Where other culture groups build towns and cities as a collection of dozens or hundreds of free-standing structures, Vo cultures usually construct hives, labyrinthine complexes of adobe or brick in which homes, public infrastructure, businesses, and hallway-roads all share walls and roofs. Exploring an abandoned hive is sort of like journeying through an above-ground anthill or an excavated dungeon. By virtue of their construction, hives have the following features:
- Many entrances, each individually defensible. Many hives are designed to be accessed by ladder only, except perhaps for a stable dock built isolated from the rest of the hive.
- Tough but penetrable walls. Hive structures are resilient against sandstorms and harsh winds, but a sledge and enough time can create new access points.
- Winding paths with many dead-ends and barred doors. Many large hives are laid out to intentionally confuse outsiders and invaders.
- Flat roofs, easily traversed unless designed for defense.
- Wind towers to create cross breezes and circulation.
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| Chan Chan, capital of the Chimor Empire |
Exploration Procedure
Unless otherwise noted, assume things follow the way of your favorite dungeon game procedure.
Labyrinths
Unlike a dungeon, many areas won't be represented by a floorplannable chamber. We'll call them labyrinths, and they differ in the following ways:
It takes one Turn to pass through a labyrinth if you are very familiar with it; two Turns if you've been through it only a couple times before; two Turns to find a random exit; or three Turns to fully inspect the labyrinth.
If you mark your path with chalk, thread, or some other means, you can backtrack quickly, taking only one Turn. However, denizens of the hive can follow your path right to you— +1-in-6 chance of encountering wandering monsters.
Most labyrinths have side rooms (former apartments, storage magazines, exc.) that can be barricaded and camped in. Depending on the labyrinth, this either involves breaking down a barred door (standard old school procedure for that), or building a sufficient barricade at an open portal with whatever jetsam you encounter, which takes three Turns for an average-sized party.
The strange layout of a labyrinth is good for sneaking through— +1-in-6 chance of surprise for all encounters where you would roll that, and solitary characters sneaking around in good sneakin' clothes have a default 3-in-6 chance of doing so successfully.
Just as with all other facets of an adventure game, particular labyrinth areas will be subject to intense variety. Some will offer special hazard, strange forms of traversal, or hidden treasure.
Breaking Through Walls
Hive walls have hit points. Spending a Turn hitting a section of wall with an appropriate tool, like a sledgehammer or pickaxe, allows a character to make an Open Doors roll to deal 1 damage to a section of wall, ceiling, or floor. The average adobe wall has two hit points, and two characters trading off strikes can work together to strike a wall in the same Turn.
When a section is destroyed, there is a 0-in-6 chance of collapse, +1 per level of structure directly above it. A collapse causes the roof and adjoining walls to break apart and fill in the gap, a save vs 2d6 damage for the breakers, and trigger a collapse check for the structure above it. Some structures, like freestanding towers and vaults above a basement level, are specifically reinforced to prevent collapse, ignoring the first collapse check that would be made for them.
Example: a party of explorers is trying to access a treasure vault three levels deep in a hive, and has found its way to the area directly below it on the fourth level down. Two characters tear at a ceiling supporting the vault above with heavy hammers, and get lucky in their Open Door rolls, demolishing it after only a single Turn. Normally this would trigger a collapse check (3-in-6 because the vault is in the third basement), but ingenious quoins have been built into it and the vault structure holds. The characters give each other boosts and climb into the hole in the ceiling, discovering what is in the chamber above.
Estimating Distance
As in the above example, it may happen that characters want to judge what space on one level is directly above or below another, and if this involves an abstract space like a labyrinth rather than a strict floorplan, the DM will have to assess how accurate the guess is.
As a rule of thumb, if the PCs slow to half speed and count their paces, walking the entire route, they can always find the right spot on the first try. If not, they're always off by at least a hundred feet, unless the hive is really quite small. Hive denizens are always accurate in estimating distances of places they must have been a hundred times before.
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park |
Archaeological Cues
When exploring an abandoned or fallen hive, it can be useful to learn about the culture that constructed it, to understand the recurring landmarks that can be used to orient oneself as one explores. The older hives may even show cultural strata, with newer archaeological cues repurposing and building onto old cues.
A hive may not have all of the cues associated with its current culture, but it would be weird if it lacked half of them. As it's common for one hive to be rebuilt or redeveloped over time, the signs of earlier cultural cues may be apparent, though the earlier infrastructure may have been subsumed by later constructions, repurposed, or walled off.
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| Roman atrium |
Yarfu Empire Cues
1. Solarium well. A shaft open to the sun that falls upon a drinking well and communal space, decorated with religious scenes. Therefore connects the roof to a low level with nothing below it in that space.
2. Barrack-temple. Stockpile of relics and many apartments. Great firepit with bronze mirrors. Near to the main entrance, and to the procession circuit.
3. Procession circuit. Grand basement-level procession hall that loops back on itself, with civic murals.
4. Dare-tower. Thin, gaudily decorated tower jutting from the center of the roof or close to the main entrance. More martially ready hives have more prominent and provocative towers, daring foes to try their defenses. Usually directly above the throne chamber, even if multiple floors intervene.
5. Basement throne chamber. Relatively shallow stone seat built into the back wall. Directly under the dare-tower.
6. Slave arcade. Straight, smooth-walled pit overlooked from at least two sides by open arched bays. While infamous today for their slavery, imperial accounts considered their captivity liberal and permissive, and it was not uncommon for the slave caste of large hives to operate and maintain huts, communal art objects, and closed worship, affording some degree of internal autonomy.
7. Puck field. Circular or rectangular pitches built on flat sections of hive roofs. While not considered civic functions, hockey and other puck sports were nearly ubiquitous in the times of the empire. They were always kept well away from the homes of the wealthy and the temples.
8. Rooftop birthing fonts. Bathing pools in small numbers, within view of the sun. Mosaic tile makes the bottom of each pool resemble a sun itself, to bless those born at night. A definite path usually leads from the well to the fonts, even when they're at a great remove.
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| Saranac Lake |
Ice-Brick Culture Cues
1. Blood Well. A fissure in the earth from which warm air escapes, melting ice for the hive's population to drink. Unworked, the fissure eventually stopped releasing this warm air, at which point the residents poured blood into it— either the contributions of many or the sacrifice of one person— and the heat resumed. By necessity, found rising from the base of the hive and open penetrates to the surface. Sometimes the main entrance of the hive.
2. Detrital Walls. Due to the cold climate that prevents the natural decay of some substances, external walls are sometimes mingled with refuse or sentimental keepsakes as a form of disposal. If a hive expands, it leaves rows of formerly-exterior walls emanating through it, so moving through a detrital gate is a good navigational landmark.
3. Savouriezh Komz. A many-portalled hall or district whose doors are carved and painted to form bulging, expressive faces, fierce animals, or other images. Here youths on the cusp of adulthood live, moving to different apartments as suits them. No authorities governed them in this area. After two years, they were allowed to leave the Savouriezh Komz and live as adults. Often found in the raised space below the akropolis.
4. Den Quarries. Cutting blocks of permafrost from the depths of the hive in this part of the world tended to release air trapped in minute pockets, imparting an airy dissociation on those who lingered in these quarries, creating an area of both construction and mirth. Ventilated by cryptoportici.
5. Cryptoporticus. Enclosed passages with windows, often given a view of many public areas while allowing no obvious egress into them. Often feed into the vicinity of the postern.
6. Akropolis. A raised roof district with a grand stair that contains the homes of superior citizens and a grand temple. Built over the Savouriezh Komz with no direct connection between them.
7. Postern. A remote and well-hidden shaft that served as a secret exit in the event of a siege. Traditionally, all killing that was to be done in the hive was performed in the antechamber of the postern to create a psychic barrier or staff the area with ghosts. Executioners and butchers found their businesses close to these posterns for that fact.
8. Mirror Shaft. One or more north-facing angled shafts of packed ice, intended to reflect light from the sun into the depths of the hive. Traditionally trapped in some novel way to discouraged their use as an entry by invaders. Often mirrors the akropolis, by default.
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| Knossos Palace, Crete |
Mansion-Flooding Culture Cues
1. Courtyards. Small and privately owned, they were supposed to be constantly guarded by the wealthy citizens who owned them. Found in nice districts away from the grand dome and the peret.
2. Hemarastell. A civil arrangement in which slaughter-houses are situated in the hive's stable dock over grates, so that animal blood is allowed to seep down onto the graves of the dead. These grave fields usually acted as a flood channel, and bodies where exhumed and disintegrated with relative frequency. Raised halls connecting the hemarastell graves to the rest of the hive were frequently clogged, especially after active habitation ended.
3. Clerestory Temple. Resembling a wide, squat tower with high, slitted windows to allow in natural light. Priests were said to study the handling of light here, and mastery of spells. Kept apart from the Bright Fruit Tower, and often adorned the Grand Dome.
4. Drowning chamber. A bare oubliette with a barred ceiling and narrow windows facing the sea, used for execution and sacrifice.
5. Bright Fruit Tower. Narrow windows illuminating murals decorated with delicate juice-based dyes, serving as a place to record art and historical details that might otherwise be damaged by water. Typically forward, near to the stable dock.
6. Enclos Rekhyt. A public square situated directly under the grand dome, marked with lapwings in flight and rock pythons. By near-universal custom, almost anything said in the Enclos is permitted, but if it is considered false, the utterer is to be fed to snakes.
7. Grand Dome. Large, perfectly hemispherical protrusion from the roof of the hive, usually formed from locally-quarried stone. In the summer, site of spiral races that tested athletes' balance as well as their speed. It was said the best spiral racers would be skilled warriors, and the culture's soldiers were said to be capable of performing deep lunging thrusts with a spear that would have unfooted other fighters.
8. Peret. A complex within the hive of mixed use as a granary, a place of deliberation for hive leaders, and a site of auspicious births. Usually within a brisk walk of the Enclos Rekhyt, the work of measurers was conducted publicly, and this association with abundance and fidelity brought both leaders and expectant parents.
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| Talpiot Ossuaries, Israel Museum |
Proto-Imperial Culture Cues
1. Elevator Platform. Showing the precision engineering and cogwork of this culture, wide platforms that sunk and rose were common. Usually operated by the wheel channel (and accessed by a secret panel).
2. Darken Holy. Windowless and taboo sanctum near the center and the bottom of the hive. Always has a kinked antechamber to prevent light from ever touching the holy. Every year during the winter solstice, it was the responsibility of an unranked priest to enter the holy and challenge the God Who Wants to Eat the World, imagined as accessible by this ever-dark chamber. There's something to this, as this is a duty with a measurable casualty rate. Accessible via the ossuary.
3. Ossuary. Usually spilling to the size of a neighborhood, the apportionment of which apartment one would be interred in was apparently a common cause for social friction. Often visited but never inhabited by the living. The ossuary either encompasses or adjoins the darken holy.
4. Quarry rows. Stone from the ground beneath the hive was desirable even if it was of low quality generally, both because quarrying it necessarily expanded the hive's tunnels and to display the stone as a point of civic pride.
5. Kaleidic Temple. Built high along the eastern wall of the city, the temple's main feature was a spinning, many-colored plate. It was intended that as the sun rose, a dark curtain would be torn from the window, causing a beam of light to suddenly illuminate the plate. The sight of this, after meditation in the dark, brought on visions or great powers.
6. Triumphal. The pillar or pillars running through gates into the neighborhood of slaves, typically war hostages taken by that hive or purchased from an allied hive. It was expected that such captives would be freed after a period of time spent in labor and displacement, and they were allowed to correspond with their own people when convenient, but were otherwise treated in draconian ways. These neighborhoods were universally kept on the opposite side of the hive from the ossuary.
7. Arsenical Chimney. Narrow chute connecting the roof to a redsmith's forge, used in the creation of bronze and the powering of engines. In the culture's time, smithing was considered a holy profession, associated with the sacrifice of health and long life, and as such forges were often intricately decorated.
8. Wheel Channel. A passage of interlocking metal wheels meant to transfer mechanical power. Usually connected the arsenical chimney and elevator platform.
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| A woman, one of two moieties in Darem Tunnel Culture |
Darem Tunnel Culture Cues
1. Excavated Temple. A cultic complex built in a large, multi-story chamber with many tunnels branching off from it. Often at the approximate center of the hive, sometimes enforced by increasing rents for those a certain walking distance from the temple.
2. Tiarmaez. A fortified, orthogonally gridded district. Formed a main gate and bulwark from which the tunnels of the ground spread. Kept separate from the rooftop grove and ventilation shaft.
3. Serdabs. Closed chamber containing religious or civic statues, accessed by a small slit or window for offering and prayers. Traditionally constructed halfway between basement and ground level, they also retained warm air that circulated after nightfall, resulting in the belief that the breath of the dead is hot. Built near to the cartouche for the swapping of statues.
4. Rooftop Grove. Useful fruit trees were cultivated in regular rows here. Good soil was often gradually and painstakingly added to ever-deeper tree-pans as roots grew. In addition to produce and relaxation, the groves were said to draw good souls to be reincarnated in those born in the hive, and they were the shaded site of such births whenever possible. Later cultures building over such groves either allowed them to remain as courtyards below the level of the roof, or convert them into hypostyle halls.
5. Solar Stairway. Oversized steps rising from the edge of the hive into thin air. Meant to be the avenue for the hive's ruler to ascend to the sky to converse with the sun. Pointing directly away from the cartouche.
6. Ventilation Shaft. Thin channel running from the hive roof down to the deepest basements to aid in air circulation. Often defended by a fortified tower at its top. Set as near as possible to the deepest section of the hive.
7. Cartouche. Fortified manse built into the western wall of the hive. Contained the hive's chief, whose most important legitimating ritual included being the first to enter new excavations to test their structural integrity. The chief also named every child born in the hive, and the cartouche is traditionally decorated with statuettes of boar-headed figures, handsome individuals, and other images taken to represent common names found in that hive. Serdabs are always found near to the cartouche.
8. Gynaon. A grand hall and district exclusive to women, the center of civic life. Usually on the opposite side of the hive from the Tiarmaez.
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| Pharaonic Mastaba |
Heoline Culture Cues
1. Racing Court. This long yard, open to the air, was where the ruler of the city engaged in periodic races to demonstrate and renew his divine mandate to rule. Often decorated with murals of dangerous animals and skulls, symbols of what the ruler outraces with good policy. Found near the center of the hive.
2. War Temple. Built directly over a smithy, fumes and smoke rise directly into the temple and up through a skylight. Marked out with gilded flames. Adjoins the solarium well.
3. Mastabas. Flat-roofed, slope-walled tombs that surrounded the hive and could be found on the roofs. Has false doors for spirits to enter and exit, and the tombs of prominent heroes formed the site of fighting associations, sometimes sanctioned, sometimes illicit.
4. Ti Amun. Typically a select location in a residential district, the Ti Amun was a gathering place for a closed society whose barriers for entry were that one must be invited to join and one must be a mother. Discerned by murals depicting the sun being birthed from the horizon, and remembered by later civilizations as being a breeding ground for apostates and conspirators.
5. Ostalery. A worked tunnel running under the area surrounding the hive to directly connect two areas, or acting as an intermediary space between the stable dock and the hive proper. Decorated with murals, businesses often eventually adorned these tunnels, usually tavern-brothels and food vendors.
6. Klochdi. A tower with a large suspended bell, rising from near the center of the hive. Chime patterns unique to the hive signalled the arrival of news, quarantines, hews and cry, and religious events.
7. Solarium well. A shaft open to the sun that falls upon a drinking well and communal space, decorated with natural scenes. Therefore connects the roof to a low level with nothing below it in that space.
8. Peace Temple. Built directly under klochdi, where junior hereditary priests performed rites for slaves on condition of good conduct. The heoline culture practiced a form of chattel slavery otherwise uncommon in Yarfu, and the peace temple was the center of the practice.
Other cultures in Yarfu predate the empire, but they did not build hives, or they did not have architectural touchstones, or there are no extant ruins from which their touchstones could be reconstructed.
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