Located in the wet jungles east of Abombi, a massive cavern complex waits for the foolish to come and try to claim the exquisite clear sapphires are rumoured to exist in its belly. This place, called the Dragon’s Graveyard, is the home and breeding ground to a mighty and deadly lizard that preys upon those who draw too close to this infamous Black Kingdoms locale. Marked with dozens of different tribes’ warnings to stay away, some people will always dare to risk their lives when riches are involved.
The
The DragonDragon’’s s
Graveyard
Graveyard
‘Beware the draconne, friend. They do not call its home a graveyard because of its bones…but for the bones it has collected of its kills.’
Terrain Type: Cavern System
Total Subterranean Area: 1,800,000 square feet Depth Below Surface: 800 feet
Spatial Distribution Information (in square feet):
450,000 tunnels, 1,260,000 chambers, 90,000 chasms
Important Terrain Elements: Thick Pillars, 70% Loose
Gravel, 50% Common Flora Growth, Large Reptile Fauna (Draconne), Gemstone Field (Sapphires)
History
It is said that the fi rst draconnes were the pets of the dragon-men that once ruled so much of the Hyborian continent. Serving as war beasts when young and mounts
when older, each draconne was a prized member of the clan that bred it; no dragon-man would dare put his beasts into harm’s way unnecessarily. When the dragon-men began to suffer at the hands of the Atlanteans, they knew that their empire was in dire straits. The ancient tales say that this is why
the Dragon’s Graveyard was cut from the crust of the world – to help
protect the draconnes. Ssaphu, the elder being,
opened the world with his
primal magics and the dragon-man clans ushered their draconnes into the dark of the caverns below, sealing them up afterwards. They had hoped to one day be able to retrieve the creatures, after the war was over. Unfortunately, they did not win and did not survive. If the tales can be trusted, the draconnes bred and went completely feral.
For as long as any of the tribes in the area can remember, the Dragon’s Graveyard has been a location to be avoided. The draconnes must have eventually dug their way out in search of food animals 100 years ago or more. Black Kingdoms historic drawings in the area show large reptilian creatures erupting out from the ground to do battle with the locals, proving that the draconnes have been around and hunting for several generations. The jungle surrounding the mouth of the Dragon’s Graveyard has been a dangerous stretch of wilderness for a long time.
In the earliest known explorations of the Dragon’s Graveyard there are notes from Iranistani treasure hunters that tell of ‘huge fi elds of clear blue sapphires as large as a man’s fi st’ and ‘invisible monsters that scale walls’. The Iranistani called the place Shanara Murn, loosely translated as ‘blood mine’ and of the initial 20 explorers that went into the cavern’s mouth…only four returned to the surface. The survivors did not have anything but stories concerning the sapphires in the cavern’s heart but they did have many lengthy and frightening tales about the chameleonic beasts that tore their friends apart before their very eyes.
Decades after the Iranistani exploration, their map ended up in the hands of Turanian noble named Shorif. The wealthy man ignored the numerous warnings of ‘dragons’ and ‘ghost lizards’ scrawled on the map, seeing only the faded word sapphire. He gathered a caravan and followed the map, paying off or cutting down the Black Kingdoms tribes that dared to stand in his way, making a name for him as an invading devil to the natives. Eventually Shorif and his 100 men found the markings that matched the map, chopping their way to the vine-covered boulder rift that serves as the main entrance to the Dragon’s Graveyard. They set up a camp
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by the entrance, preparing to send workers down to fi nd the sapphire fi elds. It was not until the night camp fi res were lit that Shorif discovered fi ve of his workers were missing; stoking his paranoia that his men were heading into the cavern early to steal his sapphires. He sent 10 of his soldiers into the dark after them. They never returned. People continued to disappear around the camp and by the fourth day Shorif was well below half their original number. Having gotten over 50 of his own men killed without a single gemstone found, Shorif gave the order to pack up and leave. Unfortunately for him however, the draconnes heard the commotion and came to the surface to see what was happening. The resulting massacre not only claimed Shorif but bankrupted his family back in Turan.
Other than foolish explorers and would-be treasure seekers, no one goes near the Dragon’s Graveyard in large numbers. The draconnes do not often come to the surface to hunt more than a few times a week; but the sort of noise that a crowd makes has never failed to bring them running for a feast.
Whenever outsiders discover the Dragon’s Graveyard they come fl ocking in search of riches; always believing that they will be the ones to overcome the draconnes and fi nd the gemstones. These expeditions have only ever ended in blood and death.
Layout
The Dragon’s Graveyard is a huge complex of caverns joined together by large and winding tunnels large enough for a man on horseback to plod along within them comfortably. A total of 16 chambers span out and descend from the cavern’s main entrance, a cracked, half- buried boulder with a mouth nearly 20 feet wide. From its source seven kilometres east of Abombi, the Dragon’s Graveyard winds downwards for several hundred feet beneath the surface.
It has three connections to the surface; the main entrance, a second venting tube that is only a man’s
width across located a half-mile away and a third water inlet that is only a foot or two wide was cut by rainwater. Most of the cavern’s traffi c goes through the main entrance, as draconnes grow too large to use the secondary ones
after only a year of growth. This makes the main tunnel and chamber of the Graveyard the most travelled area of
the whole cavern system – unfortunately they are most frequently travelled by the draconnes.
The main shaft leads down steeply into the fi rst chambers, opening up into enormous mid to low-ceilinged hollows that each has no fewer than two tunnels attaching to them. These tunnels empty into other chambers; small ones used for food storage and hatcheries or larger ones that end up as sleeping dens and lairs. Much of the Graveyard’s fl ooring is covered in loose gravel and soil kicked and scraped up by the draconne’s sharp claws, forcing people to trudge and slide through it while they scramble effortlessly over the walls, pillars and ceiling. Four main chambers form the spinal centre of the cavern system, with 11 smaller ones branching off from them. The 16th chamber of the Dragon’s Graveyard is the deepest point of the cavern system; a large, high-ceilinged cave room that is home to hundreds of thousands of silvers in sapphires…and the largest of the draconnes, the alpha female.