Climbing the stairs of the side passage they came out onto a gallery with a high balcony circling the rectangular underground ceremonial chamber 60 feet up.
The chamber itself was immense, easily 400 by 500 feet across, with a ceiling of 100 feet. There were many dozens of black columns holding up the roof. However, there was not much light in the vast space, just a handful of lamps, candles, braziers and torches. Incense and perfumes lay thick in the air, masking a pervasive miasma of decay. The floor was of a shiny black stone.
Below them they could see the ancient chamber laid out with the main entrance right below them. Then a set of stairs in the middle of the floor leading yet further below. According to Dr. Khafour, accessing the underworld. Past this was an elongated rectangular pit with water at the bottom, a leech pit. Near the far end of the chamber was an ornate throne made of carved green stone on a raised dais and platform.
Leading off to the right of the throne and platform was a ceremonial bridge leading over the floor to a side entrance. At that entrance was a stele, much like the one found on the estate of Edward Gavigan, the senior cult leader (now deceased) of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh in the UK. The investigators had attacked and wiped out the cult there some months ago.
On the rear wall of the throne room was a gigantic irregular oval portal measuring 90 by 120 feet, of utter blackness.
The ceremony conducted by the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh to honour their King, and to resurrect his Queen, Nitocris, were getting in to full swing.
Inside were hundreds, perhaps almost a thousand worshippers, chanting and swaying. Staring at the throne. Guarding them were scores of hundred of the hideous unnatural "children of the Sphynx", man with the heads of animals (crocodiles, jackals, panthers, hippos, birds etc. armed with ceremonial clubs and curved knives. In between the square pit and the throne a group of prisoners were surrounded by a group of priests. All the cultists, priests and Children of the Sphynx were dressed in the familiar black satin cultist robes.
On the altar was the sarcophagus of Nitocris. Chi-Yin recognised it as the one that was mysteriously stolen from the Clive expedition.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:47, Wed 10 Jan.