The Siege of Berber

The characters are hired to break the blockade of Berber; alternatively someone or something they need is trapped inside the town, and they take it upon themselves to reach get it out. Three meks of the Ja'alin are involved in the blockade (one per landward approach), each with two score warriors and a dozen jinni; if given notice, another three meks lie within one day's journey, and a further six within three day's travel. Upon reaching Berber, the characters are the first outsiders here in three years. The town has been transformed; the populace enslaved to Ja'alin overlords and set to work digging beneath the town. The characters must find out what they are looking for, and for whom - 'Izz el-Afram Hamad is the obvious mastermind behind this operation, but by no means the only possibility.

of over fifty pyramids here, but less than half are still standing. The pyramids of five emperors still remain, along with those of fourteen queens, some of whom were renowned warriors. There is a Magic aura of 2 at Kurru, deriving from the use of this site for two centuries.

Nuri

The later of Napata's pyramid fields, the Nuri Necropolis is on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Napata. The tombs of 21 emperors can be found here, along with those of 52 kings' mothers, kings' wives, and princes. The pyramids are built on two plateaus. The largest and oldest pyramid belongs to Taharqa, who was both king of Kush and pharaoh of Egypt. Taharqa's pyramid stands over fifty paces high, and stands on the western plateau. Also on this plateau are the parallel lines of the pyramids of kings' wives, and the necropolis of the kings' mothers, or kentakes. The eastern plateau bears the pyramids of the other twenty emperors. Each of the emperors was interred in a huge sarcophagus weighing a dozen or more tons.

Nuri was in use for about five hundred years, before Arqamani moved the royal cemetery to Meroë, long enough for it to gain a Magic aura of 5.

The capital city of the Kingdom of Makuria, Dongola is on the east bank of the Nile, on top of a bluff overlooking the river at the point where the Wadi Howar enters the Nile. It lies at the southern end of the productive Letti Basin, and within a day's journey in all directions from Dongola there are about thirty villages with beautiful buildings, churches and monasteries, many palm trees, vines, gardens, cultivated fields, and broad pastures. The city dominates any movement along the east bank of the river.

Dongola was originally defended by a high, insurmountable stone wall, but the city quickly grew beyond these limits, forming an extensive suburb to the north of the city. It is now ringed by seven walls, representing successive stages of population growth, and

the impregnable stone wall is the innermost. It is estimated that over ten thousand people live in Dongola. The houses are large and often two stories high, and the streets are wide, a testament to the prosperity of the kingdom in general and the city in particular. There are many churches in Dongola, and a cathedral, known as the Church of the Granite Columns.

Dongola's royal palace is the only structure built of red brick, making it stand out from all other structures. It is several stories higher than any other building in the city, and bears several domes on top.

Dongola's mighty cathedral is a square building containing sixteen columns of highly polished granite arranged in four rows. Aisles separate the rows of columns, and the central nave is wider than the aisles and crossed by a similarly wide narthex, giving a distinct cruciform plan to the inside of the cathedral. A mighty dome is supported by the columns, and there are colorful and vibrant frescoes of Biblical scenes painted by a true maestro that add to the sanctity of the building. There is a Dominion aura of 7 within the cathedral.

In their glory days, the monuments of the ancients found throughout Egypt and Nubia will have had a Faerie aura associated with the worship of pagan gods. As the temples were abandoned, the glamour they were granted by their deities waned. However, centuries of use as cemeteries may have left behind a preternatural tether to the Magic Realm, which persisted once the Faerie aura had faded. These tethers have generated a Magic aura of 1 for every century that they saw continuous use; sites with impressive natural features may have even stronger auras, and sites whose monuments have substantially degraded may have weakened tethers. For more information, see Realms of Power: Magic, page 8–10.

Story Seeds for Dju Wa'ab

An ancient capital is a natural site for stories.

The Blind God's Eyes

For centuries treasure hunters have scoured Napata in vain for traces of the fabulous wealth of the Kushitic priesthoods. Legends have it that the missing statues of the gods show the way. Buried under the sand, the priests' last act was to wipe away the paint from the statues' eyes, reverting them from vessels of the gods back into mere carved stone. One of the statues was recently uncovered by the wind. The daughter of a traveling merchant who stopped here for water innocently colored in the eyes of the statue with kohl while she waited for her father. Unaware of anything untoward, they moved on. However, the faerie that once inhabited the statue has been drawn back in; and now it moves, slowly yet inexorably, toward its destination. It is just a shame that there is a town in the way.