Third Survey Ziggurat
- Rooms
- 12
- Foes
- 17, CR 1/8 to 5
- Traps
- 3
- Treasure
- 723 gp
At a glance
The threat
The temple's last high cleric, now an undead spellcaster, has made the pedestal statue in the focus of a rite meant to keep every soul in the complex from reaching Kelemvor.
Wandering monsters (1d3)
- 1
1d3× Ash Veil KeeperCR 1/2
When: A combat lasts more than three rounds, or the party loudly forces a door.A bone-thin temple caretaker with an ash-stained veil, drawn to loud noise and fresh blood. - 2
Bone SwarmCR 1
When: A character disturbs a burial niche or leaves a corpse unburied.A cluster of loose bones that assembles into a crawling, many-limbed shape before attacking. - 3
Unrecorded SpiritCR 2
When: A character speaks a false name or desecrates a name tablet.A pale spirit bearing a blank name tablet, drifting silently through walls and pointing toward .
Rooms
12Outer Steps
What they see
Read aloud
A broken stair climbs the outer face of the ziggurat to a squat stone entry with a bronze door. The door's funeral inscription is legible, but the lock has been forced and repaired repeatedly.
Features
- Stepped ziggurat entry
- Bronze double door with a heavy lock
- Carved relief of a Dragonborn escorting a soul
What the GM knows
Monsters
Skeletal RavenCR 1/4
A bone-white raven watches silently from the relief, then animates as a skeletal bird if anyone tampers with the door.Tactics. It harasses anyone handling the lock and retreats through cracks if reduced to half its hit points.Treasure
Clerk's Seal15 gp
A bronze funerary seal, still bearing the temple's emblem.Notes
The door opens into . Its lock can be picked with a Dexterity check using thieves' tools, or forced with a Strength check. A successful Intelligence (Religion) check identifies the relief as a funerary passage of Kelemvor.
3 doors: W (locked), E (locked), N (locked)
The place
What it is
This stepped Dragonborn temple descends from a weathered ziggurat into chambers where the dead were judged and prepared for burial.
Atmosphere
Cold stone holds the smell of wet ash, old incense, and sealed tombs.
The threat
The temple's last high cleric, now an undead spellcaster, has made the pedestal statue in the focus of a rite meant to keep every soul in the complex from reaching Kelemvor.
History
Dragonborn masons raised this ziggurat as a temple to Kelemvor, where the dead were named, judged, and prepared for burial.
Rumors
1d4- 1A bell rings beneath the ziggurat whenever someone dies nearby, though the temple's bell tower collapsed generations ago.
- 2The priests once erased prisoners from their records, and some say those forgotten dead still wait to be judged.
- 3A blue lamp burns in the sealed shrine, and its light makes restless corpses hesitate.
- 4The high cleric's statue is hollow, but anyone who tried to open it never returned.
Plot hooks
3Corridors
3Passage between and
A frieze of Dragonborn mourners carries carved name tablets toward the lower chambers; several tablets have been scraped blank.
Passage outside
A narrow drain runs beneath the floor grating, carrying black water toward the lower levels. Something occasionally taps from inside it.
Passage near and
Old bronze lamp niches contain cold ash, but footprints in the ash appear shortly after anyone passes.
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