Hajdu's Obelisk

Hajdu's Obelisk is named for its discoverer, who found it 500 years ago in one of the piles of Tir Vagyon rubble that litters the eastern slope of Vargo's Hill. As soon as he saw it, he became convinced that the strange characters engraved on the pillar held some great secret. Hajdu, apparently a man of some means, hired workmen to retrieve the heavy stone and set it upright in his courtyard garden. Hajdu then set out to decode the message on the stone, nearly to the exclusion of all else. His obsession with the stone became so intense and frightening that Hajdu's wife divorced him, his business failed, and by the end of this life was a near-penniless man living in a ramshackle ruin. As far as anyone knows, he died without ever decoding the obelisk that he studied for over 20 years. Hajdu's home was razed centuries ago, but the obelisk still stands in what was once Hajdu's garden in a small park along Caravan Boulevard. The obelisk is regularly visited by scholars and curiosity seekers. On at least 5 recorded occasions, Khezvaros has become swept up in "obelisk madness," a kind of mass hysteria that suddenly convinces many citizens that they must solve the mystery of Hajdu's Obelisk. The obelisk is so overwhelmed with visitors early on that locals are often forced to set up a goon squad to protect the pillar. After a few weeks most of the visitors lose their drive for solving the riddlle--often upon realizing that they have absolutley no knowledge or training to suggest they could do so. Occasionally--sometimes at the end of a wave of obelisk madness and sometimes out of the blue--will develop "Hajdu's Malady" and beocme completely obessed with solving the writing on the obelisk. During the day, there are always a number of scholars gathered around the obelisk discussing theories and working out various decrypting schemes. At night, many of these same scholars sleep in the park, having long since lost or been kicked out of their former homes. The regular members of the group are prone to vicious infighting, ever-shifting rivalries and cliques, and constant bickering. Despite generations of scholarly attention, the obelisk has yet to be decoded.