Yseult Shadowrun – The Great Doors

The Chamber of the Sphinx

      For a little more detail on Yseult’s current puzzle, here we have the layout of the Chamber of the Sphinx, from the great, mystical symbol-inscribed, doors on the left to the collapsed stairs to the right.

   Perhaps sadly, Yseult gained entry to this set of chambers through the tunnel left where “Apep” had passed through the lower annex (and left quite a trail burned into the floor). That’s really too bad, since once there was quite a collection of scrolls and tomes there, but the entire room was lightly spattered with Apep’s incredibly-corrosive acid, and even the stone door is half gone. A few scraps might eventually be salvaged, but it’s likely to take years if it’s even possible.

   The statues of Set (The Night Sky) and Ra (The Day) guard the mystical doors, while the circle of posts and niches contains the statues of Thoth (God of Wisdom and Records), Osiris (God of Ressurrection), Ptah (The Opener of the Ways), and Nepthys (The Guardian-Nurse of the Pharaoh), and the statues of Isis (Goddess of Magic) and Hathor (Goddess of Birth, she who welcomes the dead into the next life). Horus is – oddly enough – missing, but Horus was often identified with the Pharaoh in any case.

   The forty-eight niches and posts may not be quite accurately depicted; the dots are a bit oversized. There is plenty of room for a man to pass between them in the actual room, regardless of whether or not it looks that way on the diagram.

   The top (at least on the map) annex contains jars and boxes of food, drink, clothing, ornaments, and other minor necessities of life – apparently an offering to the powers of this place. For a pile of material that is presumably better than three thousand years old, it looks to be in pretty good shape. Of course, it’s always possible that the place was in use considerably more recently than that.

   At least according to the mapping drones, another of Apep’s tunnels approaches the chamber, but reaching it would still require digging through ten or twenty feet of solid rock. Hopefully no huge sliding blocks of stone will cut off Yseult’s current retreat.