Golgotha, the Place of the Skull

Cultural Level: not really applicable, but Bronze Age (CL3) ruins dot the landscape while Fortress Pax is a Classical (CL4) settlement, maintained by the Magistrate of Peace. Landscape: Nocturnal desert, mountains, bog. Due to the presence of Abaddon, the land is always dusk, red skies with black clouds until nightfall. The land is intensely cold though the air is thick and hot. The stars are not visible here. Rumors of an undead ecosystem abound, but none return from Golgotha save Khemeti mummified caravans and they do not speak. Major Settlements: Unknown. Many cities were known to exist in the region, but the dead have configured the region for their odd, inscrutable needs and the synedra are not generally known outside the dead of Golgotha. Races: At the Battle of the Four Armies, every race in the Known World participated, and circumstance has since seen Golgotha fed from all corners of the world. Due to the intense negative energy saturation, all residents have risen as undead. The undead of Golgotha are defined by class levels, modified with any undead template. The Law: When the basileus performed the imprisonment of Abaddon, His Personal Guard was with Him. They rose as death knights to a man, but their oaths to the basileus held. They were repurposed and created as His Magistrate of Peace to hold Fortress Pax in His Name. All undead created in the Battle of Four Armies are bound to protect the land, as are any slain in combat before the land itself sucks them lifeless, placing them under command of the synedrion Lament. Synedra are the councils formed to direct situations determined by the Grand Synedrion, the great council that convenes in the Hall of Hewn Stone. Abaddon is sealed in an orb within the temple itself for the Magistrates of Peace allow none within the Psychomanteum Siamun but themselves and the Vestal Virgins who maintain it. There are believed to be five operating synedra and one Grand Synedrion at Fortress Pax, but this is uncertain. Any synedrion will have at least 23 members, each concerned with different agendas. Depending on the synedrion, it can be larger, but Fortress Pax holds the Grand Synedrion at 71 members, so no single synedrion should be larger than that, nor convene with an even number of members. The selection of the members of a synedrion is not known, but they are created by the Grand Synedrion to address the concerns of Abaddon and are identified as such. Each member of a synedrion has the power of low justice and are addressed as Instructor. Synedra canvas public opinion and disseminate information, make rulings, and debate. Their decisions are binding, and their consensus holds the strength of law. They hold office until the concern is addressed to their satisfaction. The Synedrion Lament, for example, provides military oversight for the invaders now bound to the land, but also examines and maintains the curse enslaving invaders . This synedrion affirms the curse that binds invaders to the land and dispatches these troops through Golgotha. The synedrion is subordinate to the Magistrate of Peace, just as local troops are subordinate to Imperial forces. Squads or teams are sometimes formed for special missions or specific duties by synedra, just as the synedra are called through the Grand Synedrion. Locally, the dominant undead of a region claims a haunt adequate to it's ability. These haunts are fluid and move as the undead shuffle about, but a current haunt may request Lament station troops in a haunt, and such assigned undead are bound to the haunter so long as it controls a haunt. These individuals patrol endlessly, sometimes erecting odd structures for their own unfathomable purposes.
History: Golgotha was the battlefield for the Battle of Four Armies where the basileus ended the threat of eastern invasion forever. Once holding many trade routes, the area was dominated by the Forbidden Name’s Fortress Pax until that was destroyed by Kingir, though it was being rebuilt by Iranshar, as Alexander stopped there long enough to recruit troops and resupply his army. The city was leveled again during the Fall of the House of Gaius and the Year of Four Emperors, leaving nothing standing but the walls of the Psychomanteum Siamun until rebuilt again by Dowager Empress Helena, who rebuilt the Psychomanteum Siamun and pacified the region with her power amplified by the perfect geometries she imbued with her foresight. As Helena was the basileus’s grandmother, He regarded the honor of His House besieged by the armies of Endingir, Iranshar, and the cannibal horde of Djibril much more than the territorial encroachment of a remote corner of His Empire. Using the forbidden witcheries of Purple Ports diabolism, the basileus attempted to summon power enough to protect the land by trapping primal creation itself in the perfect geometries the Wizard-King Siamun used in constructing his psychomanteum. This audacious scheme failed and instead bound a sentient mass of negative energy trapped in the land itself, only able to manifest in it's prison, the basileus’s orb, and unable to manifest it's power beyond the walls of the psychomanteum. In appearance, Abaddon is a vision in a black orb and a terrifying voice demanding freedom, raging of His imprisonment, and boasting of His past. The essence of Abaddon permeating the land runs through the coasts of the Mare Nostrum from the Khemet Brook to a day’s journey south of Sirru and the Iranshar Gulf Coast to the Burunan. These energies are inimical to life and drain 1d4 levels per round until they reanimate the remains(survivors that leave the area can roll Fortitude against DC 24 to regain a lost level after 24 hours). The three invading armies were turned into monstrous servitors of Abaddon along with all inhabitants and the effect endures. Only undead occupy the land, and receive +8 turn resistance. This bonus stacks. Because life cannot survive here, the resident undead will not be of types that require feeding. This effect stops at the coast, as fishing boats have discovered, but the waters are dangerous nonetheless as undead patrol the waters, seeking to drag the living to the land.

Trade and Diplomacy: Entire mummified caravans from Khemet yet use the roads, so many of the synedra have relations with the Waset. The patricians of the Eternal City also communicate with the synedra through undead courtiers, since even the erinyes and devils of Dis are vulnerable to the land’s effect. Kingir’s ghoul necropoli do not exchange even minor trade with Golgotha, as Arratu forbids traffic with the surface. However, Golgotha has many remote and lonely places where one may access any of the afterlifes though the laws of that realm apply. One does not enter Arratu without passing the seven toll gates which claim 1/7 of the soul of all who cross them, even if one enters by the darkling roads of Golgotha. Many undead, both potent individuals and secretive conclaves, have connections with Golgotha because of the Paths of the Dead. Although petitions have been presented for Golgotha to allow various conspiracies safe haven or privacy to plot, none has received a response. Abaddon has neither supported nor rebuffed them, so they carry out their plans independently, using certain areas of Golgotha as clandestine meeting halls or cache depots. These schemes have naught to do with Abaddon, even when dedicated to it. All Abaddon desires is freedom, but the undead of Golgotha believe they will meet final death should it leave the land, so only aid it’s schemes when coerced to do so. Invaders have no will where Abaddon is concerned, nor may they refuse the synedrion Lament. The Magistrate of Peace monitors their numbers and culls them to prevent revolt, though poaching of powerful specimens is not unknown.

Geography

Golgotha is desolate hills and deserts sprinkled with low mountains that dominate their landscape. Boggy ragged coasts yield to salt marsh so rank as to extinguish life almost on contact, growing more foul and toxic the nearer one draws to Fortress Pax. The air itself is toxic here, dense and hot, inevitably fatal at the dark heart of the Psychomanteun Siamun where Abaddon is held.

Fauna & Flora

This is a land of the undead. No plantlife survives but desolate trees long dead and salt corroded as the insects died with everything else. Undead beasts roam this waste, ghost brutes as well as animate remains, some fossilized and obviously predating the Prisoning of Abaddon.

Natural Resources

Whatever resources Golgotha has are of no interest to the dead and thus, untouched.

Type

Wasteland

Location under

The Mare Nostrum

Included Locations

• The Psychomanteum of Siamun

Included Organizations

• The Grand Synedrion

Owner/Ruler

Basileus of the Empire

Owning Organization

The Grand Synedrion