Ziggurat-palaces and more treasures of the river kingdom
Every nome in the river kingdom has an ancient ziggurat-palace reserved for its nomarch. Its top floor is always kept clean and perfect for Lugal, should He choose to visit. He has never done so in living memory.
Each nome is different and has a Notable Feature. I might later assign each of these features to a particular nome, but for now they're to be chosen alongside nomes and treasures at character creation.
- Colossal throne carved of a single piece of green marble. It is either flanked by two tigers who raise their paws to support you as you step up to your seat or shrouded by the wings of an eagle which close around you to keep the sun off of your face or slowly rotates on the flat back of a mud crab.
- Open-domed observatory chamber, its ceiling angled such that the moon, hanging low and unmoving above the city, is perfectly framed in the oculus
- Secret passages connecting every room that only you know about
- Set of labyrinthine tunnels below the earth (a dungeon…?)
- Walled garden with exotic plants, perfect for perfumes (and poisons…?)
- Menagerie of exotic beasts and birds and fish
- Strange companions which roam free about the estate. Either a stately lion or a hive of bees which provide their golden honey or spiders which provide their perfect silk or a colony of bats which fend off insects or countless white rabbits which get in every room without fail.
- Attached bathing complex atop natural hot springs
- Chamber whose walls are set with brazen mirrors. Deodands glow in the reflections even if concealed from sight.
- Shimmering tapestries line the halls. They shift and change, depicting a single moving scene, rather than a fixed image.
- Portal above the nomarch’s throne set with convex mirrors which direct and amplify a beam of sunlight directly downward
- Grand amphitheater which could fit the entirety of the nome
- Forum of philosophers and scholars and rhetors. A miniature Academy.
- Temple the envy of the kingdom (choose a cult)
- Colony of starlings trained to deliver messages in your own voice
- Instead of a ziggurat, your palace is a great tower which reaches into the sky. In the center there is an elevator whose chains are pulled by ancient simulacra of men made from stone and bronze and fur.
- Instead of a ziggurat, your palace is the absence of one, upside-down. It is a tiered pit whose walls are set doorways into chambers carved into the earth. Water cascades down each face in waterfalls and flows around a free-standing palace for Lugal at the bottom, rather than the top.
Nomarchs also have a stone manor house in Uruk whose every surface is carved and painted and is tended to by urban slaves while you are away. They are built in attached complexes with central courtyards, but you (and your slaves) are likely the only living people inhabiting the complex.
And two more treasures to be selected alongside nomes at character creaton:
Lot-Shamir
He is a bit of gold the size of a teardrop, housed in a hinged box of lead and wrapped in a cerulean shawl. Show him an object or material, bid him to work it into an object of beauty, and he will do so. He is obligated to serve. Anything carved by Lot-Shamir is holy beyond belief, having been worked by one entirely without sin; one who wishes to mar the beauty of his creations must roll breath to follow through on the desire. Divinities and snakes care not for such a thing as sin; they are above it and outside it, respectively.
Tongs of God
Made of iron, numinous and grey. The first tongs ever made, oversized in the human hand. Can hold and handle any material, no matter how hazardous or slippery. The manipulating hand is protected in the process (e.g., it is not burned by proximity to molten metal grasped by the tongs, even unprotected).