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 2 or 5e for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This time we dive into the Catacombs of Crosis.
Crosis’s Catacomb
Crosis was an ancient and extremely powerful dragon that lived millennia ago. It was powerful enough to threaten the gods themselves, and eventually, it (temporarily) assumed the position of the god of death within the pantheon. The dragon was ultimately slain by a group of immortal heroes, but Crosis’s old lair still remained behind, as they only slew him in the underworld. The Catacombs are buried nearly a mile underground, far from the usual place where you’d find a black dragon like Crosis — which was all part of the old wyrm’s strategy: Keep enemies believing that he’d be found in a swamp like the younger dragons, and even having a younger dragon pretending to be him (and being well-paid for it) while the wyrm plotted behind the scenes, and took out anyone who exposed themselves to his scrutiny and schemes.
Lay of the Land
The Catacombs are located a mile underground, beneath an ancient forest, one that Crosis himself planted on the fertile ground above his lair, using both the forest and magic to hide the entrance to his lair. Over the intervening millennia the forest has grown enormous and been filled with all kinds of mundane and magical creatures, from rabbits and deer to a unicorn and a herd of centaurs.
All of this was part of Crosis’s original plan as this would have helped to hide him while he was still mortal. The upper levels of the Catacombs are still in use by the humanoids and centaurs who live in the forest as they inter their dead within its tunnels. But they do not know that the lower levels are hidden from them and that THOSE halls have not seen living travelers since the age of Crosis. These lower levels are filled with the treasures that the dragon held when it was alive, and though these were of little value to it when it ascended to godhood, they remained hidden.
Dangers
There have been rumors of undead creatures within the upper levels of the Catacombs for as long as there has been intelligent life living near it. These rumors are even true on occasion, but these threats are usually dealt with by the locals or by hired adventurers. The true danger within the catacombs, or at least within the lower levels, are the remains of Crosis himself, whose very spirit lives on (as a Wyrmwraith (PF2) or Ghost Dragon (5e)), and still seeks both to come back alive, but also to ascend once more to godhood. In the intervening years, and since its death, the ancient dragon’s spirit has, if possible, become even more malign, and no longer is godhood enough. Now it wants the total destruction of all life in revenge. Crosis is well aware that he has lost a significant amount of power since his fall, but that has by no means stopped his ambitions.
See you back next time. 😊
Kim Frandsen
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- Finder’s Archive – Crypt of the Eternals - June 2, 2023
