Inspired by Ancient Egyptian pyramid fields, solar kingship, and the long development of royal funerary architecture
Ra Beneath the Pyramids
The sun god was once a man, and the body he built has outlived ancient Egypt.
What the party believes
A collector hires the characters to recover a brass lens found in a newly mapped shaft beneath Giza. Their guide is Razul, a charming engineer who knows the pyramid passages better than the survey team that opened them. He claims the lens belongs to a workshop older than the dynasties that built the tombs.
The deeper chambers look less like burial rooms and more like a power station. Mirrors follow the sun without moving. Copper veins hum inside the stone. Razul always knows which floor will heat up next, and every door opens when his shadow touches it.
Recover the missing lens, identify the builders of the underground machinery, and escape before the solar chambers reach full power.
Where the trail leads
- Cross a mirror shaft where concentrated sunlight forms bridges for a few seconds at a time.
- Find records showing that early Egyptian conquerors inherited the pyramids and later turned them into royal tombs.
- Catch Razul speaking an extinct technical language to a sealed door, then watch him dismiss it as a lucky guess.
- Retrieve the brass lens and see an image of Razul wearing the same face thousands of years earlier.
- Reach the solar heart as Razul seals the exits and the pyramid begins drawing power from the midday sun.
What actually happened
Razul is Ra. He began as a scientist whose solar cells captured more than five hundred times the energy of modern panels. His invention made Egypt powerful enough to conquer neighboring lands and strip them of their knowledge. People called him the sun god, and he turned the title into a throne.
An artificial heart kept him alive for centuries. When his body finally failed, he built another from cells that feed on sunlight. He guided the party to the one chamber he could not open without a living hand. Now he intends to restart the network, erase the older civilization from the record, and rule in daylight forever.
Where it can end
- Destroy Ra's solar body and release the stolen knowledge to the places it came from.
- Trap Ra inside the pyramid and keep the solar network under mortal control.
- Shut the entire system down, leaving the truth buried with the technology.
The history behind the story
Ra was one of ancient Egypt's principal solar deities, and the pyramids were Egyptian royal funerary monuments. This adventure is deliberate alternative history. Its older civilization, scientific Ra, solar cells, conquest, and artificial body are fictional changes made for the game.
Content notes
famine, colonial violence, body replacement. Change or fade any element that does not suit your table.