Wednesday 31 October 2012

The Hidden Ziggurat Dažbog

Strangely Carved Obelisks(illustrative)
Legends abound of people discovering the Dazbog while exploring the labyrinth of caves under the craggy Beskdy mountains.  While the details vary, all accounts invariably describe the subjects entering a modestly sized cave, the sides covered with primitive hieroglyphs.  The center of the cave is dominated by a square of stone tiles with  four strange obelisks at the corners.  In the center of the tiled floor is a square hole, through which a man could be lowered by a rope, leading down deeper into the ground.

The legends describe the explorers descending into the hole and finding themselves at the top of a vast Ziggurat.  There they encounter inhuman wonders and otherworldly horrors, though the nature of these varies with each account.

Regardless of whether the legends are true or not, the area surrounding Dazbog is inhospitable in it's own right.  The hill people are of a degenerate type and dislike strangers, though they are happy enough to help them part with their coin, whether by selling them supplies or serving as porters. Additionally, the Beskdy mountains and the caves below are full of wild animals and have a reputation for occasionally producing unwholesome creatures, this generally being attributed to Dazbog's influence by the superstitious natives.

The most recent account of Dazbog, is by last century's well-known monk/historian Bartholam.  He records a quest of the Knight Gniewosz of Klostyn who rode out in the Spring with 100 men and the renowned blacksmith Zyndram to find and seal-off the entrance to the unholy Ziggurat with iron bands as thick as a man's wrist.  He returned in mid-Autumn with most of his men, reporting a successful quest.  He also described how him and his men searched the maze of caves for other entrances to Dazbog to seal, but to no avail.  In fact, coming to a point just below the entrance cave, they found no sign of the Ziggurat, leading Gniewosz to conclude that Dazbog exists not in this world but in Hell itself, and the entrance is some sort of unholy gateway.


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