There is a cloth screened portal that leads to a broad hallway. It is short and goes around the corner to a large kitchen. Across the kitchen is a door, which leads to a small walled garden that has a barred, heavy, black, gate. It leads to an alley.
This back entrance to the Dar Peshdwar is on an alley that exits to a narrower side passage. After several turns, this side passage opens into a small open square that contains a bazaar. Across the square is long narrow road that runs a great deal more than 300 feet.
In the cellar, it is damp, and there is a low tunnel to a spiral stair down, carved from the rock. Forty feet down there is a natural cave. It had been eight feet deep in water, now, the bottom is mud. The area next to the wall there is still a fresh water pool. Back in the cellar, there is a passage way to a door, barred with a heavy iron ring. Inside that room, which is also a natural cave, complete with stalagmites, are four or more stone boxes. They are trapped with poison needles. In the boxes are coins, jewelry, uncut gems, and metal ingots. The room is also trapped with a confusion spell. The gold coins are big thick wheels with the head of a haughty man stamped on one side and a sun on the other. There are a few tarnished silver coins. The are are some cut gems, pearls, amber, ivory and coral. There is an ivory scroll case with a map of the sub-dust tunnels. Some lead to the Forgotten City.
Sixty albino carnivorous apelings with yellowed hair arrive ten rounds after the treasure room is entered. They are mute and have yellowed teeth. The mini-apes are under the command of Suel albinos who use curved bladed spears, crossbows, and aklys. There are twelve Suel pygmies, including a grey robed mage, (Flesh to Stone, Lightning Bolt), and his understudy (Darkness), ring of invisibility.
Travelling down the passage, and around the corner, down the stairs leads to a well room. Proceeding then, through a hole leads to a pool and beyond.
The West passage goes up to a concealed stone door into a circular aqueduct. There is a trickle of water here flowing from the Temple/City area North to South. The pipe is 20' in diameter and runs for miles. This is 300 miles away from the forgotten city in (A6-153, or Z5-152). Wandering monsters include giant slugs spitting acid and poison, dun puddings, black puddings, green slimes, lurkers above, and cloakers. The pipe eventually comes to a wall of rock and soil which burst the aqueduct during an earthquake. It leads out and opens to tunnels outside of the aqueduct. The large one runs on one side. The small ones are five feet tall.
The large one leads due southwest and slightly up. It intersects with the floor of a larger tunnel going south. It is a slug trail. There are fungi, bats, rats, and mice. It ends in dust and soil with a hole sloping down and an east-west slug tunnel. The down slope goes 80 degrees to the horizontal. After 30 feet there is a drop to a chasm. This "J" shaped tube ends 100 feet above the floor.
The cliff wall is made of smooth limestone. 5' feet to the the right of the tube, is a 2' wide ledge. It goes 200 ft along the wall. then there is a 7 foot gap where a large amorphous creature with tentacles and acidic black blood awaits. The blood is capable of dissolving swords and the like. The path then leads dow, widens and forms steps down to a 10' above the floor of the rift. The cavern is 300' in diameter. The ceiling is too high up to see. Magic supports it. The ledge continues, going upward, narrowing, and going to the top of the cavern where it becomes a tunnel. This large cavern was a refuge during the Rain of Colorless Fire. The tunnel leads to a high plateau in the middle of the Sea of Dust, it was a river on the plateau. The river cut a rift (the passage) and fed a great lake (the cavern). The riverbed/passage/tunnel leads to the Forgotten City.
From that route, there is a guarded entrance way. It is a crude wall with two square towers manned by Suel Pygmies. 100 feet in front of it is a fifteen foot tall ledge with lots of recesses. Patrols consist of twenty apelings and twenty pigmies (six in the front, ten flanking and four in the rear) with human slaves. The pigmies use a sign language (undercommon). The twenty foot wall touches the sides of the cavern. One guard on the wall is thirty feet from the cave side. Other guards are posted forty feet away from each other along the wall. The passage rises up. This was part of the city's outer wall. It was built on a hill.
One quarter mile further, the river bed broadens into an enormous chamber. The broad way on the lowest level has foot traffic (pygmies, slaves). Stairs and ramps are on either side of the road leading to a level with a busier road sixty feet above. Low ancient buildings support a solid roof of stone. Red light from dim oval globes illuminates the place. The roof forms a large dome. This entryway is a side passage. The dome, which is 100 feet high at it's apex, covers only the heart of the city.
A faint high signal note summons the pygmies into the buildings for the sleep period. A piping with quivers is the alarm. A gong from one end and a horn from the other end rallies the pygmies. From above ground, half of the buildings still stand. In its prime, it could have housed a million people.
It is a white building one half mile down Broad, left off of the Ramp Street. The secondary entrance from the broad avenue is up a narrow stairway. There are white pillars trimmed with red gold on the entrance. Clerics are housed nearby the secondary entrance. There are grand entrances on the other three sides.
The secondary entrance is from the west and opens to a large vestibule with three passageways leading away. Red light fills the room. Straight ahead is a golden light. This is the only place in the city such light can be found. It is a ten foot wide passageway of polished alabaster with gold inlays in the mosaic tiles. It is day-bright in order to awe the commoner pygmies.
The grand hall has huge pillars. There is a curved end hall, columned side aisles and a wide central way. There are lines of display-cases along the middle of four broad main aisles. It looks like a museum. The cases are glass/crystal enclosures, exhibiting religious artifacts: ancient books, scrolls, carved chairs, offery and altar pieces, gold and silver clerical paraphernalia, etc. The center of the chamber is domed in gold. The floor beneath is a disk of dark polished onyx. Around the circle is a gold inlayed wooden rail, broken at one spot from the secondary entrance side. Outside the rail are pygmy benches with a seating capacity of 100. From the zenith of the dome 40' up, hangs a huge chain of dull greenish metal. 15' up the chain has a massive ring. Four other chains radiate from the ring to enclose the crystal globe, along with another ring underneath. There is a more of the thicker chain reaching and stapled to the floor. The lower ring is 7' 6" to 8' 0" above the ground. The theorpart known as The Cone of the Magi is encased in the resochist globe. [Randy Richards (acererak@aol.com) assures me that: According to Gary Gygax,... Uattho... is the name of the long dead mage-priest who guarded the Cone of the Magi (which is what the Suel called it). As a side note, "resochist" is an alchemical substance similar to "transparent aluminum" from the Star Trek movies.]
The display case holds platemail +2, an oval-shaped shield +2 and a high quality sword (+3 or +4). Attempt to pilfer these items calls the knight who once wore them back to life. He shouts insults at the thief as he fights. After loosing 30 hp he begs for quarter. He believes that he and the Suel empire still are vibrant. He will attack again if given the opportunity.
The resochist sphere is very heavy. If it is dropped, it will break the benches, railing, and emit a loud clang and roll to the left or north. The sphere takes 50 hp of damage to break, but weapons must save verses crushing blow or shatter with a -2 per strike cumulative penalty. The slaves will think that Obmi and Eclavdra are saviors. The Pygmies will rally outside the temple.
Ashworms eat ash and deposit stuff that other creatures eat. Dustarchers, needlebirds, spotted pit vipers, asharrows (a snake), large dust striders, large wolf spiders, paddle-foot lizards, giant centipedes, dogs, wolves, jackals, foxes, and dustfish can also be found here. Puddings, slimes, and giant subterranean slugs live in and hollowed out a network of tunnels beneath the desert. There are birds that burrow into ash. Rats and mice live in the underground tunnels. Shrews and moles burrow; badgers live underground. Foxes, dogs, snakes and lizards hunt on the surface. Animals' skins and hides are dun colored.