Correct, you don't know where the tomb is, a search of the hex is required for that.
It had been hot in the city of Tephu too, but there they could at least find some shade and refreshments. The open desert of the Parched Dunes offers no such relief and it’s only thanks to Francis’s help Elliander can endure the heat. The duskblade takes care to protect his skin and eyes from the sun and sand. He will also make use of his salt tablets when needed if he sweats a lot. The sand has a way to find its way into his boots though.
Elliander would prefer to walk in the morning and in the evening. At noon it’s very hot and better to rest, while at night the darkness makes it difficult to walk when the terrain is rough. The duskblade can provide his own light to guide him, but that also makes them visible to any enemy from a distance.
Having collected some info along the way and gotten a general idea of the few landmarks there are, like the river to the southwest and the mountains to the west, Elliander ponders where someone might want to hide Chisisek’s tomb. The river seems to be a place travelers seek and not so secluded. Likewise, the area of sandflats north of them is the trail most commonly used by caravans. He suggests they head out northwest.
Moonday, the 5th day of Sarenith, 4714 AR
Weather is clear, sunny and very hot (100 degrees or so)
Hour of Sunset.
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The party travels during the morning hours, just as dawn paints the eastern horizon a lovely shade of pink and then again in the evening, as the sun sinks into the west with another blaze of beautiful colors. Midday is spent resting in whatever shade the heroes can make for themselves, so that they avoid the sun that blazes unmercifully down upon them from directly above. Thanks to Francis' magic, they are able to endure the awful heat of the day, and again the cleric's magic gives them plenty of water to drink. But still, traveling through the desert beneath that blazing sun tests their endurance.
They head roughly northwest and take their time searching the sandy plains for signs of a hidden, or perhaps even buried, pyramid. But the adventurers find nothing for the efforts, and the first pinpricks of despair begin to creep into their souls. There is so much land to search, and the tomb may be quite obvious or it may indeed be difficult, if not impossible to find. Have the centuries and the harsh desert environment concealed it entirely? There is no way to know, and they can trust only to their gods, to luck, and their own survival skills to find out...
Player Handout - Mask of the Forgotten Pharaoh
Player Handout - Scrolls of Inquiry Excerpt
The funerary mask they recovered in Wati, known only to them as the Mask of the Forgotten Pharaoh actually belonged to Sky Pharaoh Hakotep I, who ruled Osirion during the Second Age over six thousand years ago. References to Hakotep as the Sky Pharaoh recounted his ability to 'ride the stars by night'. Thanks to a few other obscure clues in the library, combined with their knowledge of history and the arcane, the party suspected this might refer to magic once possessed by the Shory, an ancient people said to have created great cities that flew through the skies thousands of years ago.
The hidden Spiral Archive library revealed that Hakotep was involved in some ancient war, and he was convinced that an attack was coming from enemies who 'lived in cities in the clouds' - further solidifying the idea of Shory involvement. Apparently the Sky Pharaoh was seeking to find a powerful weapon to defeat his enemy, and there was evidence that he actually found this weapon - but the only details the party found were the remains of papyrus scraps depicting confusing geometrical patterns.
A scroll was found describing Hakotep's tomb as 'having wings', part of the confession of a member of a group called the Sacrosanct Order of the Blue Feather, which also claimed that the Sky Pharaoh's heart and funerary mask were stolen from his tomb before it was 'lost to the skies'. This document indicated that these two items possessed pieces of Hakotep's soul, which were separated from his physical body. Hakotep's successor, Pharaoh Djederet II, ordered that members of this order were to be rounded up and questioned - but those scrolls were to be found in yet another secret library known as the Dark Depository.
Having now found this second library, the adventurers have yet to find these Scrolls of Inquiry as they were called, but they located the journal of a Priest of Nethys who was either a member of the Sacrosanct Order of the Blue Feather or doing very similar research. The priest's name was Khnenti, and he was apparently obsessed with the mystery of the Sky Pharaoh. Khnenti wrote extensively about the funerary mask of Hakotep I, and that it also contains a portion of the Sky Pharaoh's soul, specifically his ka, which apparently fuels the magical abilities of the mask. It was also noted during their search of the room that all of the sarcophagi in the chamber they're resting in contain the remains of those that were being punished by being embalmed and mummified while still alive for various crimes involving the search for knowledge that had been deemed as protected by order of the pharaoh. And, in fact, the occupant of one of these sarcophagi was none other than Khnenti himself - a contemporary of Pharaoh Djederet II and apparently during the time period when the Scrolls of Inquiry were purportedly written.
It is apparent to the party that these scrolls, and perhaps more information, are still to be found somewhere in the Dark Depository - perhaps in one of the other rooms they've yet to explore. As well, they hope to find the location of this Vault of Hidden Wisdom, where Khnenti indicated he stored his most precious research on Hakotep, including the Sky Pharaoh's 'darkest secrets'.
Their research finally revealed the Scrolls of Inquiry, the scrolls proving to be both cumbersome and difficult to read, with most of the confessions meaning nothing to them. One transcript, however, does contain some useful information (OOC - see Player Handout #2 in the Google Slides for details). After hearing the others tell of this, Devin realizes he may have heard something about that. The half-orc bard recalls he heard some months earlier. The story went that an important and high-ranking priestess of Nethys was said to have discovered an artifact of some kind beneath Azghaad's Spire in Sothis. Her name, as he recalls, was Serethet - and soon after the discovery that had all the treasure hunters and nobility in the capital city of Osirion buzzing with excitement, the priestess disappeared. There were rumors that she had fled Sothis after being summoned to an audience with the Ruby Prince himself.
Besides the grim contents of the scrolls, the party also discovered a collection of architectural plans detailing a series of tomb designs of incredible complexity. Each plan is labeled with a double hieroglyph of an owl inside a house. It didn't take long to cross reference the hieroglyph as the signature of a very famous architect from the First Age of Osirion, a talented man called Chisisek. There is also a note mentioning a meeting between Chisisek and the Sky Pharaoh, but nothing more is found on this topic here. It appears that the interred priest Khnenti possessed further research on Hakotep and the architect both, but these can only be found in the Vault of Hidden Wisdom - the third and hopefully final library in their quest for knowledge. The location of the Vault is secret, but there is a notable clue that "worthy scholars can find the entrance by casting their eyes from the summit of the Tower of Ra’s Glory at dawn on midsummer’s day." The party, however, is able to glean some knowledge from the corpse of Khenti using a Speak with Dead spell. And though the spirit of the long-dead scholar gives no further instruction on how to find the Vault of Hidden Wisdom, the question "Why is the Temple of Nethys hiding information about Hakotep?" elicits the answer of. "The Sacrosanct Order of the Blue Feather, a sect of the Temple of Nethys, sought to learn the secrets held by Sky Pharaoh Hakotep I, where he lay interred in his tomb. But the knowledge they gleaned was deemed too dangerous by Pharaoh Djederet II and the Order was charged with keeping it secret from all except themselves. For not even the Pharaoh, himself a worshipper of Nethys, would see valuable knowledge destroyed."
The final question, "Where is Chisiek buried?" brings a strong response from the corpse. "Chisiek's tomb lies in the Parched Dunes, north of the source of the Crook River in the foothills of the Barrier Wall within a steep-sided ravine at the western edge of a valley hidden from those that are not seeking it carefully." The body of Khnenti even went so far as to turn its head to seek the eyes of the spellcaster, adding an addendum to its final answer. "Find the tomb of the architect who built the Sky Pharaoh's sacred pyramid. Finish my work!"
After finding the third and final library, the PCs find the remainder of the journal of the Nethysian priest Khnenti, whose spirit they actually spoke with in the Dark Depository. According to the journal, with Hakotep’s ib and ka trapped in his heart and funerary mask, the third part of his soul, the ba, remained trapped within the pharaoh’s body in his pyramid. In order for the Sky Pharaoh to pass into the afterlife, the three parts of his soul — his ba, ib, and ka — must be rejoined. Khnenti goes on to speculate that reuniting Hakotep’s ivided soul might even return the Sky Pharaoh to life.
The research also confirms that the architect Chisisek designed and built Hakotep’s pyramid. When construction was completed, Chisisek was killed and buried in a hidden tomb to preserve the pyramid’s secrets, but no plans of the pyramid seem to have survived. They do learn that the Sky Pharaoh’s pyramid was capable of flight, and when Hakotep’s body was entombed within, the
pyramid vanished into the sky. However, none know where the tomb now lies, or if it still soars through the skies over Osirion.
However, Francis found a text that confirmed that although none know the location of Chisisek’s tomb, his funeral was commemorated in a fresco in the Vault’s rotunda by the greatest artist of the age, Hor-hepu. This is the same fresco that was hidden behind the false ceiling, and in studying the fresco painted on the true dome of the rotunda, the PCs learn that Chisisek’s tomb - sealed with his double hieroglyph of an owl inside a house - is said to be located “across two bridges, where
the sphinxes ponder the crook, the scarab, and the sun.” This corresponds to the reference they'd already made, which indicates the area between the Crook and Scarab rivers and the Pillars of the Sun mountains — a desert region called the Parched Dunes, though once again the tomb’s exact location is not pinpointed.
Lastly, they find that the geometric shapes on the fresco are far more than just design elements; they represent a fantastic weapon of vast size used against winged cities populated with strange figures bearing weapons that launch black fire - clear refence to the ancient people known as the Shory.
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Amenhep 58/58
Devin 59/59
Elliander 63/63 [Armor Crystal - DR 1, has absorbed 0 (of 10) damage this day]
Francis 53/53
Nevitash 71/71
It’s hot. Elliander stops and empties his boot from sand again. The landscape looks barren, sandy plains broken up with additional rocks. The duskblade tries to figure out what they are actually looking for.
”We’re looking for a tomb, right? But it was kind of secret and thus built in a hidden place? Unless they dug a large hole, built the tomb inside and then filled it up, then this type of plain seems wrong. If the tomb is hidden below the sand, we can search forever without finding it. Do we really know what type of structure it can be? A pyramid, or something else? I know they like to bury important people in pyramids, but they are often standalone structure, visible. Chisiek was important, but not the pharaoh. Isn’t it more likely, if they wanted to hide it, the tomb is cut into a cliff side or tucked it away among hills or in some type of dead-end canyon? Should we aim for a more hilly landscape?
Francis considers Elliander's words. Even with the magical protections their skin was dry and red. It burned and itched like exposure to flame....
"I don't know much about construction. But it seems to me that any structure would have to be built on sturdy ground, not sand...."
"I think they would build in lands that are easier to get to and to transport resources." Nevitash says.
Francis seems to be thinking a bit like Elliander, while Nevitash lays out another theory, searching where it’s easier first. The duskblade turns to Nevitash:
”What you say sounds logical if they just wanted to make a monument that would be easy to see. Along the river would certainly be easier, but we’ve encountered a lot of secrecy so far. Something tells me they wanted to hide away this tomb, maybe even building an extra fake one just to confuse. Would they really put it here where the caravans run?”
The duskblade looks west trying to discern any cliff formations through the heat haze. It’s hard to tell. The sun makes the air distorted close to the ground. Early mornings are the only time they can really see far. But they’ve got a rough map of the land, and the duskblade would favor going west, touching the river.
Amenhep shrugs. While his upbringing in Osirion has kept him marginally better adapted to the heat, it is still uncomfortable, "The deserts sands are known to shift. Structures built in an earlier age may have been put somewhere entirely appearling, but the ever-changing desert swallows it whole."