Tomb of the Oracles

The recently uncovered tomb housing the remains of the Oracles of Saqqara, located close to the oasis with the Desert of Rydess. It is protected by Khafre, an ancient Neznámy.

Entrance

The main entrance to the Tomb used to be buried under a sand dune. After some digging done during Lone and Level Sands, the group uncovered a number of arches, and stairs that lead down towards long-hidden stone. Under the touch, the rock reveals an intricately carved door. There is no handle, no button, but there are pictograms.

At the very top of the door, there are three panels, one after the other. The first one depicts a glorious sun, its rays touching every edge; yellow paint can still be faintly seen. The second one shows measuring scales, weighing a heart against a feather. The third one is a picture of an hourglass, its sand caught in the moment between one eternity and the next.

Underneath, there is a long sequence of symbols, spanning across the door all the way to its base.

There is another row underneath all of this, but it is empty, though it looks like things could be inserted into this line.

The Painted Chamber

The corridor beyond the door opens into a circular room. There is an exit on the opposite side, but the walls here are preserved the best. They are covered by hieroglyphics and pictograms in (presumably) Saqqaran, and showcase five great panels, from left to right. Each one has a smaller top section, separated from the main panel's body. 

The first one has a familiar motif of a glorious sun 🔆. The second one is a drawing of scales ⚖️. The third one, an hourglass ⌛. The fourth one is a beautifully detailed butterfly 🦋. The last one is a five-petalled flower in full bloom 🌸.

Then, the panels themselves.

🔆 People, depicted in profile, worshipping what must be gods - rain, thunder, light, time, earth, the usual. Then, a number of such people caught in a ritual with their hands to the sky. Lastly, the gods fleeing from... something. There is a gap on the panel, and it's unclear whether it was meant to represent some kind of void, or if this piece simply crumbled to dust with time... or someone destroyed it on purpose.

⚖️ More people, once again with hands up in the air in the sign of reverence, grouped around a spherical winged object. Above them, that same gap-void-thing looms, ready to pounce and devour once more. Then, a mountain, beneath it great passages and caves, and within them smaller people, presented as labourers, workers and artisans. What might be artifacts of some kind are depicted among them, and those people who are in their vicinity are either shown lying on the ground, or as skeletons.

⌛ Taller people, fair and beautiful and long-eared, living in cities of glass and stone. Some of them seem more prominent, and they hold spheres above them with various objects within:

- An opened door, through which a creature is stepping out like a chick from an egg;

- A glowing shield reflecting and breaking all manner of weapons;

- An opened eye, and little scenes of life surrounding it;

- A star-covered brain, worked on as if it was a mechanism;

- A wisp of fire, a droplet of water, a bolt of lightning, a gust of air, and a blob with a skull in it;

- A barren desert, and a smaller sphere; within it, a lush jungle, and a person surrounded by four faint outlines of that person;

- A procession of objects, like a line of evolution; person, bird, horned beast, statue, and so on;

One of these orb-holding people is bigger than the rest, and their orb is split in twain by an ankh- one half shows primitive healing supplies, the other half shows skulls and rotting bodies and blood. 

The very bottom of the panel is a grim scene - more skulls instead of the ground, with robed figures lording over them, and the emptiness devouring their heads.*

🦋 The fourth panel is split in two equal parts, and shows smaller people again, facing each other, clad in armour and holding standards and banners painted white or black. Above those in white there is a large winged being, sun-faced and bright; above those in black, a large horned creature. Both sides are fighting skeletons, seemingly united in their cause, but below, the panel is not divided, and shows both sides in battle against each other. The hole in the panel is now in two places, seemingly on different sides of the conflict, but as a spectator(?), while the winged one is fighting the horned one right in the middle of this scene.

🌸 And finally, the last panel - seemingly an apocalypse. The ground is broken, shattered, and the same winged orbs from before are rising upwards from the earth. Two of them are the largest, and they are hatched, revealing something that could be Dragons. Next, people of all kinds are shown fleeing through many doors and archways, while the Draconic beings are fighting the hungry void. They seem to have emerged victorious, as the latter is fractured into smaller fragments, shown again inside great shields - finally imprisoned?

The Guardian's Chamber

Once again a corridor, and then another room, this time rectangular. There is light coming from above - a hole in the ceiling. Everything else is dark enough to require enhanced vision. There is rubble around. 

Here, Khafre the Sphinx guards the door that leads deeper into the Tomb.

The Chamber of Truth 

Beyond the door that Khafre is guarding, there is a room similar to the previous one. On the opposite side, another stone door, and in the middle there is a towering statue of a robed human carrying giant scales. In front of them, a bowl, presumably for offerings. Above the door, there is some text, in the same ancient language that is seen around the rest of the tomb.

Upon entering this chamber, tendrils of light zap out of the statue, piercing the visitors' chests. There is no pain, just... tightness, but when the tendrils retract from the bodies, they appear to be wrapped around ghostly hearts. On the scales, a feather appears, and the tendrils hover above, ready to place each heart.

Here, one is compelled to tell only the truth. Lies are punished by strong mental anguish, and spoken words that don't match the password have a chance of being unintelligible, and can also cause mild pain.

The Tomb Proper
The passage beyond the final set of doors is a slope leading down, into the seemingly last, long and rectangular chamber. Enchanted flames burn in the wall-sconces, illuminating the surroundings just barely.

The air itself here demands full attention. Still, silent, stale and cold as a corpse, it doesn't move, yet when the visitors do, it presses into their canvassed skins or scales, weaves itself into the brushstrokes of their hair or feathers, and yearns to burst out of their lungs to paint itself red.

The walls are lined with closed, intricately painted sarcophagi, with a statue between each of the two adjacent ones. Plenty of Saqqaran pictograms are present on the stone coffins. On the far end, the floor is raised forming a platform, and a single sarcophagus rests there. Next to it, there is a body sitting on the floor, motionless and askew. A man, dead for quite some time, yet preserved in striking detail. His body has a rocky texture, as if he himself is like the statues around. As the visitors approach, they feel compelled to tell only truth - a similar effect to the one they experienced earlier, but much weaker, like an echo of magic. It's not hard to deduce that he used to be in charge of the chamber with the scales, before his eventual demise.

Upon closer inspection, the petrified corpse has a peculiar dull stone lodged into its forehead - a ka stone. The process seems to have been deliberate, and there are tiny carvings around it, either as decoration, or serving some other purpose. Upon his strong arms, there are more inscriptions, and some of them even seem like they can be pried out, like pieces of a mosaic. Two in particular catch one's attention - a pair of Striking runes, each etched into the middle of his palms! They too seem like they can be taken out.

His hair, or what remains of it, is no hair at all, but stone and opaque crystals. It appears that the forgotten magic that he learned from the Sphinxes changed him in considerable ways - perhaps even turning him into an Oread, if he wasn't one already to begin with. He is wearing gilded armour that lost its sheen; it's quite securely merged to his very body, and one doubts that it could ever be taken off without utterly ruining the corpse.

As the final line of defense, the statues can be animated by the Tomb to defend the sarcophagi. They contain mummies which can continue acting without the stone armour around them, though they are not Neznámy, and seem to be animated by another type of magic, most likely the same one that moved the statues. Khafre wasn't aware of this protective measure, and revealed that the mummies belonged to builders and architects of the Tomb, who willingly entombed themselves here to preserve the secrets of the Oracles of Saqqara.