then came the great ceremony, and the merfolk followed their traditions. Only the high priest himself was spared the need to sacrifice, as only the high priest is allowed 2 cycles, to pass on the knowledge to ensure it goes as planned. He alone saw what Srrussk had begotten, and from the thousands of eggs only a few handfuls emerged. And these were not merfolk. Instead, they were akin to Srrussk — a creature revealed to be a mind flayer. And these, his “children” were his aquatic kin, a menace he named the Cephalids, and who quickly rose to power under the sea.
Lay of the Land
The Cephalid Coliseum was at the center of this transformation and where it once thrummed with power, these days it barely flickers. It holds a place of honor in a now-abandoned merfolk city that is crumbling into ruin, though the Coliseum itself is faring slightly better due to the ministrations of the now-forgotten High Priest. The Coliseum itself consists of several crystalline rock formations that jut out and up from a pit in the seafloor. Though once at the center of life, nothing comes close to it now.
Dangers
Srrussk and his kin moved on long ago, though some of the Cephalids occasionally return here to ruminate and bask in the destruction that they can wreak upon the world. To them, their place of birth has become a statement of the superiority of their kind. If they can accomplish the destruction of a nation simply by being born, how much more can they accomplish by being alive and actively working towards world domination?
One creature remains here though, a sad existence, the shadow of the merfolk High Priest that once ruled the city and the religion. His mind was shattered and his power dissipated when the ritual was completed as he realized what he had done to his own kin. He now tends the Coliseum, in a vain hope to nurse the spark of magic that remains within — ever hoping that rekindling it will restore his people and absolve him of his guilt. To everyone else though, he is harmless — but something strange has happened recently. One Cephalid was attacked and killed by rabid wildlife as several sharks and an orca emerged out of nowhere to protect the High Priest when the Cephalid attacked him (normally he would stay well out of their sight), so it is possible that the priest’s deity hasn’t forgotten him yet.
And that concludes this week. Always check for mind flayers!
Kim Frandsen
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- Finder’s Archive – Crypt of the Eternals - June 2, 2023
This will fit with the merfolk kingdom I’m placing in my World of Eska.
Added to the Blog Database.
https://jonbupp.wordpress.com/blog-database/for-dungeon-masters/chapter-5-adventure-environments/wilderness/