Locations

Back to Table of Contents

Version: 1.0
Canon through: August 27, 2026

Outline

• Settlements and Public Sites
• Punishment and Mining Sites
• Desert Ruins and Lost Places
• Catacombs of Ashur-Ka
• Planned Religious Sites
• Old-World Locations
• GM Notes

Settlements and Public Sites

Amarna

The largest city in the region. Amarna is walled and centered upon a great temple devoted to Ra. It stands in the fertile Khat’Najat river valley and functions as a religious, political, commercial, and criminal center.

The apparent order of its streets is reinforced by strict law and cartel control of serious crime. The temple’s position makes divine authority physically central to civic life.

Great Temple of Ra

The principal temple at Amarna’s center. It embodies Ra’s public dominance and the priesthood’s institutional power. The recent proclamation separating priesthood and Pharaoh gives the temple an even more independent political role.

Punishment and Mining Sites

The Mountain Mines

A network of mines in the Pharaoh’s Teeth extracting salt, gems, stone, minerals, Nullium, and other valuable resources. Many workers are prisoners serving sentences under harsh laws; others may be sold or treated as property.

Undead taskmasters supervise labor. They do not tire, bargain, or forget.

Some shafts are associated with disappearances. One later mine began producing magical quartz and became the setting of The Quartz Below.

Bowels of Anubis

A magical oasis on the desert side of the mountains. Its waters are effectively bottomless, heal injury, preserve life, taste of rotting flesh, and cause writhing pain.

Punishments include:

• Permanent chaining and immersion for capital sentences.
• Timed confinement in lowered cages for lesser sentences.
• Indefinite survival without the release of death.

Released prisoners sometimes report whispers in the water. It is believed that Amun is imprisoned below and that the victims help keep him weak.

Well of Anubis

A named source of water required by the ’Iiskir Elixir recipe. The campaign has not conclusively established whether this is another name for the Bowels, a spring fed by it, a sacred well maintained by Anubis’s priesthood, or a separate site.

Desert Ruins and Lost Places

The Cursed Ruined City

An abandoned city in the Sharian believed to be cursed. The Ashen Vow led the party there, ordered the junior adventurers to remain outside, and entered alone. Corpsebearer Shades later returned the experienced heroes’ apparently unharmed bodies.

The city’s interior, cause of death, and relationship to its undead bearers remain unresolved.

Forgotten Desert City and Library

A lost city known to Sedric through scholarship and legend. It is believed to contain scrolls unseen for millennia. It may preserve truths about the gods, the remade world, ancient history, or the Artery.

Tomb of King Sabet

A tomb or puzzle site associated with four portraits of King Sabet: Innocent, Heir, Conqueror, and Prisoner. A later symbolic treatment uses Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night, including skeletal versions.

Nabira and her two hounds are associated with this material.

Cinderquartz Mine

A mine where ordinary extraction gave way to the production of a new magical quartz, called Cinderquartz in later planning. Neshet’s intended contact disappeared while investigating it.

The mine supports an extended dungeon crawl in which resting is dangerous, the environment changes under magical pressure, and humanoid shard creatures emerge from the quartz.

Catacombs of Ashur-Ka

A developed dungeon beneath a forgotten desert ruin or temple. The party explored it, confronted its guardians, freed the djinn Ashur-Ka, and recovered or carried the Cinderheart Seal.

Outer Ruin and Buried Seal

A circular depression or seal buried beneath the sand. A lone rune-marked pillar accepts the Burning Jewel and opens the descent.

The Swallowed Stair

The stairway revealed after the surface seal opens. Statues bearing bowls of flame frame the descent into the catacombs.

Entry Chamber

The first interior threshold, establishing the worked stone, ritual architecture, and separation from the desert above.

Hall of Thirsting Dead

A central chamber occupied by Ash-Salt Dead. The player map includes side rooms and an eastern statue puzzle. Solving the statue mechanism reveals a secret passage.

Scorpion Well

A chamber with a dry central well, two side rooms, a cave-in leading to a natural tunnel, a Tomb Scorpion, and a Glassling Serpent or Glass Snake.

The dry well contains a secret entrance to a long corridor leading deeper into the complex.

Natural Cave Tunnel

A route exposed by the cave-in. It contrasts with the intentionally constructed temple rooms and can connect to older geology, hidden creatures, or alternate paths.

Inner Sanctum of the Cinderheart

The final ritual chamber, sealed and guarded by Sahrem, the Emberbound Warden. The chamber’s magic, altar, and Cinderheart imagery connect the Seal, Burning Jewel, and Ashur-Ka’s imprisonment.

Ashur-Ka’s Prison Chamber

A developed room viewed from the south entrance. Its only major illumination comes from a red magical circle and golden runes on a distant altar. Three undead guardians initially appear to be statues. A red, gold-etched vessel on the altar contains the trapped djinn.

Planned Religious Sites

Lost Temple of Anubis

A long-abandoned temple whose investigators do not return. Undead within the site violate Anubis’s proper order of death. The party is expected to investigate the cause, recover an ingredient or knowledge needed for the Oil of Anubis, and earn the priesthood’s aid.

The site is intended to combine religious roleplay, investigation, exploration, and combat rather than function as a simple extermination dungeon.

Old-World Locations

Cave of Shattered Reflection

The site of the final battle with Vecna. The completed rod, ritual, fractured mirrors, and collapsing coordination of the six heroes culminated in Vecna’s victory.

The title appears in singular and plural forms in drafts; Cave of Shattered Reflection is used here as the primary form.

Neverwinter

The “Jewel of the North” in the old Forgotten Realms. The dead heroes’ spirits drifted above Neverwinter while reality began to unravel.

Syl’s Bastion

Sylcaryn’s sanctuary and brief refuge after escaping the final battle. The other heroes watched in spirit form as Syl and the bastion unraveled thread by thread.

GM Notes

• The Catacombs of Ashur-Ka were developed incrementally; some side-room contents and exact room numbering remain flexible.
• “Well of Anubis” and “Bowels of Anubis” should not be assumed identical until explicitly decided.
• The ruined city and forgotten library city may be the same place, but current material does not require that conclusion.