Connects to: 29.14.26, 40.06 and 45.09.
Before Shuttered was Shuttered, the Lord of Pain would mark his displeasure of a man or woman by flinging them from the city into an extradimensional prison. These prisons were mazes constructed from the victims’ nightmares and fantasies. Each maze had just one exit, hidden so well that most could not find it even after a lifetime of searching.
When the windows of Shuttered were closed, all of these extradimensional mazes were dragged into this dimension. Scattered throughout the Shrouded Lands are the mazes, some still populated with the figments and delusions of their (usually former) occupants.
The Mind Chambers of the Infidel are a set of lavishly decorated rooms. A network of secret passages runs parallel to the rooms, but no object of any kind casts light while in the passages. Many of the portraits hung on the walls have their eyes cut out so that people in the passages can glance out. Pulling on library books or torch brackets often causes walls to rotate, trapdoors to open, and other mischievous devices to activate.
The chambers are populated with smartly-dressed kobolds who delight in adding their own crude traps to the existing sophisticated mechanisms. The kobolds test their traps and play tricks upon several surprisingly life-like mannikins. Unbeknownst to the kobolds, the mannikins are wax golems—infinitely patient and able to rebuild themselves after almost any indignity. They represent different facets of the Infidel’s personality, and it seems that they are all that remain of him.
The race of kobolds was not documented before the Shuttering. It is possible that they originally only existed in the Infidel’s imagination.
Connection:
- Kobolds did indeed emerge from these chambers, but that is because dragons dreamed them.
Hooks:
- What other creatures of the Shrouded Lands were originally figments of the imagination?
- Who was the Infidel and how did he offend the Lord of Pain?
- Is the Infidel truly only survived by the wax golems?
- What other mazes are out there?
