Puzzled by Architecture. (Blakros Museum) minor spoiler

[FLite]

In the Mists of Mwangi, the final action takes place around and on top of a 20 foot tall, ten foot wide ziggarat, with a 4 foot platform on top. At the top of the "ziggarat" is an alter with someone bound on it.

Am I really reading that map + description right? because thats kind of crazy. That basicly means each "step" of the pillar would be 2.5 feet tall, and 6 inches across.

Also, in the sequel, Voices in the Void, the pillar contains a secret door leading to a ten foot wide ramp that goes down 25 feet over 50 feet, and which is 15 feet tall, meaning the top of the ramp doesn't go below floor level till it is 20 feet past the base of the ziggarat, and the open space of the ramp is as wide or wider than the ziggarat.

What the heck? Either the Blakeros museum was built be timelords, or the ziggarat is supposed to be 30 feet wide by 20 feet tall, and the map is extremely wrong (Note that at 30 feet wide by thirty feet long, the ziggarat pretty much fills the room.)

[Netopalis]

A wizard did it.

Hey, we even know which wizard! It was Nigel!

[FLite]

Actually, I would blame the original builder if anyone. Nigel just isn't impressive enough to blame him :)

[Drogon]

We have long begged Paizo for a flipmat with this location on it. I've always suspected the reason it has never been done is because the job causes madness in the cartographers.

[BigNorseWolf]

Here's a printable map

[FLite]

Dude, I would totally GM that map. Preferably with the echer scene from Labyrinth playing in the background for flavor.

[Rei]

Welcome to Pathfinder Society. My favorite instance of "what the hell is this map doing to physics" is in the Cathedral of Aroden in Shadow's Last Stand I. There's something there labeled a staircase that is five feet long and twenty feet high.

[FLite]

I don't know, I seem to remember some "staircases" like that when we visited the Netherlands.

I think some of it may have to do with trying to fit the whole map onto a single sheet of game paper. Actually, it seems like sometimes large rooms are too small because they are trying to fit them onto a sheet, while other times, small rooms are too large because they want room for the entire party to fit into the room with the enemy and still be able to move. (The archive on the Blakros map has a fairly generous 8 feet between shelves for example. And even cheap dockside inns have bedrooms that are 20' by 15' feet.)

[Rei]

My pet peeve with buildings in PFS is that you barely ever find bathrooms or even outhouses. I think I've seen a bathroom in a total of two scenarios that weren't located in the Blakros Museum, and I've been doing this for five years.

[Eric Clingenpeel]

Of course you don't see bathrooms, that's what chamber pots are for...

[FLite]

well, bathrooms are pretty rare in medieval towns. They tended to be stinky places. Homes are more likely to have chamber pots, which then get emptied (hopefully) into the sewers.

[GM Hands of Fate]

Most likely the chamber pots were emptied into the streets.

[FLite]

Also, given what lives in absolom's sewers, and given that it occasionally crawls out of the toilets, I'm not sure I would want a toilet in a building.

again the blakros museum:

Giant Crocodile, seriously? Speckled Viper is almost as bad, how the heck does a 3 foot long snake climb up a hole wide enough to let a 12' long crocodile through?

[Dubgall]

The contents of most chamber pots were used to set dies in fabric's.

[Sir_Wulf]

I've often described the ziggurat as a “plinth” to better match the image on the map:

In the center of the room, a step-sided plinth looms twenty feet up from the mists. Narrow steps and numerous handholds on the plinth's sides would make it an easy climb.

The plinth's pinnacle forms a platform some four feet across, upon which sits an altar covered with 'demon-ape' motifs. A slender elf lies sprawled across the altar, bound to it by some of the artificial vines that decorated the chamber. The elf's robes are ragged tatters. He does not seem to be trying to escape, but is instead screeching and grunting in time with the ululating chanting of the apes in the vast chamber. A small monkey sits atop the elf’s chest, waving a stone dagger.

[Lakesidefantasy]

Dubgall wrote:

The contents of most chamber pots were used to set dies in fabric's.

Yeah, I was shocked to learn that dyers in ancient Rome would place a large pot outside on the street for passersby to relieve themselves into, then at the end of the day would bring the urine filled pot in to set the dyes.

[FLite]

hmm... Practical, efficient *and* civic minded!