Verdant Vault of Malakum, The

The Verdant Vault of Malakum is an OSRIC module designed for 4-6 adventures of levels 8-10.

Well over 2,000 years ago, there existed a vast jungle kingdom ruled by a man called Malakum, who was descended from a long line of mage-kings. Like his regal forebears, Malakum ruled with a stern hand and possessed a pitiless, cruel nature. The sadistic liege was greatly feared by his subjects particularly because of his unnatural fascination with plants of every species. He enjoyed performing magical experiments on his own people in which he grafted onto their bodies various plant parts, in most cases killing his victims outright and at other times producing hybrid abominations. The mage-king also perfected various and sundry magical ointments and poisons extracted from plants, which he always tested on his unwilling subjects. It was therefore no surprise that Malakum’s people tired of his rule and mounted a rebellion, assassinating him and almost all of his advisers virtually overnight. Without a ruler, however, Malakum’s subjects soon reverted to savagery and eventually fled into the heart of the jungle to live out the remainder of their lives.

Fortunately for Malakum, his tomb had been completed several years before his death. Immediately after the mage-king’s demise resulting from an obsidian dagger cut to the throat complements of one of his former servants, a few surviving members of his priesthood were able to smuggle his body out of the palace for internment. After spending several weeks preparing their liege’s corpse with exotic oils and powders, these priests placed Malakum’s mummy in his tomb. Their grisly task done, the priests fled into the jungle with the rest of the citizens of the city, and vanished into history. The tomb of Malakum has remained inviolate all these centuries.