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The Tombs of Tomad Dun
The Tombs of Tomad Dun are said to be a lethal, labyrinthine burial complex built hundreds of years ago by a mad king. Rumors persist, however, that the many stories surrounding the Tombs are all fraudulent. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- their disputed authenticity, they attract a steady trickle of adventurers, most of whom end up as broken bones or interestingly shaped smears on the walls in the upper levels.
The Tombs are situated not far from the northeastern shore of Knight's Lake, just far enough from the city to avoid catching innocent travelers or attracting the ire of the Athyrian Motherkeep. The entrance is marked by a series of increasingly macabre stone sculptures that culminates in a grossly overgrown, vine-covered skull; those wishing to brave the Tombs of Tomad Dun must climb through the skull's fanged maw to reach the inner chambers. Even getting that far is no small feat, as the forest surrounding the entrance is known to be inhabited by glamodrim, hill giants, and other fell beasts.
Because the Tombs lie so close to the lake, it is said that the builders used the high water table to their advantage in constructing numerous submerged areas, relying heavily on poisonous plants and thorny vines, and drawing aquatic monsters into the complex.
Restricted Knowledge (available only to characters who have either (a) Regional Knowledge: Coeur d'Ennui, Northwestern Calantyr, or V'tavia; or (b) Expert History)
-- Maps to the entrance of Tomad Dun, and sometimes purporting to show its uppermost chambers, can be purchased from antiques dealers, pawnbrokers, and less reputable sources throughout Knight's Lake and sometimes further afield. The sheer ubiquity of these maps tends to cast doubt on the genuineness of the Tombs, particularly since most of the maps are more or less consistent in showing how to reach the entrance and often with respect to the upper chambers as well, thus making it less likely that they are independent forgeries.
-- Several adventuring companies have claimed to recover substantial wealth from Tomad Dun, even if most of their profits appear to be in the form of loot taken from less successful prior adventurers' corpses. Many more adventuring companies have returned maimed or not at all. This suggests that there is some danger afoot in the Tombs, whatever the truth of the other tales.
-- It is said that the statues leading up to the entrance are the work of, alternately, the mad king who commissioned the rest of the complex, or a vengeful medusa who took up residence many years after the Tombs were built. Careful observers, however, have pointed out that the type of stone varies from statue to statue, and one would expect that to remain consistent if the same person were in fact petrifying unlucky victims. Additionally, several of the statues do not resemble any known species, or else are so inaccurate in their details that they appear to be obvious fakes.
More Restricted Knowledge (available only to characters who have Expert Regional Knowledge: Coeur d'Ennui, Northwestern Calantyr, or V'tavia)
The Tombs of Tomad Dun are, in fact, less than a hundred and fifty years old; the tale of the mad king is entirely false.
The Tombs are the handiwork of an extraordinarily disagreeable and misanthropic wizard named Gauldophir, who lived in the Knight's Lake region some two hundred years back. As he got older and faced the end of his natural life, Gauldophir came to realize that his closest living kin were a gaggle of dimwitted, spendthrift nieces and nephews: the detestable children of siblings he'd never much liked in the first place. His relatives seemed to assume that they would be entitled to all his considerable wealth as soon as he died, and so the elderly Gauldophir, with all the peevishness of his years, resolved to disappoint them.
He spent the better part of a decade excavating the Tombs of Tomad Dun near Knight's Lake, hiring masons and trap-setters to outfit the chambers, adding his own diabolical spells, and bribing or binding monsters to take up residence once the complex was near-finished. Then he paid bards to spread false legends about the Tombs' nonexistent ancient history and, as a final touch, set up a trust fund through a banking concern in Coeur d'Ennui to ensure that maintenance crews, disguised as adventuring companies, would stop in every so often and keep things in working order.
When the project was completed, Gauldophir wrote a long nasty letter to his surviving relatives telling them that he'd buried all his fortune in the Tombs of Tomad Dun and warning them that other people -- more intelligent and competent, and therefore more deserving -- would soon work their way into the heart of the dungeon and so win the inheritance that Gauldophir's nieces and nephews had imagined as theirs. This done, he apparently died.
There is a good deal of uncertainty about whether Gauldophir actually put any of his own fortune into the Tombs, much less all of it. Contemporaries seem to have thought that he probably gave his money to the banking concern that keeps the fraud financed. However, for generations now his relatives have been trying to "recover their inheritance" and mostly dying in the process, so in that respect his plan seems to have been a resounding success.
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