The Mages-Kings' Mausoleum

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Below the towers of Amathus lies the only trace of the grandeur of the past civilisation that used to rule over the city. The Propoetides were a fearsome dynasty of powerful Mages-Kings that conquered and ruled over the whole continent. Legends say that they angered the god by stealing secret magic from them and that as a consequence they were promised to an eternity of torments in the afterlife. To avoid this, they created the technology of the soul jars, elaborate artefacts that could safely house their souls for the rest of eternity.
Only they now needed to protect those soul jars for just that length of time, and that against enemies that would have exactly as long to slowly unravel their protections.
To face these challenges, they chose to dig deep underground to build a gigantic mausoleum complex right under their cities. It spreads from kilometres of maze-like tunnels built without any sense or reason. To make things even better, time and space seems to dilate inside the building, giving everyone a weird sense of vertigo and surrealness. This all made it all too easy for the visitors to unconsciously wander off and get lost without even having realising what is happening to them until they're too weak to move and die of thirst and hunger.

Not that the mausoleum has had any visitors since the death of the last Mage-King and the extinction of the imperial line. Before that, only members of the family were allowed in by the numerous wards and protections on the building. The first true Mage-King was the one who designed the project, and he used prisoners of war to work on it before sacrificing all of them in an enormous ritual so as to both force them to keep their secrets and to use them to reinforce the wards.
The mausoleum has been conceived to not need any caretaker. Magic runs independently from any input or interference and will continue to do so, powered by the old human sacrifices that have drenched the soil with blood, and by the continuous death of the people living of Amathus above its surface - which is the reason why it has been built right underneath it. Everybody serves the Mages-Kings, in life as in death.

The magic is anchored into every single surface of the mausoleum. The walls of its corridors are covered with reliefs that are a mix of natural ones and engravings fixing the magic. They also open in discreet niches alongside their walls that hide Ascalabos deadly flying lizards that were created by the Mages-Kings to guard their soul jars. The walls are also covered with bioengineered creeper plants that feed on the magic of the surrounding soil and infuse some of it into the wards. Both plants and lizards are programmed so as to only recognise the blood of the imperial lines and to devour any impure beings wandering near them.
In addition to general protections against outsiders, the imperial family also has special protection against each other, as the many branches of the family have often been at war. This is why they all choose the position of their soul jars and their eternal neighbours carefully.
The mausoleum is organised so that the maze of corridors open from time to time into a tomb area that gathers the soul jars of several members of the imperial family. Often, members are often grouped by generations with their partners, all centred around the monarch of their generations or the head of their side branch of the family, with increasing degrees of protection the more related to the monarch or head you get.

The oldest tombs in the mausoleums house both the soul jars of the dead as well as their bodies. However, with how long the line the Mages-Kings ruled and how many members of the family there was, space soon was at a premium and only a jar with their soul and a jar with the ashes of their body were kept.
Body and ashes could be dangerous ingredients in the end of enemies of the imperial family, allowing them to create a curse targeted at all living members left. However, now that the family is extinct, it is the soul of those powerful mages that attracts all greed, especially with the new invention of artificial bodies and the need of powerful souls to fuel them.
So far, the Merchants-Mages have failed to fully breach the protection of the mausoleum, only managing to free the Ascabalos lizards through the streets of Amathus. But they have the rest of eternity to work a way to pierce the imperial protections, and nobody is let to stop them...

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The present The Council of Merchants-Mages · Galáteia · The Mistress · Rival mage Modern Magic Rules of magic · Artificial bodies Ancient civilisation The Propoetides, the ancient civilisation of Mages-Kings · The theft of the divine secrets by the wicked Mage-King of Amathus · Soul Jars · The Mages-Kings' Mausoleum · The Ascalabos, deadly flying lizards guarding the Mages-Kings' mausoleum · Galatée's uncle the king