Dungeon: Hishad Cavern

28 Sep, 2025

20250927/28

The Hishad Tombs are located on the north face of the titular cavern, itself located underneath Crater Island and accessible from the Parade Ground archaeological site. The caverns generally will be dealt with in a future post. Note that an artificial sun is intermittently in operation, having a 3in6 chance of illuminating each day. On 1, light is flickering and pink-purple.

Timeline

Two months ago Hishad Cavern was breached, soldiers of Soam and their Mopoli POW labourers descended and struggled with sundry horrors.
Two weeks ago they got to this tomb, which is shadowed by a rock outcropping and so always in darkness. Experts amongst them are aware of the utility of a Maker Body's components and ordered it excavated. A dozen soldiers and three dozen labourers were detailed for the job.
One week ago the North Burial Chamber (11) was breached: The preservative gas within immediately escaped and suffocated the work party. The tomb was allowed to ventilate and breathing apparatus were sent for.
Four days Ago The tomb was judged accessible and reentered. A fissure, unnoticed in room 9, had disgorged carnivorous vines. A boardwalk was laid to bypass these and made a less easily circumvented discovery: An antlion colony had also breached the tomb and could be heard active in the burial chamber. Several labourers were eaten and a hasty retreat was beat to the pallisade outside.
Three days ago the Soameran commanding the evacuation was found, flayed, alive, and pinned by his own shattered tibia spread eagle to the palisade. The labourers mutinied and fled into the darkness.
Now you've arrived. Why? 1-2. Conscripted experts, dragged by the Soamerans to this distant island and sent to this tomb as advisors to a snivelling officer, 6+1d6 soldiers, and 12+2d6 labourers. You have effective control of the excavation and are expected to lead from the front. 2in6 chance the officer declines or modifies a given plan he's been involved in. If you do not secure this tomb, you will be executed. Start with a d4, step up if you made no apparent progress that day, step down if you made a very significant haul: If <= 4, you're fine. 5-8 one of you is flogged. 9-10 one of you is sent to the main camp to be publicly maimed. 11+ you are all sent to the main camp to be publicly executed. 3-4. As above, but you're rebels who've volunteered to confound the Soameran's from within. As volunteers your punishments for failure will be less severe. Roll as above, but 5-8 pay is docked, 9-10 you're demoted, 11+ you're reassigned to dangerous drudgery. 5-6. Tomb robbers operating with access to Soameran uniforms, codewords, and intelligence. If seriously scrutinized, roll d4: <=4 your excuses are believed. Step up the die each use.

Hishad Tomb

0 Outside Tombs

A crude pallisade of Bloomtree pseudowood, topped with broken glass and sharpened stones. There is a fenced area where horses were kept. A section of palisade is bloody and shattered bones have been driven into the wood: This is where the commander was pinned.

There are signs of struggle and two ladders stand against the inside of the palisade, but there are no bodies.

General Construction

Green stone speckled red, smooth. High vaulted or domed ceilings. Utterly putrid smell growing more intense as one goes deeper - a great quantity of rotting meat.

1 Site Office

Formerly pedestrian entrance. A thin wooden wall has been thrown up to enclose it, making a crude office. Unfinished diagrams - extending as far as room 10, excluding unopened room 8, visible.

West wall, statue of male in skinsuit with insectoid mask worn on the forehead (like a Greek wearing a Corinthian helmet) and a seax across his abdomen: Antedilluvian inscription 'Hish' - woman identically attired opposite, inscription "Sha". Scholars would recognize them to be Makers: The ancient class that piloted immense bodies who corralled Giants and monstrosities to create the world.

Wooden door leads to 2.

2 Staging Area

A wall of bricks has been breached, and a pile of detritus extends past the breach covered with wooden boards to make a smooth walkway. An iron gate has been installed, it is unlocked and hangs open. Inside are tools and crates packed with straw, awaiting aretefacts. Also visible:

6m ladders x4
Weedkiller bags x3. A poisonous white powder. Each bag is capable of covering 3 square metres with weedkiller.
Breathing apparatus: A barrel-sized cart, pumped at both ends like a railway handcar to move air through four hoses to four masks. Each hose is 20m long, but they can be disconnected from masks and chained together. Requires 4-6 people to pump, and allows work in anerobic conditions. Protrusions at the top of each mask allow a small lamp to burn there: Utilizing this feature has a 1-in-100 chance of setting the head on fire each hour, 1in20 if engaged in vigorous work.

A column stands before another breached wall. This is a false column, with about a metre between it and the ceiling.

The breached wall has an installed, locked iron gate. The hinges are on the south side so it can quietly be circumvented.

3 Barracks

The prisoner-labourers rested here. A wooden wall has been built to isolate it: 3m tall with a stand on the west side so guards can overlook it and a gate with a bar on the west side. Empty crates have been made into crude cots, none are occupied. Personal effects have been left behind ungathered: Careful searching reveals d10 sp of Mopoli jewellery and charms, as well as d20 sp of coin sewn into a leather belt.

4 Ceremonial Hall

Domed. Without tapestries, it echoes. A pool in the centre with scummy water, some has splashed and dried on the floor beside it because someone was obliged to search it: They felt spherical items covered in holes at the bottom, but evidently declined to haul them up: There are 6 spike grenades which explode after a few seconds exposed to air, propelling spikes in all directions for 1d6 damage (2d6 if held).

A short stage on the east side, two saits on the NW and SW leading up to an overlooking gallery. A breached wall in the north side, ,and open doors to rooms 5 and 6.

5 Slide Room

Sha's room: Irregularly shaped glass panes suspended from the ceiling by metal wire hold thin sections of animals and plants. Most have been removed, and some lie leaned against the wall in preparation for packing into waiting crates. Those left suspended are trapped: The cable will snap down from above as a sharpened, cutting whip or 1d6 damage. There is a bloodstain and a scrape on the floor by one hanging pane.

6 Tidal Pool

Hish's room: a scale tidal model a coastal city with scummy water that rises and lowers in simulation of tides. Close inspection shows it to be the coastline of Hlifk City as it appeared when oceans were 100m lower.

7 Gallery

Not for mortal guests: The undead workforce that built this tomb stood here for display when the funeral ortaion was read for the attendees who stood in 4. A tunnel leads to 8: The door here is sealed. Worktools have been stockpiled outside it in preparation for breaching it. Paper beside the seals has been used to make etchings.

8 Dormant Dead

The Labouring Dead that built these tombs could not be released into general circulation, as the details of the tomb might be retrievable from the animating fragments of their souls. Thus they stand here, waiting. There are 29 of them and 4 Digging Golems (Flesh humunculi grafted from multiple corpses, bully-whippet like upper body musculature).

The air hair is very dry and breatheable.

The undead have gnarled flesh like dried wood, and bronze censers on their chests with the remnant of perfuming flower petals. They have verdigris, openwork, purely decorative copper eyes. They stand completely dormant unless disturbed.

They communicate telepathically, but chatter their teeth in Lament as a human-parsable readout. They will recognize intruders and seek to eject them; first by polite ushering to the entrance, then by swam-grappling (being low and clumsy), and only if attacked or witnessing vandalism or robbery by blows.

They are not the source of the putrid stink.

9 False-Columned Hall (West)

When the Maker Bodies were interred these passages had to be open. They have been blocked by false columns: These are fully 6 metres below the ceiling, in darkness high above, and could easily be domino'd. They are decorated and climbable.

Carnivorous vines have grown down from a fissure high in the north wall, and cover the floor after the first turn. An antlion, its insides liquified and digested, is barely visible amidst a mass of vines in the east. The vines move almost imperceptibly slowly, but each can snap once per hour and wrap around a limb with its barbs. Once a target is grabbed, more and more vines will snap into place and slowly worm their way into the body to digest it from within. 1d6 damage from the snap, DEX Save or immobilized, 1d6 damage per minute constrained. Vines can grow 1metre per 10min turn.

A boardwalk has been thrown over the vines, coated liberally in white powdered weedkiller, which has also been spread on the ground in lines to stay their growth west or east. The boards are uneven and badly secured. Wind or water would remove the weedkiller and imperil the path.

In the northeastern corner a section of floor has fallen away: The sound of antlions emanate therefrom. The hole nearly undercuts nearby false columns.

10 False-Columned Hall (East)

The breach to 11 is visible, the smell and sounds appalling.

The southern burial chamber is sealed. Its wall has had been rigged to blow with blackpowder charges when the northern chamber was breached. Due to damp, these charges have a 5in6 chance of detonating, and if so would collapse the wall to (12).

11 Hish' Burial Chamber (North)

The Maker Body is rotting, and antlions team over it, dismembering it yet further. A pool of putrescence spreads over the floor, amongst which are the inedible grave goods. The body of Hish and the undead attendants have been consumed, and a breach in the floor leads to the antlion nest.

The Maker Body has been almost completely stripped of flesh: Vast, amber-coloured bones are visible. The trepanned, empty skull is intact, and a residue of magic remains to be scraped from its interior.
Hish was armed with two talons
Hish' body has been consumed.

East wall, a relief carving depicting amongst other things Hish and Sha attacking a point of darkness: This darkness is like a combination lock and is surrounded by almost imperceptibly faint catechisms in Antedilluvian. Setting it to 'Man shall not be replaced' is one half of the code for the secret door concealed here. The other half is in Sha's tomb.

12 Sha's Burial Chamber (South)

Filled with preservative gas: This gas is heavier than air and will suffocate. The grave goods are intact, as is the Maker Body: 9 metres tall, four-armed, placid-faced, musculature strangely openwork in the legs. In life, it gave immense speed and strength to its pilot, Sha, ensconced in flesh in the cockpit in its chest. This was not its primary utility. A wizard casts spells by holding in their heads specific impressions, but the necessities of life and limitations of a merely human brain limit the magnitude of the magic: By offloading all other thought, except natural functions and movement, to its pilot the Maker Body's brain provides a vast resource for the casting of spells and it was with this power that the antediluvian world was built.

Loot:

A pale metal spear
A breach-loading flare pistol 2 metres long. Could be retrofitted to a carriage as field artillery.
- 'Bear Bangers' erupt with a blinding, strobing light and a bone shaking noise. They are rocket propelled and move in a spiral pattern. 1d4 shots
- Flechettes: 3d8 damage, pin targets to walls 1d4 shots
A dozen canisters of nutrient paste, imperishable when sealed, providing nourishment when consumed or smeared on the skin.
Sha's body is intact, trepanned like the body, with organs and segment of the spine removed. She lies head to head with the maker body with the insectoid, six eyed pilot's helmet equidistant between them, and six labouring dead body technicians lie head-in around the helmet. They will become active if disturbed. She wears a white skinsuit: magnetorheological fabric that is not encumbering, but hardens instantly to medium armour in response to impact.
A ceramic-armoured undead guard stands in each corner. If activated, their signal has the strength to activate and render hostile the dead in (8); If the seal is not yet opened, the digging golems will take d10 minutes to startup, move to, and breach the seal.

East wall, a carving like the above. The combination here is "God shall not be recreated". When both are set the doors slide aside to reveal a descending passage to (16).

13 Antlion Hive North Chamber

Multipurpose area. A northern passage leads to a detritus store where inedible material - metal and glass - is discarded. Low, rough terrain. A vertical shaft leads up to the cavern wall: Partly natural fissure it was expanded rapidly when the smell of meat was detected.

14 Antlion Hive Egg Chamber

You can stand here. Eggs coat the walls. A breach has been made into the north burial chamber (11) - it would be a vertical climb to exit. Part of the Maker body has been pulled in and has been stripped of flesh, the skeletal arm could be used as a slick putrescent ramp out.

15 Antlion Hive Queen Chamber

The queen, engorged with eggs.

16 Repository

Obliquely referenced in the actual tomb due to its sensitive nature, it is here apparent that the Makers buried here died of wounds received as a consequence of securing a demon. Various relics are kept beneath an iron grille in the floor

17 Shrine

18 Imprisonment Chamber

A raised stage at the north side holds a device of curves and verdigris metal: It casts a sickly and unnatural green light towards the demon chained in the south of the room. This is paralysing light: Save to evade it on first being caught in its glare, on failure become rigid and topple for 1d4 damage. Thereafter 1d6 damage per turn until paralysis of the heart or lungs causes death.

A red-ink labyrinth has been drawn thickly on the floor. The demon is chained above it at the end and would have a long path through to escape, right up the beam of paralysing light. The 'corridors' of the labyrinth are a minefield of warding spells and traps.

Routes and Routs