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This file contains all the really juicy GM-only stuff that I wrote for my own version of Mayac Choro and as such it is strictly off-limits to players. Players being players they'll go ahead and read this anyway no matter what caveats are put on it, so feel free to change anything contained herein as you see fit. :-) In this file you'll find information on how and why the Lost City got to be the way it is, what's happened to the locals and the secrets of the Great Pyramid (which, in best Egypto-Mayan style, comes with labyrinth, curses and mummies attatched) and the Undercity of Mayac Choro.

History and Background
Mayac Choro is a mountain-top city built as a Utopia by a now-extinct mathematico-religious group during the height of the Old Republic (possible ties between the beliefs of this group and the Soulcrafters may be speculated, but are unlikely to be proven). During the decades between 3700 and 3800AD the immense wealth of the cult was used to build and decorate their secret city in the Tien Shan mountains of Rampart - a refuge for their way of life against a coming 'deluge' their astrological prognostications foretold.

Eventually the cult's prophecies came true (as prophecies of doom have a way of doing if you wait around for long enough), the galaxy fragmented and, during the centuries after the fall of the Republic, the location of the city, never common knowledge, was gradually forgotten by the outside world. The inhabitants of the city continued in their autarchic lifestyle after the Fall, their food provided by the rich upland farming in the surrounding valleys and by the resources their technology was able to extract from their environment.

The city seems to have retained its original purpose as a religious community until the 4200s. Sometime during this century some meteorological or seismic disaster (memories of "days without light and nights of fire" are retained in Uighar folklore, but are vague at best) caused the collapse of the city's attendent farms, rapidly followed by its advanced technological base and the religious heirarchy. This collapse was soon followed by raids by Uighur tribes recently converted to the Path of Life's Unfolding (see the Kisen Do monastery for more on this minor sect of the Universal Church) who came intent on looting the fabled wealth of the heathen city.

In the face of this external aggression the traumatized inhabitants of the city slowly rebuilt their shattered homes and rediscovered their identity in this new, bleaker world. Over the decades the Choronese' once-civilized agrarian society gradually took on an aggressive raider culture, hunting down and preying on the Uighur; initially for self-defense, later out of cultural tradition. Half-forgotten religious ideals were adapted to include human sacrifice, ancestor worship and veneration of the protective spirit of the city (personified by the Great Pyramid).

Over the space of centuries the isolated and slowly decreasing inhabitants of Mayac Choro degenerated from their former high ideals into a state of inbred barbarism and religious fanaticism. Led by their shamans (the heirs to Mayac Choro's original religious leaders) the Choronese initially survived by using their superior technology to prey on the local Uighur tribes. As this technology gradually broke down it was replaced with cunning and ferocity of attack. Over time the lost city in the mountains gained a reputation as taboo, an area to be avoided at any cost. Eventually it became no more than a legend, and the occasional disappearances in the night the stuff of life in the New Dark Ages.

The Flora and Fauna
Despite the apparent lack of human inhabitants the city is not completely dead. The valley below is remarkably fertile (were it not for the taboo the Uighur would have settled here long ago) and, along with the wild corn, bushes and stands of wild fruit trees - many of which are cultivated crops 'gone native', it has it's fair share of mountain wildlife (think goats, llamas, mountain cats, great birds, bats, etc.) living in the ruins of the old Choronese farms and villages. The Choronese hunt many of these creatures for food but have learnt, the hard way, the value of moderating their culls of the local wildlife. If the PCs (or the creatures) fancy some hunting themselves use the stats for wild animals found scattered about in "Wierd Places", "Forbidden Lore", "Imperial Fiefs: Hawkwoods" or "Sinners and Saints".

Within the city are urban vermin of various kind living on the lichens and mosses in the buildings and in the overgrown gardens of the city. One possible clue for alternative routes into the city than the main gates could come from flights of bat-analogues flying from cave mouthes in the mountain beneath the city. Stats for these could include the Chitterlings and Escorpia Bugs ("Wierd Places"), the Hissing Cockroach ("Merchants of the Jumpweb") or the Hullrat (Core Rulebook"). The Choronese have a semi-symbiotic relationship with the animals within their city. The animals prey on the Choronese' trash, the locals eat them as delicacies. It should be noted again that the necropolis is surprisingly free of any vermin.

Although such things might seem like little more than background fluff the presence of urban vermin can be a useful tension-builder when the PCs finally realize that they are being watched by something. Picture it: The light is fading, the city has only been partially discovered and you've done your work building the feeling of tense paranoia. Then, during a watch sometime in the night, there's a scuffling in the outer darkness. "What was that noise? Creator! There's something moving out there and it sounds big! Everyone wake up." They wait, then go exploring for a bit "It's just a cat-thing. Relax!". Do this a few times and watch the players gnaw their nails in frustration at not having something to bash. Something like...

The Inhabitants
Over centuries of inbreeding within a small (and shrinking) genepool the original inhabitants of the city have gradually become less and less human. Now numbering less than a hundredth of the several score thousand the city was built to hold, the Choronese are vicious half-naked pygmies, nearer to cavemen than to the noble and enlightened Republicans who first built Mayac Choro. Although they have lost much of their knowledge they retain a greatly debased version of the art and religion that once built this city. During the course of their explorations the PCs should discover artwork or artefacts which, although in a primitive, regressed style, are vaguely reminiscent in style or content of the high art all around them. For most players this should be a clue that, even though they haven't seen them yet, the city still has citizens.

The PCs should eventually encounter a small group of the inhabitants, who will not be best pleased that the PCs have found their way to the lost city. As soon as the PCs enter the city, or the tunnels under it (see the Undercity), they will suffer from the constant sense of being watched. No amount of Perception + Observe rolls will reveal what is watching them. Crude sigils or daubed brutalist art will heighten their concern, and the first appearance of the Choronese should be in a dark, confined space where the primitives have the advantage of the dark and a handy escape route.

The reaction of the Choronese to the PCs is all-but inbred and only fantastic role-playing will overcome the cultural and linguistic rifts between cultures. The inhabitants of the city have been brought up on their shaman's stories of the Uighur devastation of the city and have come to hate and fear all outsiders, trespassing in their holy city (especially with Uighur guides - the first to die!) will not go down well. Looting the ancestral tombs in the necropolis or entering the Great Pyramid will result in a response little short of psychopathic from any Choronese in the area.

The Undercity
The true hidden city of Mayac Choro, this is where the inhabitants live out their pitiful, squalid lives like a bunch of low-budget Morlocks. The undercity is a combination of cellars, sewers, hand-carved tunnels, built catacombs, naturally-occuring mountain caves and the city's long-disused sewer system. Water, provided by the city's aquaduct, still runs through certain parts of the sewers, but, after a thousand years of poor maintainence, erosion and subterrene urban development, it also runs through areas of the catacombs and the caves as well.

The Undercity has been left for the individual GM to detail in it's entirety. I personally ran it using little more than the map, some additional details on subterranean ecologies and plans of one or two of the tunnel networks inhabited by the Choronese. It's your option whether the PCs use it just to get into the city, come down here with flamethrowers "...to clean out the tunnels!" (expect the Choronese to react very badly to this...) or chose to go for the old-fashioned dungeon hack option. What? You want my advice on how to run a dungeon bash? What are you, some sort of White Wolf GM? :-)

The Mystery of the Great Pyramid

Players being players they will fixate and obsess on this pyramid just like a bunch of LSD-doped monkeys watching a video of "Yellow Submarine". In fact it might be best if you don't mention the pyramid to them at all! :-) However, when they finally reach the pyramid they're going to want to get inside it and not common-sense, not reasoned argument, nothing short of the dreaded GM's fiat will stop them ("For the third time. It's not hollow!" "There must be a way in, I'm prying at the rocks." "The rocks are the size of shipping crates and weigh about 10 tons each!" "Right, I'll tap at one with my rock hammer." "It goes *Thud*, like a hammer hitting a big, solid, 10 ton slab of rock." "Ha hah! It must be hollow..."). So we might as well give the little scuts exactly what they want from the word go hmm?

In my own campaign (feel free to vary this of course) the key to getting inside the pyramid were two amulets which, when pulled into recesses somewhere on the pyramid and turned a certain way, opened a passageway into the interior of the pyramid ("Ah hah!"). One of these amulets (and half of an attendant map to the city) was in the possession of the story's arch-villain, the other one (and the second half of the map) fell into the possession of the PCs during their stay at the Kisen Do monastery. How they get the two together in the face of this opposition is a problem for the ingenuity of the PCs and the evil, scheming GM to decide.

Within the pyramid itself there should be various elaborately sculpted statues and sumptuously decorated (for the best effect have all those priceless hangings musty and really fragile - "melt at the touch of human skin salt" is my favourite flavour of tapestry :-) ) chambers performing various functions. To save you some trouble I've done a little bit of research and included a list of chambers any self-respecting ancient alien pyramid should hold.

• Entrance Hall - curses and frescoes a go-go! Nothing too valuable here, but maybe some sacrifices left by the Choronese shamans. Include well-disguised entrance to the Undercity.
• Labyrinth Rooms - fiendish "Indiana Jones"/"Mummy" (the 1999 version)-inspired tricks, traps with shifting walls, dropping blocks, turning rooms, etc. Don't give the players any clues they are in a labyrinth until the walls start grinding and moving around them ("No these walls aren't trying to squash you, nor are spikes emerging from them - yet...). Not even the Choronese come down here! Clue the first couple of traps with the smashed remains of unlucky locals or treasure hunters (the remnants of the Cordwainer-Fairbairn expedition).
• Triumphal Way/Chamber - Half-senile golem guards (their threat recognition routines are shot, their combat ones are just fine). Carvings of the construction of Mayac Choro. These carvings should consciously echo those on the mountain road.
• Burial Chambers - mummies of the glorious dead, chambers of gravegoods, etc.
• Central Chamber - high in the pyramid. Furnishings include all the ancient temple stuff (alters, pillars, statues (include some bird-headed humanoids to play up the Eyrti connection).

OK. You've put your party through Hell getting here, then beaten them prone with the mysteries and terrors of the city and the pyramid. What to you do to stroke their battered little egos? Well, along with the XP for the session you reward them with the sort of significant and important stuff that forms the start of whole epics (leastways...that's what I did). Below are a few things that might be appropriate to the sort of quest of discovery this tale should turn into

• Soul Shard - preferably a small (20 wyrd store, +1 goal to one path) crystal. May grant the first person who touches it a vision of great significance (by this point in my campaign I had 3 characters with minor psychic abilities and a theurge with more Hubris than Theurgy - imagine the politicking that went on!)
• Texts - fragment of the Stellar Apocrypha, the prophecies of the End Times that caused the city to be built, histories of the city/cult/Republic (up to the 4300s), a Rosetta Stone for those *#$%!!! heiroglyphs, ancient books lost for generations, texts in alien languages (translations from the Eyrtiani originals?).
• Artefact Weapons - neuro-gun, fusion gun, web gun (as per Wierd Places), finger lasers, stun wands, flux/mono-whip sword, master-crafted guns (Old Republican weapons wield by natives or Ogres).
• Semi-sentient (and senile) Think Machines & Golems - tomb guard Ogres, Visier Servitor. Basic Think Machines found on the bodies of the Cordwainer-Fairbairn crew, some are still retrievable.
• A jumpkey - to wherever the GM decides. Could be a 'special' like a trade-route, a dark road or a jumpgate resetter.
• Treasure maps - to wherever the GM wants the campaign to go.
• Heirloom Culture Items - jewellry, grave goods, statues, ornamental weapons (combine with artefact weapons and make it fragile...)

There you have it. The Lost City of Mayac Choro. I hope you have as much fun with it as I did. :-)