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Marine Ruins

"The architecture of these structures is strange, difficult to identify. The alleys are covered with a slightly concave material... There's even a statue at one of the building's corners, representing some sort of reptilian divinity."

A flooded Ophidian site beneath Buoyancy Bay — the surviving fragment of Ss'Alish's ancient community, sealed and forgotten for centuries until a recent explosion cracked it open and woke the lich sleeping at its heart. The setting of the introductory Marine Ruins scenario, and a self-contained gateway into the Ophidian layer of the underground.

What It Is

The Marine Ruins are all that remain of the community of Ss'Alish — an ophidian magician who, with his apprentices, lived in the Serpent city that stood where Cadwallon stands now. Unlike the well-picked ruins elsewhere, these were spared: the frescoes are intact, the strange metal fragments untouched, a reptilian-divinity statue still stands at a building's corner. The architecture is unmistakably Ophidian — concave-surfaced alleys, the coiling marks, the warm scale-tiles.

How It Was Sealed and Reopened

  • The Ophidians left in 255; Ss'Alish stayed behind and died into undeath by a special ritual, waiting in his crypt
  • Centuries later the Cynwäll city rose above; the crypt ended up below ground
  • Cynwäll and Dogs of War construction partially flooded the crypt
  • When the sewers were built, the water receded and workers found the crypt — and prudently bricked up the entrance. Ss'Alish slept on.
  • Recently, the alchemist Methanol caused a naphtha-machine explosion above the ruins. The tremors shattered the sealing wall and woke Ss'Alish. (see Ss'Alish)

The Layout (scenario)

The site lies beneath Buoyancy Bay, reached through the sewers. Pitch dark, quiet, sickening, Darkness-aligned. Key areas:

  1. The sewers — where smugglers meet (groups of five, ~500 D of illegal goods); shallow water
  2. The ruins — the spared Ophidian structures; the reptilian statue; recognizable as a deep-city construction "always linked to dark stories and violent deaths"
  3. Ill omen — a house knocked down not by time but by Ss'Alish's passage; tracks of a Large-Size snake
  4. Ruined houses — everyday items of a Large-Size, five-fingered, non-humanoid people
  5. Ss'Alish's tomb — the heavy serpentine sarcophagus; the naphtha smell; the treasure; the clawed-open lid showing the thing inside got out

The Smugglers

The pipes and conduits lead deep into the city and out to Kraken Harbor, making the Marine Ruins a natural smuggler meeting point — outside traders swap goods for inside ducats, at night, in groups. Their silhouettes are the "strange shapes" the Sewer Workers glimpsed and fled from — half the "haunting" of the ruins is just contraband. The other half is the lich.

The Treasure

In Ss'Alish's sarcophagus, wrapped in rotting cloth:
- The Dark Catalyst — an oil lamp shaped like a praying half-snake figure; grants bonus dice to Darkness incantation and Darkness-sensing; powered by a single gem of Darkness. At peak danger it "goes crazy," forcing a FEAR check on everyone present.
- Two superior Tulwars — enormous two-handed scimitars that escaped the wear of time (Ss'Alish wields these)

What It Connects To

The Marine Ruins are a shallow, accessible doorway into the Ophidian Vestiges — the broader Serpent layer of the underground. A league that clears Ss'Alish hasn't reached the bottom of anything; they've opened a thread that runs down through the coiling tunnels toward the great ossuary, the Vortiris temple, and (far below) the Labyrinth. It also ties to S'ylice, the living ophidian under the Walled Library — two Serpent holdouts stirring as Desire wakes.

Relations

  • Ss'Alish — the lich at its heart
  • Ophidian Vestiges — the layer it belongs to
  • Ophidians — who built it
  • Buoyancy Bay — the surface above
  • The Sewers — the access route; the smuggler connection
  • S'ylice — the living ophidian counterpart
  • Methanol — the alchemist whose explosion woke Ss'Alish (see Cadwallon p.239)

The intro adventure

The Marine Ruins are designed as a starting scenario: rumors of strange silhouettes under Buoyancy Bay reach a young league, who descend expecting smugglers and find a degenerated ophidian lich. Clean, contained, and a doorway to everything deeper. (Full scenario: Rulebooks/MarineRuins.txt.)

What woke besides Ss'Alish

The naphtha explosion that cracked Ss'Alish's seal may have loosened other bricked-up things in the same Ophidian layer. If one sealed crypt opened, how many others shifted? The Marine Ruins could be the first of several waking sites — the shallow edge of the Serpent stirring.

See Also