Grave of a Thousand Heads (Onegeon Jam)

For the Onegeon jam in accordance with The Onegeon Manifesto by Cats Have No Lord

Guidelines for the ideal Onegeon:
Make it system neutral as much as possible
Make it small
Make it either bland or entirely unique.
Make it weird

This site is either a room in a forgotten corner of a dungeon or in a barrow in the middle of an icefield.

The Grave of a Thousand Heads

A frozen stone door, carved with dragonshead, with signs of panelling long pried away. Behind the door a large staircase descends 20' into a 180' diameter hexagonal chamber. The walls glimmer, light reflect from black marble, the floor has mounds and scattered detreitus.

To one side, a pile of frozen headless bodies, hundreds of them, battle-marked and frozen beneath a sheet of ice. Draw close and see someone tried to burn them once before.

Ahead, a cairn of skulls, the missing hundreds, topped with a sword standing to show its hilt. Behind it a tipped altar, a shattered icon.

All across the floor signs a packed camp was destroyed in fighting.

Stepping from the stairs starts the skulls clattering and chittering, pin-pricks of blue light their frozen sockets. The bodies beneath the ice begin to struggle free.

A few skeletons will work themselves free continuously while intruders remain and lurch to attack. Destroying the skulls quiets them all.

Touring the perimeter finds black marble slabs making the hexagonal room, smashed through in places to reveal an older cavern behind. The marble is carved with the tale of a great ritual, strongly featuring undead dragons. The walls behind the slabs are daubed with ancient lore. The altar oozes evil, the smashed icon that of a forgotten murder cult.

Time spent here to piece things together - a murder cult laired here, was raided and wiped out. A noble fell in the battle and was buried under the heads of his foes. The site itself was being studied by the cult but is of an older time, a previous dragon cult having built it, etching their most powerful ritual into the stones on the walls.

Paltry loot can be gleaned from the bodies of the skeletons. The sword has minor magics but is clearly an heirloom of the local ruling house. Beneath the cairn, buried with honors is a noble of that house, their body partially mummified in the cold. Armour long rusted, marred by the blows that killed them. A bright signet ring, the most significant prize here. Tens of gold to a nameless fence, hundreds returned to his family, the same for his sword.

Design notes

This is an 'activate the map' room - an information-trap where the damage just takes a long time coming. The remnants of the cult, the local nobles, dragon cultists, power-hungry arcanists - whisper a word that you were in this place and all of those will be after you.

Trade back the signet and sword to the nobles, they will reward you well. Give them any concern you are trying to unearth the murder cult and they will hunt you to the ends of the earth.

The true treasure here is information - the murder cult want to know where the last altar of their master is, any dragon cultists or arcanists would be very interested in the ritual carved on the walls. Most would be seek to kill rather than leaving someone else the chance to learn that knowledge.