I've always had a love of ruins. Even as a very young lad, I thrilled at the idea of exploring old cities and investigating that which man had abandoned. More than likely, my early (1980) immersion into this hobby had an effect on this aspect of my personality. So, luckily for me, I've been able to occasionally sate this desire of mine, which is not an easy thing, considering that I'm American and grew up in the Midwest. We don't have scads of vine-shrouded tombs, bone-haunted catacombs, and lonely, forgotten palaces in the agricultural heartland of the USA!
Aqar Quf (plenty more pictures here) is one the places I'll most remember, even if time ravages my memory in my dotage. It's quite a unique spot, and I visited it under quite unique circumstances. If you'll indulge me in a bit more autobiographical puffery before I get to the gaming-related content...
The first time I saw the crumbling ziggurat, I was sitting in the back seat of an up-armored Hummer (an M1114, for the nitpicky among you). My platoon was responding to a call for aid, as another platoon had been attacked and needed some assistance mopping up the battle site and securing the casualties. Gunships and medevac birds were roaring above us as we crossed the bridge over the old canal and headed up the narrow dirt road up to the battle site.
This thing that loomed in my sight was 3500 years old! I couldn't take my mind off that fact, even as we swept the adjacent derelict date orchard for additional enemy. I couldn't dispel the notion that soldiers of a hundred nations had passed this way, even as we clipped the modern chain-link fence into the compound and systematically cleared north until we were in visual range of the next road intersection. My imagination was lit on fire when I gripped my weapon and adjusted my helmet and armor as I crouched in the reeds, lying in wait, and thought of the possibility that some tired ranker in Julian the Apostate's army had pulled picket duty in this same spot as the legions headed toward Ctesiphon in 363 AD. By that time, of course, Aqar Quf was already shockingly aged.
Later, though, after a little research and reflection, I thought concretely about my notion of "a hundred nations" marching and fighting and sleeping in the shadow of the ruins. The ziggurat had been built by the vigorous, barbaric Kassites, the centerpiece of the new capitol of the country that had been wrested from the sedentary agrarians of the floodplains. As these things go, the area eventually came under the sway of other, still vigorous, folk, and so on and so on, until that day in 2006, when the helicopters and mechanized fighting vehicles and electric-eyed satellites of a polyglot army of a distant empire swarmed over it, however briefly.
Places like Aqar Quf get repurposed and reimagined as the centuries roll by. What had been the magnificent capitol of a new dynasty, glittering with gold ornament and filled with the sounds and stench of men and their animals, had been sacked and abandoned several times. Part of the reason for the generally poor condition of the ziggurat (aside from, of course, inferior local materials) is that locals had, over the millenia, preyed upon the ruins for stones. I briefly considered attempting to tag along on any mosque surveys of the area, in order to look for ancient stones in the foundations.
The god the temple was dedicated to is merely a footnote in the literature of Mesopotamian studies, and the rest of the old city had been taken apart and covered with soil and sand. A new king, seeing in himself something of the god-kings of three- and four-thousand years ago, attempted to restore some of the glory of the Kassite's capitol, and enlisted his learned scholars and workers to rebuild the surrounding temple. Whatever else you might have to say about Saddam, he certainly did have an affinity for antiquities.
The locals have their own whispered legends about the ziggurat, the kernels of which predate their religion, and these legends maintain an acceptably pagan gloss about them. My favorite one tells of the first king of the city, who began as a rough warrior from the mountains. He grew prideful, say the villagers, and challenged Shamash, the sun god, by firing arrows at the sun, declaring victory when the god did not strike him down in response. My second favorite is a tale about a ghost of a Shamash-priest which still accosts travellers, because when the Mongols looted Baghdad 800-odd years ago they defiled what had remained of the tombs in the old city. These aren't stories you'll find in the history chronicles, but these are the stories of the folk that live with the view of the old temple on the horizon, day in, day out.
Just like the ziggurat has been repurposed, so can these images, tales, and histories be repurposed. What can we use about Aqar Quf while dreaming up ruined locations for games? A few proposals follow:
- Just a few miles outside of the teeming capitol city of a great country lies the physical remains of an older capitol, its glory forgotten, with herds of goats munching on grass that grows from between millenia-old stones. A place waiting to be explored.
- Big dungeons need layers. What better excuse for layers than a dozen empires ruling over the same area as the years rolled past? From what I understand, M.A.R. Barker's Jakalla underworld takes this concept to the extreme, with layers so old that even men from 20,000 years ago wouldn't be able to decipher the inscriptions on the walls in the deepest places.
- Rumors, rumors, rumors! In a world where even a humble sheepherder has a cellphone and internet access, tales of mighty kings and ghosts and revenge still pass from the lips of people that live near evocative ruins. Imagine how verbose they'd be in a world where vengeful ghosts really exist?
- The current political situation of your campaign area matters, even if the adventurers just go back and forth from the megadungeon to the nearest town. What lurking horror might have been released by the now-deposed king's meddling in the old city? How about those soldiers over there? Could they have seen something on moonless nights as they thanklessly patrol the road that bends a little too close to the crumbling temple? Or maybe those soldiers spend some of their free time doing some investigating of their own. They haven't found anything of note...yet.
