Pyramid of Khonsu

The enormous pyramid of the Pharaoh Khonsu is rumoured to be filled with the immense treasures she amassed during her lifetime. The bindings laid upon it thousands of years ago - to ensure Khonsu would remain imprisoned if she awoke - ensure it remains pristine, as if it were built mere centuries ago.
The bindings were placed by the senior and high priests of every good-aligned religion in the region, resulting in a wide variety of styles and incantations. They are all directed to the same purpose; preventing Khonsu from rising as an undead pharaoh, and should she rise, ensuring she cannot leave the pyramid. For the same purpose, a guard was mounted on the pyramid and the surrounding funerary temples for almost a thousand years.

Purpose / Function

The pyramid was constructed as a vast resurrection engine, like all pyramids of the era, demonstrating Khonsu's wealth and power at the same time. Although the main design could not be changed after she died, the priesthood were able to turn it into a prison to contain her within should she rise again.
Intended as a symbol of Khonsu's glory, few other pharaonic pyramids within the Raurin Empire ever approached its magnificence. The engineering skill and magecraft that went into the construction of the pyramid and the surrounding funerary temples are rarely equalled even four thousand years later.
Khonsu's body was interred within the pyramid with key members of her court - some voluntarily, others not so. Members of her army who died in her service - or sacrificed themselves to her, upon her death - were buried in serried ranks of regiments around the base of the pyramid. Favoured servants were also permitted to be buried near the pyramid, in hopes of sharing her afterlife - or her resurrection.

Architecture

The pyramid is located at the eastern end of the Dragon's Tooth Mountains and towers almost five hundred feet above the desert floor, and each side is over seven hundred and fifty feet long. It is constructed of red granite, with its capstone made of pure white marble. The stone blocks are over ten feet square on each face, weighing eighty-five tons apiece, and were hauled into place using a combination of craftsmen, labourers and magic. Man-height hieroglyphs extolling Khonsu's achievements cover the bottom fifty feet of the pyramid, with the smaller glyph carvings of the bindings interlaced between them.
The stone was quarried by converting most of a small mountain at the end of the mountain range into carved blocks, which were then painstakingly assembled into the pyramid. The construction effort took over twenty years to complete.
Although the exterior is weathered by the passing of thousands of years since the pyramid and temple's construction, it is much less than an onlooker would expect, thanks to both the protective magics laced into the stone, and the vicious curses which swiftly befall any who would attempt to damage any part of the complex, or steal any of its contents or stones.
A large funerary temple sits in front of the pyramid, before its east-facing entrance, with a causeway stretching between them. Ten huge thirty-foot-tall stone statues of warriors line the promenade approaching the temple's outer entrance, five on each side. Each depicts the warrior down on one knee, shields tight to their bodies in one hand, and their stone khopesh raised in the other hand to form an archway through which supplicants must walk. Massive statues of Khonsu sit on either side of the entrance, each towering sixty feet in the air. 
The columned entrance hall is lined with reliefs of the pharaoh in life as she conquered the surrounding nations and ruled over her empire. Lines of captive soldiers pass before the victorious warrior-queen in some bas-reliefs, while others show officials prostrating themselves before her or attentively writing down her orders as she issues them.
Deeper within the temple, the entrance hall opens into a large room, lined with statues of Astorath in her lion-headed persona, each holding up the ceiling. A vast star-map covers the ceiling, with semi-precious gems glittering to mark the stars, and fine wires of electrum marking the shapes of constellations. During solstices and days which were holy during Khonsu's reign, long-forgotten spells make the gems blaze with cold light.
Hallways lead off to shrines depicting various ancient gods, with several temple chambers dedicated to venerating Khonsu in her divine persona as a daughter of Eonnoe.
Leaving the temple via the rear portico, the vast expanse of the pyramid dwarfs onlookers. The causeway leads up to its entrance, a columned hall with a smaller shrine of Khonsu, and deep within the sealed bronze doors to the pyramid itself.
The tall doors are over three times the height of a man, and frescoes covering their surface show Khonsu within the land of the dead, being served by those she ruled over in life. The seam between the doors is narrower than a razor blade, and any attempt to open them fails, for they are as immovable as the stone of the pyramid they guard.
Several rooms within the pyramid contain strange and arcane devices intended to sustain the queen and her court for eternity, whilst others contain funerary treasures or shrines to deities. One large room somehow contains a garden resembling a forest glade, with a magical fountain brimming with the life-giving energy of the pyramid. A perfumed breeze flows through it, and a gold, topaz and amber artifice in the ceiling illuminates the room with daylight whenever the sun strikes the capstone of the pyramid.

Defenses

The secret entrance to the pyramid was lost thousands of years ago, when the builders were slain shortly after its completion. Hidden within the entrance shrine is a secret panel with a complex lock, requiring several different portions of frescoes around the shrine to be manipulated in a certain order. When this is done successfully, the stone block pulls back into the wall for fifteen feet, revealing a short passage which is open for mere moments before the block reverses its course and seals again.
The end of the passage, made by the recessed entrance block, turns sharply right to penetrate into the pyramid. This is also the first trap for the unwary: when the entrance block moves back into position, the blocks which make up the left side of the passage after the turn also slide forward with it, erasing the passage from existence as they meet the blocks which make the far wall and crushing those who move too slowly.
Those who manage to navigate the secret passage exit into a grand entrance hall, where vaulted ceilings are held up by fluted columns topped with lotus flowers. The tiles of the floor form an immense mosaic and conceal a variety of deadly traps, ranging from trapdoors over spiked pits to spikes thrusting from the floor or gushes of burning naphtha pouring from the ceiling. The safe path can only be perceived by those who have studied Khonsu's life as shown in her frescoes, and follow the pattern in the mosaic.
The way within the pyramid is guarded by undead warriors, living statues and elementals maddened by their long confinement. Long stone passageways with carved or painted decorations show highlights of the pharaoh's rule, or simply moments of everyday life to be commemorated eternally. Everburning torches are built into the walls, lighting the halls with continual flame spells.
Intruders must navigate several levels to reach the heart of the pyramid several storeys above, where the mummy-queen resides on her throne, surrounded by her court and guard. Traps fill the edifice, and even those who successfully avoid them are more likely to join Khonsu's court as shambling undead servitors than escape with their lives and some of the wealth filling the tomb.

Founding Date

-3089 PS

Type

Crypt

Parent Location

Dragon's Tooth Mountains

Owner

Khonsu

Characters in Location

• Khonsu