Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Blackest Tesserzigguract

"The Blackest Tesserzigguract, also known as the Fuligin Hyper-Ziggurat, a four-dimensional structure consisting of eight hyperspace cells connected to eight black ziggurats located across several worlds, planes and dimensions such as Algol, Contra Algol, Yezmyr, The Land of Two Rivers, Glorantha, Konduum, and others."
Recently the good friend of Planet Algol, Geordie Racer, posted about the adventures of his players in his own Planet Algol campaign in The Black Ziggurat. (I, II & III). Two fine gentlemen of our "OSR community", Chgowiz and Yesmar, expressed dismay as they already had plans involving their own "Black Ziggurats," and stated that they were going to change the names of their respective Black Ziggurats.

Now it's none of my business to tell others what to do BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IT WOULD BE AWESOME IF THERE WERE MULTIPLE BLACK ZIGGURATS! It would be like Moorcock's Tanelorn but an OSR meta-dungeon instead! Especially if there were gates linking the multiple Black Ziggurats!

Now I should point out that it is hardly surprising that there are multiple Black Ziggurats, heck in my Iridium Plateau sandbox there is "The Ziggurat of the Maggot Queen" which is black. Black is a pretty common sword & sorcery prefix and ziggurats are an even more sword & sorcery version of the pyramid, so "Black Ziggurat" is an obvious archetype of the primal sword & sorcery unconcious.

So Chgowiz, Yesmar, and anyone else out there. Make your dang Black Ziggurat and call it THE Black Ziggurat. We're all friends here guys, we can handle multiple Black Ziggurats, I want there to be a cornucopia of Black Ziggurats out there in RPG land!

15 comments:

  1. Death Ferox Doom has a ziggurat, but it wasn't named...

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  2. But is it black? I am drooling in anticipation for Death Ferox Doom BTW.

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  3. I can see one appearing in my upcoming Starblazer Adventures scenario.

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  4. Do want! Can we name it Castle Grayskull?

    /only half kidding.

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  5. Right On! How can we appease our Reptile Masters if we don't all big up the BZ !?!

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  6. I've got your Black Ziggurat right here, Blair.

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  7. Perhaps all of these black ziggurats are mere shadows of THE ONE TRUE BLACK ZIGGURAT, found on Amber (or insert your world of choice here) of course.

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  8. OK, I accept the idea: there will be a Black Ziggurat under the Dying Sun.

    Hmn, maybe it likes those Monoliths in 2001?

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  9. "Welcome to the Black Ziggurat Cosmic Public Transit System..."

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  10. That's right, hüth; constructed by aliens with a sick sense of humor.

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  11. @huth: In my last campaign I had to make announcements like that while the party was exploring an ancient subterranean trans-world mass transit system, but in an unintelligible computer voice "Boop deedoop da dee bo ba dee boodle Boob boo..."

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  12. Would you have something against putting Black Ziggurat in my campaign setting?

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  13. Excuse me while I'll steal this concept for my Thursday night game! I wonder where the other planar gates in this thing lead?

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