The Altars of Greystaff
In the far southeast of Minaria, amid the craters of Blasted Heath, looms a great grey pillar. An array of broad stone altars stands at its foot. From them??even if they have seen no sacrifice in years??blood endlessly drips. Philosophers, scholars and sorcerers have pondered the sinister nature of Greystaff, but no one has conclusively defined its nature, be it of god, demon or natural spirit. What is known about Greystaff is cried into the sleeping minds of mediums the length and breadth of Minaria??that its altars crave blood, and in exchange for it Greystaff shall grant power over the elementals.
A myth of the South Plains maintains that man was created on the eighth day of the world. To test man's obedience the Maker God created Greystaff to tempt him. Alas, on the tenth day of the world one of the two tribes of men approached Greystaff, threw half its members upon the altars, and called down a firestorm to destroy the other tribe the god had made.
The Maker was outraged by man's perfidy; he poured out a black vat of ills across the world, expecting the flawed creation to despair and commit mass suicide. Once again he was thwarted even in the face of all the physical and emotional ills that oppressed mankind, it perversely clung to life.
The most plausible theory of the origin of Greystaff comes from a little?known manuscript written by the unnamed "Mage of Jipols" in the tenth century. How this late source came by knowledge of ancient doings is not explained in the manuscript as we know it.
According to the Mage, when the Scarlet Witch King rose against the Lloroi Empire, he employed many blasphemous magicks that challenged the harmony of the natural universe. The lawful spells of the Lloroi magicians and priests were ill?matched against such mad conjurations. It seemed that no spell or army could stem the Witch King's relentless advance.
The Mage says that the great of the realm agreed to a project of the utmost desperation. It seemed as if the powers arrayed against them had to be matched by powers of the same type. So by means of soul?wrenching incantations, over a period of several years, the wizards of the Lloroi raised a pole of negative cosmic power. They threw crowds of war prisoners across its altars and enlisted the powers of evil into the cause of the Lloroi Empire. Afterward, the Witch King's victories ceased and his power was eventually beaten down.
Ancient historians have often conjectured that it was the practicing of forbidden sorcery that brought about the great Cataclysm. If the Mage of Jipols is correct, the Altars of Greystaff may have contributed to the catastrophe. Indeed, earthquakes, hurricanes and all manner of natural disasters have been correlated with sacrifices at the Altars. For example, when the tyrant of Adeese sacrificed to Greystaff in the year 1250, volcanoes erupted in the Barriorr Mountains, a tidal wave devastated the Sea of Drowning Men and severe flooding struck the kingdom of Immer.
It can be justly said that the king who invokes the power of Greystaff for short?term gains only risks disaster in the long run.
The Faces to the Sea
Many civilizations have come and gone on the face of the Minarian continent. It is one of the most regrettable features of Lloroi rule was that they cared so little for preserving knowledge of the ancient states which they overcame.
The Faces to the Sea are relics of one of these early cultures. The giant heads sculptured to the shoulders, have features resembling no race that lives today on the continent of Minaria. A legend of Parros says that as long as the Faces watch the sea, no invasion from that direction will ever overthrow Minaria. It seems unlikely that this is the true reason the Faces were built; in the days of the Lloroi Empire, the Faces were much farther from the seacoast than they are today.
Also, the erection of the heads seems to have been widespread over ancient
Minaria. In 1340?43 a long drought troubed the Ercii people of the
Wetlands (a hybrid race which lives by hunting, trapping and hiring out
as military scouts). Their otter?hunters discovered that the dropping water
level had revealed a series of sculptures much like the Faces to the Sea.
But before qualified scholars could study the discovery, the drought broke
and water hid the objects once more.
The Isle of Fright
In ancient times, the Isle of Fright was part of the peninsula of Umiak. When Umiak went into the sea, a high plateau remained as the focus of a strange vortex of water called the Spiral Current. This current, drawing in waters from the whole of the Sea of Drowning Men, carries many strange things to the beaches of the Isle of Fright.
The flotsam that comes to the Isle does not wholly consist of junk. The masts, ribs and planks of many a noble vessel find their resting place here. So do the disassociated bones of the countless sailors who have lost their lives in the storms and accidents of the sea. Of even more interest is the treasure and valuable cargo that litters the beaches and the stony reefs that ring the mysterious islet.
The Isle of Fright received its name partially from the vista of ruin and death upon its shores. Then too, pirates and freebooters, who have been visiting the island for centuries, have tried to ward off other treasure hunters by telling frightful tales of selkies and mermen which haunt its outlying shoals.
But the secret of the Isle of Fright is long out. Minarians are now more familiar with selkies and mermen and do not fear them so much. It is also well known how much treasure the island holds fleets from civilized nations commonly engage in salvage operations off its reefs.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the isle holds its dangers. The
unpredictable currents have forced many a vessel to wreck upon the rocks,
others have been lost to the pirates who know its hidden channels. These
pirates, when not engaging in drunken treasure?hunts, keep a lookout for
the castaways whose rafts are inevitably drawn in by the Spiral Current.
The rich captains and nobles usually are ransomed back to Minaria. Less
happy is the lot of common sailors captured, who are worth no more than
their bid price on the auction block of Slave Island.
The Lost City of Khos
For more than thirty?four centuries the city of Khos has stood deserted by man shunned by the tribesmen and nations of eastern Minaria. According to the travelers who have visited it, there is majesty in the ruins of Khos??but also mystery and danger.
For the last few centuries, the danger has issued from the strange race of flying beings which lives in the cave?filled hills to the north of the city, and which comes to roost in the crumbling towers at sunset. A colony of gargoyles these are, a type of creature that has long inhabited the Wastes of Folmar in Girion.
No one knows what forced the gargoyles' ancestors to make the long migration from their own country, but they are hated by the dwarves and the men of Pon. Too many thefts of livestock and women can be laid at their door. Then too, their numbers are increasing; lately they have organized enough to name themselves a king.
But before the gargoyles came, Khos still evoked awe in the hearts of its visitors. The dwarves, a people accustomed to placing their emotions in verse, have left us a fragment of a tenth-century poem, attributed to Aether, the semi-legendary warrior-bard:
The work of Giants.
the stonemasons
Frost cloaks
the gatetowers, frost on mortar
Well-built this
wall, fate broke it
The stronghold
burst, the stout wall breached
Floor beams
snapped, towers fell
Shattered are
the battlements, roofs ruined
Age undermined
them; time their undoing
Came days of
pestilence, on all sides men fell dead
War fetched
off the flower of the people
The hosts who
would build again shrank to earth
Therefore are
these courts dreary, rime?ladened
These many feasthalls,
empty...
The dwarf who composed these lines was moved by the spirit of the place, but likely did not know anything of its real history??those facts are lost in time. Tradition has it that Khos was the capital of a state that predated the Lloroi conquest. The Khosites supposedly practiced blasphemous sorceries and defied Lloroi rule. This led to a centuries?long struggle.
The Khosites must have been a heroic people. Even after the young men of Khos perished in battle, their wizard?priests brought their vengeful spirits back to continue the struggle. These wraiths, the Ghost Troops of Khos, won their greatest victory when they annihilated a Lloroi army south of the city. The specters d rove the Lloroi soldiers to their deaths with terror; visitors can still hear the crazed laughter of the vanquished Lloroi drifting over the old battlefield. Hence the name of the place??the Field of the Laughing Dead.
Despite the wraiths, the Lloroi eventually destroyed the city of Khos.
But by some chance, the spell to summon one of the Ghost Troops is preserved
today in Minaria; therefore, the kings of Minaria can sometimes rally the
spirits of these ancient heroes for their own war?like causes.
The Tombs of Olde
When the Emperors of the Lloroi ruled from the city of Niiawee, the Tombs of Olde were named the Necropolis of Minjekahuan. Here, in a gleaming grave?city of alabaster and jacinth, the embalmed bodies of deceased Emperors and high priests were lain amid lamentation and flawless ritual. The last Emperor to be interred in Minjekahuan was Nibagisis; his unfortunate sucessor had his resting place in the Sea of Drowning Men.
Antiquarians have collected an abundance of myths about the Tombs; some have even dared to visit the city of sun?scorched mausoleums. They have found that the ancient Lloroi planned well for the protection of their high?born deceased, with mechanical devices, curses, and guardian demons. And beyond these technological and supernatural terrors, they invested the Necropolis with a living menace.
From the faraway corners of Girion, the Lloroi brought strange, ghoulish beings called "kutrubs" to Minjekahuan. At home surrounded by sorcery and death, these creatures were entirely obedient to the charm?spells of the Lloroi priesthood. Lest they increase and spread beyond the tomb city, the priests wrapped a confining spell around the outer perimeter of Minnjekahuan.
But it seems that the old confining spells have faded. For some centuries the kutrubs have been expanding into the nearby Waste of Vah?ka?ka. Until recently they did not constitute more than a local hazard to lone travelers and small groups. But by the early fourteenth century they had grown numerous enough to drive the nomadic tribes of the Vah?ka?ka into the Dry Mountains and the Banished Lands.
Many are the legends of doom surrounding the fate of tomb robbers who seek the treasure and magical devices buried in the crypts of the dead. One such tale speaks of Monju, king of Zefnar, who sent a host of slaves into Minjekahuan with picks and shovels. They brought back no treasure; in fact, none are known to have come back with their lives. Neither did Monju escape the anger of the funerary spirits: After the expedition, a foul. unknown wasting disease took him slowly to his deathbed.
But the curses of old may have waned with time. One modern expedition
has had impressive success. Hulon, king of Shucassam, braved the bad reputation
of the Tombs and had his servants assail one of the largest mausoleums.
They poured boiling vinegar between the limestone blocks to weaken them,
then applied picks and sledgehammers. Within two years the Shucassamites
had extracted an emperor's ransom in Lloroi grave goods and furniture from
the tomb. Never during this time had the expedition's death rate due to
kutrub attacks and other causes exceeded fifty percent per year??which
was apparently considered within acceptable limits. Nor was Hulon's death??which
occurred exactly one year after the first looting of the crypt??ever positively
attributed to angry spirits.
The Witches' Kitchen
At the very edge of known Minaria, stands a valley of geysers, healing springs, boiling pools and bubbling mud. Long before civilized man suspected it, barbarians of the north feared the valley as a place of angry earth spirits.
The Witches' Kitchen was discovered in 1186, when Muetarian hunters were fleeing from a war party of barbarian savages. They feared the blades of the men behind them more than the eerie, steaming vista that lay ahead. Fortunately, the barbarians would pursue no farther than the valley's rim. A few days later it was safe for the hunters to leave.
The story they told was of immediate interest to the sorcerers and alchemists of the civilized cities. Already before the end of the century, some of these men had made the hazardous journey northward, daring the perils of wolves, undead things from the Shards of Lor, and marauding nomads.
The scholarly pilgrims found some of the springs invigorating and youth?restoring. The sulfur and other minerals from the hot springs were of unsurpassed purity for sorcerous needs. Likewise, the heated ponds of the valley stayed at a perfectly even temperature??ideal for the delicate potions of the highest types of magic. Moreover, the gods of magic seem to favor spells worked in the rainbow?lit valley, and the wizards' record of success with experiments worked in the Kitchen is truly remarkable.
At first the wizards fought fierce duels for possession of this or that corner of the Witches' Kitchen. For a time in the thirteenth century, the mage Zhrondor and his coven dominated the valley to the exclusion of all others. Since Zhrondor's fall, a council of elders have governed the place, keeping order, but allowing the wizards who use the Kitchen's facilities considerable freedom.
In late years the Kitchen has drawn students who go to the valley to
attend a Iyceum conducted by accomplished old wizards. Its graduates are
common in the cities of Minaria and testify to the wisdom of their teachers.
However, the chief sorcerers of Minaria??the Eaters of Wisdom??spurn the
Iyceum. "Charlatans!" they say, "And prancing hedgewizards with rattles
and bones!"