Session 89: Echoes Beneath the Shattered Sun

5th of Apollo, 500 CD

The companions of the Shining eclipse continue there exploration for the ziggurat known as the Tomb of the Shattered Sun. After defeating the Bone Nga in room eight of Level 1 which is the way to level two of the ancient ziggurat, the party explored the remaining two rooms on level 1. As the party descends down into a narrow passage that leads to a 30X50 fifty foot room is the lack of air in this room. Breathing in this room feels like sucking through a reed submerged in sand. The parties lungs protest every step in this room. The atmosphere is thin, dry, and unnervingly still. All three walls faded etchings and sigils some flaking from age. The faded etchings appear to be the Egyptian pantheons looking at the etched figures on the northern wall of the room. Two figures also faded but one can be made to be Sekhmet, and a unknow figure. The party figures that it is her Father Ra the god of the sun and the leader of the Egyptian pantheons. The inscriptions on the wall were able to be deciphered as the " Guardian's Trial " a rite meant to purify the breath and spirt before facing a divine judgement. Due to thinness of the air two party members were very tired from the lack of air in this room.

In room ten of the first level was a vaulted hall of ancient reverence and quiet power. At the far end of this chamber dominating the entire floor but floating at waste level was an island. The island has swirling hieroglyphs and divine symbols that shimmer under enve the faintes light. The island glosw dimly with three distinct magical seals each pulsing with a soft hue a crimson, sapphire, and emerald gem. The floor around the massive island depicts the Sea of Azure location unknow. Each gem was a magical seal that had to be solved by three riddles. Once the party was only able to solve one riddle at a time once solved the gems would tell the story of the great city of Atlantis. The first gem told the story of the finding of Atlantis and its glory of the 5th dynasty and its power as it ruled all of YonZora. The island of Atlantis was the seat of there power and glory.

The second gem told the story of greed and power and the beginning of the down fall of the 5th Dynasty.

The Pact of Sekhmet — The Lioness’s Trick

When Atlantis was at its zenith — marble spires crowned by gardens, its harbors brimming with tribute from every corner of YonZora — the Fifth Dynasty believed themselves equal to the gods. Their High Priests walked clad in silk and coral gold, their oracles claimed dominion over the tides, and their Alcolytes whispered that even death could be mastered by mortal hands.

Yet hubris has always been the favored prey of gods. And in the shifting sands of distant deserts, the Lioness of Slaughter, the Red Lady of the Nile — Sekhmet — watched. Daughter of Ra, flame of vengeance, her laughter echoes in plague and war. She saw the Atlanteans’ hunger for power and she offered them a bargain wrapped in velvet poison.

Through hidden envoys and veiled emissaries, Sekhmet’s priests came to Atlantis, bearing gifts — urns of black lotus, scrolls inked in divine blood, and the promise of Aeternum Vitae: Eternal Life. The High Priests and their loyal Alcolytes gathered in the pearl-lit crypts beneath the Confluence Throne. There they supped on honeyed wine and heard the pact:

“Serve me,” Sekhmet’s voice purred from shadows shaped like flame and claw. “Carry my will across the depths and through the marrow of all who defy me. Bind your spirits to my thirst — and no blade nor time shall unmake you.”

Drunk on arrogance, the High Priests knelt. They accepted her kiss — not of affection, but of hunger. Their veins burned like molten gold as the gift took root, reshaping flesh and spirit into something other. They rose again: ageless, immortal, fed not by bread or water but by the blood of the living.

At first, they rejoiced — they called themselves Deathless Kings beneath the Sea. The Fifth Dynasty paraded their new priests like trophies, flaunting their dominion over life’s final frontier. But beneath marble floors and coral altars, the curse blossomed like a red lotus.

Hunger. Endless, gnawing, insatiable. A thirst that turned High Priests into parasites. Alcolytes into nightspawn. The courts learned too late that Sekhmet’s gift was no blessing but a leash. With each drop of stolen blood, the vampires became shadows of her will, whispering her name in their dreams, serving her secret wars.

When Atlantis dared defy her again — when they tried to break the chain with forbidden rites — Sekhmet’s laughter roared through temple halls. The vampires turned inward, devouring kin and crown alike. The Fifth Dynasty fell from within long before Poseidon’s tide came to drown what the Lioness had already condemned.

So it was written: never again would mortals think themselves gods without paying the price in blood. And in every vampire’s veins — from YonZora’s hidden tombs to the darkened harbors where ancient coffins drift — Sekhmet’s trick still sleeps, a reminder that pride is the sweetest prey of all.

The third gem revealed the following to the party the final destructions of Atlantis.

It began with envy — the Egyptian Pantheon, in their endless hunger for dominion, offered the Fifth Dynasty a forbidden gift: the secret to eternal life. A pact was struck beneath black pyramids and moonless tides, binding the might of Atlantis to an ancient darkness born of Ra’s own Daughter, Sekhmet, whose wrath had birthed the first vampire. In secret, the Atlanteans bred these Children of Night — beings neither living nor dead, hosts for a hunger that no ocean could quench.

In the twilight of the Fifth Dynasty, Atlantis shone brighter than any star upon the sea — a marvel of marble towers, crystal canals, and living reefs sculpted by the will of gods and kings alike. But in the depths of its coral cathedrals and hidden sanctums, the Atlantean High Priests whispered with powers that should have remained buried.

These abominations grew restless and cunning, feeding not only on blood but on the life currents of the sea itself. When Poseidon, Earth-Shaker and Lord of the Deep, beheld the unnatural stain seeping into his domain, his rage churned the waves into mountains. But even his storms could not wash away the plague — not alone.

So Poseidon rose from his coral throne and spoke with thunder to his brothers, Zeus and Hades, who agreed that the balance had been broken beyond mortal repair. He called out to the Roman aspect of Neptune, to Odin and Thor in the frozen north, and even to the hidden gods of the Eastern waters. Each agreed: the Egyptian Pantheon’s sin had breached the sacred divide between death and the sea, and the Atlanteans had become unworthy stewards of their stolen dominion.

Yet even divine wrath needed a sword. Poseidon plunged his trident into the depths of the world’s heart, stirring the primal trenches — but what he drew forth was not coral or scale, but fang and fur. From the tide’s fury, the wolf’s hunt, and the moon’s pale glow upon the sea, he wrought the Abyssal Wardens: creatures, fierce beyond mortal measure.

Bound in secret covenants, they were divided into twelve great clans, each with a different gift of the hunt. They could scent corruption across leagues, hear the whispers of restless dead, and track the cursed by the beat of their hollow hearts. Their charge was singular: to seek out the vampire brood of Sekhmet and tear it from the world root and branch.

When the Judgment came, the seas rose at Poseidon’s command. Lightning danced with tidal waves as Norse storms joined Roman thunder and Hades’ shadows swallowed those who fled beneath the earth. Atlantis cracked and groaned like a wounded beast. Marble palaces fell like sunken bones. The Fifth Dynasty’s crowns drifted down to feed the abyss. The Egyptian High Priests who had bartered this unholy pact were hunted by the Wardens and dragged screaming into trenches so deep not even Osiris could find them.

Yet the curse could not be fully destroyed — the Children of Sekhmet fled like parasites into the shadows of the world, seeds of hunger waiting to bloom again. To ensure the hunt would never cease, the Wardens scattered when the seas swallowed Atlantis. Twelve clans walked the world above, their names erased, their truth veiled. They first served in silence beneath the banners of the Black Legion Empire, then drifted eastward with the warrior Harker, who knew nothing of the beasts within his ranks.

To this day, their howls remain unheard except by the damned. The Abyssal Wardens roam unseen, their lineage hidden, their nature forgotten — yet ever hunting, ever bound to Poseidon’s ancient oath.

It is said that when the tides churn strangely and storms roll in without wind, Poseidon’s Judgment echoes still — and somewhere in the dark, twelve clans stir, waiting for the blood-curse of Atlantis to rise again.

Then the party continued on to the second level of the Ziggurat in the first room a massive cracked sun emblem dominates the center of the chamber floor. A 20 food wide disk of tarnished gold and sandstone mosaic now split by a fault line. Light flickers oddly here effecting andy flame or magical source producing shadows that stretch's and dance unnaturally, creating unsettling illusions of shapes slithering just out of sight. Six pillars flank the edge of the chamber each pillar showing a figure kneeling before the ancient sun. Each figure on these pillars has a cup before them. Dimmir being Dimmir pulled out his magical water skin of endless ambrosia or what ever he needs it to be attempted to pour his endless liquid into each cup. Jasmal primal rage took over as she sensed what these six figures represented forcing her to change into her true form knocking Dimmir back warning him not to pour anything into these cups. These six were abominations created out of greed and power and did not deserve to be awoken again. The 7ft werewolf bearing her teeth and claws in pure anger and wrath as she stood before these six creatures.