Uruk’s Summer Palace
The Summer Palace was King Uruk’s second great architectural wonder, a
complete contrast to his capitol’s dark and dreary buildings. Erected a hundred miles
south of cursed Nycopolis, on the high plateau overlooking the Rubban’s Tears,
the Summer Palace was fashioned from tons of solid ivory and white marble. Its
domed halls and wide courtyards gleam like polished bone in the bright
sunlight.
The Summer Palace is completely secluded from the rest of the island in the
heart of an impenetrable wilderness. There is no road across the ghoul-infested
plateau from Nycopolis, and the approach by sea is impossible due to the cliffs,
jagged reefs, and hungry schools of ixitxachitl. The safest approach is by air
(and even that can be dangerous because of the wyvern roosts in the Spine),
though the King himself favored the teleportation cell deep in the basement, for both its quiet efficiency and its
unquestionable security.
The Summer Palace is thus a perfect, secluded retreat, shielded from the rest
of the world by anti-divination wardings. Even the existence of the Summer
Palace was a closely guarded secret, since according to legend, Uruk himself raised
the building with immortal laborers, tasked genies, and fiendish servitors in
only three days and three nights. He told its location to no one and filled the
surrounding jungles with undead creations and fell guardians to safeguard his
privacy.
Kazerabet stumbled across the Palace quite by chance, while flying over the
island on a magical steed. She had read references to the Summer Palace in
ancient texts from Uruk’s reign and was delighted to find the palace uninhabited by
any significant threat, with most of its library intact. She has lived there for
years, leaving only to explore the island or pay a social call on Vermissa in
the Garden of Eternity. Now she devotes much of her time to researching the
various methods of attaining lichdom.
There are two magical gates in the basement of the palace, one ancient (forged by Uruk himself) and one
new (created recently by Kazerabet). The ancient gate leads to the basement of the haunted Royal Palace in Nycopolis. The newer
portal gates visitors directly to the Garden of Eternity. Both portals have been massively
warded to keep out undead, and Kazerabet has placed an invisible symbol of stunning in the foyer to trap uninvited living visitors. An invisible stalker has been
tasked with watching these doors and will report immediately to Kazerabet the
moment one opens.
The archmage is bound by her own code of honor to offer hospitality to
visitors, and she will be wryly amused if she encountered the party previously at the
Colossus. Providing the heroes treat her with proper respect, Kazerabet
entertains them grandly for three days. She then asks them not to trouble her research
again, and she allows them to leave the way they came.
These three days are a perfect opportunity for the adventurers to ask
Kazerabet more questions about Sahu and its many secrets. She might offer insight into
Pizentios’s loathsome character (particularly his vulnerability through Ifrit),
some lore about the history and dangers of Nycopolis, and perhaps some veiled
hints about the Garden of Eternity.
As noted earlier, Kazerabet should be much too powerful for the party to fight
with any real hope of survival. References to invisible fiendish servants, the
occasional glimpse of a genie, and the numerous embalmed ju-ju zombies
maintaining the palace should be ample hints of her extreme power. If the party is
rude, attacks her, or pries too much into her private research, Kazerabet will
promptly subdue the offenders and let them rot in her oubliettes for a while. Days
later, she will release them, stripped of all equipment and magical items,
into the monster-infested jungle outside her palace.
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