Resolute
and alone atop a limestone knob, the verdigris covered remains of an Imperial
municipal siege unit, a bronze colossus, the ‘Akolouthos’,
3,200 years old and first operational in the service of the Imperial legions, surplused
to the Styllus family until only three years ago. The Colossi was the bastion of Styllus
dominion over five hundred miles of prime Central Province vineyards and grain,
but without it the family has been nearly run under by their neighbors, the
Comizius clan. Largely intact, the Akolouthos may even be operational. If the war machine can be repaired or
salvaged, the Colossus’ value is immeasurable, and even if destroyed many
valuable bits of its arcane workings a likely to be salvageable from the almost
intact Colossus.
Like all destroyed Imperial war machines the
bronze colossi exudes rotten magic, creating a sink around it of foul arcane
corruption. The sink is not as deep or
as large as some, but the hillock that the Akolouthos stands atop is bare of
life, and now the rock itself bleeds a bluish black and the birds in the area
speak in the voices of sobbing children. The Clossi’s own radiation is
compounded by the nature of its destruction, and the ancient arcane fluids
corrupted by deep forest shadow magic.
A small lair adventure - just 11 rooms, set in the Fallen Empire setting I've made a few comments about. The party can elect to explore a destroyed war machine of the ancient world, recently brought down by noble infighting. Thanks to James A. for giving me a few more mutation effects when my own mind started to fail on this project.
LINK TO PDF (or click on header)
Link doesn't give me access to the files.
ReplyDeleteAlas, Google Docs is broken because Google no longer fixes things due to a lack of engineering talent for legacy apps.
DeleteNothing I can do about it - I've tried replacing links. Blame Crypto companies for raising the wages of engineers without scruples and Google for chasing off the ones with a them in a quest for sketchy spying contracts from the last US administration.
For anyone looking for the PDF I found it here: https://img.fireden.net/tg/image/1485/99/1485993036616.pdf
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