The tomb of the twins: a puzzle dungeon

06 Oct, 2025

The deeds of the divine twins are known to many; from their birth, they were destined to be heroes. Sired by the sun and moon alike, who both loved one mortal queen, the twins’ fathers gave them a gift of two twin blades—the Gemini Blades—and directed them to greatness.

The Lydians knew them as Khorshid Pakor and Mahsa Uparmiya. The first tale told of the twins is of their first heroic deed: trapping the foul Shadowcat on behalf of their foster father, the greatest of all Lydian kings. The monster was loosed by a powerful magician jealous of the king’s magnificence; it came upon the city at night in the guise of a housecat, black as night, and was slain by the twins before it could kill the king. The dead cat’s shadow then transformed into a larger cat, which the twins likewise were able to slay; but then that cat’s shadow came to life, an even more fearsome feline than the last, and the twins knew that they could not keep defeating the monsters. But they were cunning: They played a game of cat and mouse with the Shadowcat throughout the palace, until finally the twins were able to trap it in one of the grand clay amphoras emptied of wine for the evening’s feast. The cat could fit in, but it could not get out; trapped, the Shadowcat was a threat no more.

The second tale is told by the Lydians as well. Praise for the twins was so widespread that word of their heroism reached even into the deep places of the earth; like the movements of a fly trapped in her web, so too did the news alert the Spider Queen of the Underworld. Cursed for defying the natural order of the gods, she was a perverse, monstrous creature, and she desired Khorshid Pakor as both consort and meal. While the twins were separated, the Queen’s children stole him down into the Underworld and dressed him in silver and silk. Mahsa Uparmiya soon learned of her twin’s theft, and followed him into the Underworld to bring him back. Uparmiya infiltrated the Queen’s palace and found Pakor, but the Spider Queen found them too. A struggle occurred, one that the twins might have lost, but they were far more clever than the Queen. While Pakor retrieved his blade and distracted the Spider Queen, Uparmiya used her torch to light the Queen’s webs on fire; while the twins fled to the surface, the Spider Queen burnt alongside her palace.

They are Pakoros Erebos and Parmys Aeliades to the Numanari, who recite the tale of the twins’ third deed. Guided by the stars, the twins sailed west across the inner sea, when they came upon the isles. They could go no further, they were told by the locals—the Blazing Eagle of the Strait would eat any sailor who dared enter his demesne. But Pakoros and Parmys were devious, and knew the eagle’s proud nature. Parmys stood on the prow of the ship as it sailed into the strait and shouted insults and taunts in the direction of the Blazing Eagle’s nest. He soon took notice and dove toward her, shrieking. But the dive took him too close to the water, and he did not notice Pakoros hiding below decks. Pakoros leapt at the Blazing Eagle and tackled him under the waves. The water thrashed and boiled for minutes, before Pakoros surfaced unconscious and covered in horrible burns. But the Blazing Eagle didn’t surface at all.

The Imperials knew the twins as Pacorus Caligo and Parmia Clara, and tell the tale of their arrival at the old capital in a scorched raft with no sail, Parmia clutching the burnt, unconscious form of her twin. The twins were taken in by a prominent senator, and Pacorus was slowly nursed back to health; the twins trained with the greatest of the Imperial soldiers and became stronger than ever. When a monstrous, four-armed troll emerged from the sea and threatened the old capital, all eyes turned to the twins. The Imperials value discipline and strength, not guile; in this tale, the twins handily bested the troll, cutting it into many pieces. They spent the rest of their days in the old capital as Imperial heroes, having followed the stars to their destined home.

We know them now as Caligo and Chiara, and the final tale told of the twins is that of their sealed mausoleum in the ruined outskirts of the old capital—their grave goods and Gemini Blades ripe for the taking.

The Tomb of the Twins

Surface entrance

The tomb of the twins is a small, single-story building with a gabled roof. Every surface is sheathed in marble, and the composition is split in half vertically—the western half is pure black marble, while the right is sheathed in pure white marble. The only decoration is a set of marble doors in the center of the southern face, mirrored in color from each door’s half of the building. In the center of the door is a circle, once again mirrored and split in half down the building’s line of symmetry.

The doors have been pried open by crowbars and chisels. These tools have been discarded on the ground nearby, along with wax paper wrappers that once held their wielders’ lunch. Muddy tracks lead into the small building and down the only interior feature: a wide, shallow set of stairs—a slope much wider than it is tall—that leads to darkness. Their length is variable each time one traverses them. At the very least, they are just long enough that your light cannot illuminate both the top and bottom at once. A magician’s eye can detect a line of invisible glyphs decorating the stair’s perimeter: the entrance to a pocket dimension.

Puzzle rooms

The stairs lead into a massive, octagonal chamber with a vaulted ceiling three stories high—with the angle of the stairs, an impossible structure given the nearby geography. The floor is covered in a layer of sand, while the ceiling is a tile mosaic depicting a dual celestial scene: half full-moon night, half sunny daylight. Each wall other than the entranceway is bare but for an oversized bronze door, each with a pointillist image hammered into it. Above the door are carved the following words in the language of the old capital, oversized and easily read from the entranceway: “Follow the path of the twins / For their glory and your own”

Clockwise from the entranceway, the bronze doors depict the following creatures:

1. Coiled, winged serpent with an elaborate ruff of feathers
2. Minotaur baring its fangs
3. Beautiful woman, crowned and draped in finery. Behind her and connected to her torso, a spider's mass and eight terrible legs. Inspected closely, her mouth drips with venom.
4. Fearsome sea eagle, aflame and crowned with a sunburst
5. Headless giant: a cyclops whose eye and nose and mouth is all on his torso
6. Hoary, four-armed troll, like a cross between a gorilla and an elephant seal with baboon fangs. Wears a metal bracer around one wrist and wields a bent, L-shaped wand in another.
7. Housecat, curled up and yawning. Its shadow is subtly baring its fangs.

The correct order to pass through the doors is Shadowcat, Spider Queen, Sea Eagle, and then Troll. Passing through the correct door in sequence leads to another shallow stairwell, after which is an identical copy of the room you just left—the only change is that the door through which you passed now depicts the twins’ enemy as slain or defeated (e.g., the Shadowcat is trapped in an amphora, while the Sea Eagle is entirely absent: only an abstract oceanic image remains). Behind the Troll door, if opened in sequence, is the votive offering room. Opening any door out of order leads to a fake votive offering room (no secret doors, no possible blessing) and summons a spectral version of the monster on the door in the octagonal chamber you just left.

In the first room only, six heads, six torsoes, twelve legs, and eleven arms are scattered across the sandy floor (along with various strewn splatters of blood, guts, weapons, and the contents of their pockets). Tracks are mixed in with the carnage: six different sets of bootprints and one set of massive, dinner plate-sized handprints.

Spectral guardian

HD 6 / AC 5 / Attacks twice or uses a special ability

• The Minotaur is blessed with outsized strength and charges at great speed; he is vulnerable to getting his horns stuck in the wall.
• The Spider Queen infests the chamber with invisible webs and her countless children, then casts spells from across the room; she is vulnerable to fire.
• The Winged Serpent flies about the chamber, can constrict multiple enemies in its coils, and has a deadly venom (save vs. death, of course); it fears the bleating of a goat more than anything.
• The Blazing Eagle dive-bombs or hurls balls of fire; he is vulnerable to conjured floods.
• The Cyclops is insatiable, and can suck you up from across the chamber with a great inhale or conjure a sandstorm with a great exhale; he is vulnerable to blinding.
• The Troll tears you limb from limb or shoots you with its laser pistol; it is not vulnerable to fire.
• The Shadowcat has nine lives, each more fearsome than the last. Its first life has 1 HD, and gains 2 HD with each death.

Burnt offering chamber

A spartan room, mostly bare but for two things: a brass offering bowl on a pedestal in the center of the room and a mural painted on the far wall.

The mural is split down the middle, black and white, with the twins standing to either side. They each hold an arm toward the center, Gemini Blades in their hands, pointed downwards. The khopeshs’ crescent blades form their split, circular symbol. A set of secret doors is hidden in the mural; like the tomb’s marble entrance doors, the doors’ center seam splits on the twins’ circular symbol.

The brass offering bowl is inscribed with images of the twins’ heroic deeds, in sequence. A layer of ash from burnt offerings coats the bottom of the bowl. Burning an offering of wine, fresh meat, or a written prayer causes the fire to leap up into the air for just a moment; for a week afterward, the postulant’s forehead is graced with a spectral image of the symbol of the twins, and their Dexterity and Intelligence become 18. Should the postulant then defile the twins’ true tomb, the symbol reverses its colors, and the attributes each become 3 for a week, instead.

Hidden under the brass bowl and installed into a small recession in the marble pedestal, is a shallow button. Pressing it causes the secret door in the mural to silently and slowly swing open.

False tomb

An ornate tomb decorated with four columns carved with reliefs depicting the heroism of the twins. The marble floor is split down the middle, black and white, and on each side of the center line is an oversized marble sarcophagus, opposite the floor color. The far wall depicts the same mural as that on the wall of the offering chamber, and it also has a secret door.

Inside of each sarcophagus there is a cavity with a sealed, oversized burial urn in it (fired with black and white clay, respectively, mirrored with the casing). Picking up the urns reveals that there is not ash inside, but a number of solid objects tightly packed together, though not perfectly—bones. Only smashing an urn reveals that the bones are not human, but rather black, and iron-rich—no flame existed that could incinerate them along with the flesh-become-ash that also fills the urns. Smashing one urn causes the troll's bones to animate, and it spends its first turn in combat trying to release its other half. Some are webbed with cracks as if by force; only once the rest of them are smashed can they be inspected to see the tiny symbol of the twins carved on each of them.

There is a secret button in the cavity of each sarcophagus, too far apart for one person to depress both at once. Only if both are pressed does the secret door in this chamber open.

Troll bones

HD 8 / AC 7 / Attacks four times
Resists piercing attacks

True tomb

Like the false tomb, this chamber’s floor is split down the middle, black and white. The ceiling is likewise split, mirroring the floor as night and day. One oversized sarcophagus is positioned in the center of the room, flanked by six marble pedestals (three on each side).

The pedestals, described here left to right, display the following grave goods:

1. Seven white pearls in a silver bowl (100gp each; 25gp bowl)
2. Green glass flask, flat-bottomed, contains an onyx cat statuette too large to fit through the opening (120gp)
3. Large, red-gold feather; even the slightest friction produces a spark (40gp)
4. Plasteel bracelet (oversized; would fit an adult's upper arm), the flat face decorated with a black mirror (spiderweb cracks), beside a plasteel pistol with a scissors-grip, fired by squeezing the two legs together (barrel marked by the bite of a blade and leaking battery acid: no juice left)
5. Silver crown ornately decorated with spiders trapping humans in webs (some have sex with the humans, while some just eat them—various perversions) atop folded silk clothing, pajama-adjacent, embroidered with gold (500gp; 250gp)
6. Seven black pearls in a silver bowl (500gp each; 25gp bowl)

The sarcophagus depicts the divine twins as a single, rebus-like figure. Within the sarcophagus is a single, oversized urn. Inside the urn, the twins’ ashes are intermingled with the Gemini Blades and two amulets (semicircular, one white and one black). If the urn is shattered, the twins defend their tomb and rise to un-life as ashen swordsmen wielding the Gemini Blades.

The Twins

HD 8 / AC 0 / Attacks thrice with the Gemini Blades (melee or ranged)
Flies twice as fast as a man can run

The twins disintegrate if the half-amulet hovering in their chest is stolen; they know this and will prevent this outcome at any cost, flying out of reach and using their speed, flight, and ranged options to their advantage.

The Gemini Blades

Twin khopeshes, one has a hilt of white leather and a scabbard of black leather; the other is oppositely-colored. At some point a scarf of purple silk was wrapped around the pommel of both swords; it blows slightly, as if in the wind, even if there is none.

Individually, the blades are scimitars, +1, or +2 versus felines, spiders, eagles, and trolls. When the blades are wielded within sixty feet of each other, they become scimitars, +2, or +3 versus felines, spiders, eagles, and trolls.

If the blades are wielded by two different people, they confer telepathy between the wielders so long as they are within sixty feet of one another. Further, a wielder can make ranged attacks with the blades with a range of sixty feet from the other blade. The thrown blade curves in midair and always finds its twin; the other wielder can catch it, if they have a free hand. If one person wields both blades, then the thrown blade returns to their hand immediately after being thrown.

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