#tomb of the nine gods

[dm-paul-weber]

Tomb of the Nine Gods. Tomb of Annihilation.

Download them all, along with the map asset overlays from my google drive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yHxTr14wi3qvOvhRTo9tphUe_xXlQ9mr/view?usp=sharing

#Tomb of the nine gods #tomb of the 9 gods #tomb of annihilation #D&D #maps #5e #TOA #Dungeon master #D&D homebrew #homebrew #ttrpg #dmpaulweber #DnD #dungeons and Dragons #Dungeons & Dragons #gears of hate #dungeon of horror #vault of reflection #rotten halls #dungeon of deception #chamber of horrors #Acererak #DM

[nose-coffee]

honestly, i just gotta imagine anybody from the Houses not involved with the Cohort hearing abt tlt events would be wild. like

random fifth house citizen: all....all of the house heirs died?

their random fifth house citizen friend: [nodding] except for Ianthe Tridentarius of the Third and a Ninth nun. they’re the Emperor’s new Lyctors.

random fifth house citizen: [imagining the Lyctor trials as Battle Royale style death matches]....but everyone else died??

-

random fifth house citizen’s friend: hey did you hear? the sixth house installation got cooked in that recent sunflare!

random fifth house citizen: 

random fifth house citizen’s friend: also the Emperor has a daughter

random fifth house citizen: oh shit really? congrats to him. chaotic time to be raising a kid tho, imo

random fifth house citizen’s friend: she’s like, nineteen

random fifth house citizen:

-

random fifth house citizen’s friend: [poking their head into the room] hey, just letting you know, the tomb’s open

random fifth house citizen: the what’s what

random fifth house citizen’s friend: the tomb is open. the locked one. on the ninth house. it’s open.

random fifth house citizen:

#fuck off lou #my post #tlt #the locked tomb #'tombs open' w the same energy as 'moons haunted' #tlt meta #tlt shitposting #honestly i just think abt third house citizens celebrating 'princess coronabeth our darling gone too soon day' a lot #like. you poor fuckers have no clue oh god #i think abt the nine houses nameless citizens a lot. who knows what fate has in store for them

[vaguely-concerned]

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

#the unwanted guest #the unwanted guest spoilers #the locked tomb #ianthe tridentarius #augustine the first #pyrrha dve #palamedes sextus #this series is going to make me lose my mind completely one day (affectionate) #the locked tomb meta #the fact that ianthe seems to have had some genuine admiration for augustine makes my head spin. of course though. #of course she sees the person who looks the most like he's successfully made himself impervious to the world #utterly untouchable and impossible to hurt because he isn't even really there #and she believes it! even after seeing the john mercy augustine mess at the end! because it's such a seductive idea #when you've stuck yourself in an inevitable ocean of pain to think you could make yourself numb enough that it doesn't matter #it's the emotional equivalent of 'oh there's water all around? well I just won't breathe in then. easy lmao get on my level' #she holds on to that thing from him even when it's been proved to be both impossible and ultimately untrue even in him #because uh. oh I'm about to be kind of sad for ianthe what the fuck is going on. he might actually have been the closest thing #to parental and especially paternal affection she's ever known. certainly known enough to try to model herself after #IMAGINE how fucked up the nine houses must be when augustine the first registers for anyone as a model of psychological survival #ianthe do you really want to be yourself completely so much that you're willing to be nothing. I mean yeah probably but. oh my god #gaining nothing at the cost of everything

[weirdprophetess]

tlt is so funny because yeah these ten thousand year old people hate each other because they've committed mass genocide, created an empire with so many faults built in and they've fought god knows how many times over the eons they've known each other but also one of these bitches ate peanuts in a meeting once and somebody else has NEVER forgiven him for it

#just thinking bc #its so hilarious to me imagining how long mercymorn may have held onto that grievance for #was it one year? was it ten thousand nine hundred and eighty seven? #we'll never know #also ngl #i was just thinking ab the acid jail speech animatic from youtube thats why i made this #if you havent seen it please look it up #its so funny #anyway #waiting for someone to say they thought i was talking about the people that hate each other fighting god #and not just using the phrase “god knows” #bc ngl this is my own post #and i read it like that a couple times #the locked tomb #the locked tomb series #tlt #tamsyn muir #harrow the ninth #htn #mercymorn the first #mercymorn #john gaius #emperor john gaius #my post

[mayasaura]

we know john didn't want alecto to woke up, so why did he tell gideon to kill her? it seemed to me that he used gideon to get her to open the tomb because he knew that by telling her she would do exactly what he wanted, which is to open the tomb. so i wonder why what's his plan?

I know I've been a big proponent of the theory that John locked Alecto up for a reason and didn't want her to wake, but I think the ending of Harrow the Ninth changed things. Significantly.

When everyone we loved has gone or fled, that's morning. Empty's the same as clean. Let's put this first-draft dream of mine to bed.

Annabel, good morning.

Everyone they loved is gone or fled now. Augustine, Mercy, and OG Prime were the last holdouts. It's over. Time to close the chapter, and try something new. He promised there would be a second Resurrection, and there will be, but he can't do it without Alecto.

#apres moi le deluge #after me comes the flood #so basically I think his plan is to destroy the Nine Houses #destroy BoE and the shepard planets too maybe #whatever he can get his hands on #resurrect his friends #and then start over #maybe he'll even keep Kiriona and try doing the dad thing from scratch this time #he knows where memory lives in the brain #but to do all of that he is going to NEED Alecto #he hasn't committed Resurrection since the first I wonder why that is #can he even do it without Alecto or is he a half-god without her? #in the same way Harrow was a half-lyctor as long as Gideon remained entombed #the locked tomb #ntn spoilers #emperor john gaius #alecto the first #alecto speculation #tlt meta #nona the ninth

[kazbiter]

someone tell me that I did not just read a sneak reference to the none pizza with left beef meme in harrow the ninth lmao talk about whiplash

#i supposed it could have not been intentional #but god just said to her I'm shut in here to prevent the nine houses from becoming none houses with left grief #instantly I was like WAIT #lmfao #anyways #harrow the 9th #harrow the first #the locked tomb #tlt trilogy #harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus

[katamaricule]

It never will.

(original Simpsons joke)

#dmbj #lost tomb memes #mystic nine #seriously though that's a terrifying Team Strike Force #any Huo-Xie alliance should put the fear of God into everyone

[rottingsoftly]

ive been playing around with like confetti? crayons?? in this tiny little notebook sketchbook whatever thing and may i present to you: the king over the river except he's the size of my thumb

#wow idk why that image is so huge but whatever #this way you can see all of his imperfections #these xonferti crayons tho omg #they're all like shitty colors with random bits of differently colored wax in them #so much fun but also somewhat terrible to work with #anyway #tlt #tlt series #the locked tomb #the locked tomb series #john gaius #jod tlt #jod #tlt fanart #(technically i guess idk it took like five minutes lol) #the great king undying #the god who became man and man who became god #the great ressurector #the king over the river #the emporer of the nine houses #gideon the ninth

[nana-glass-chillhop-radio-hour]

Incredible how whenever Harrow exhibits any sign of having grown up in a culture 10,000 years removed in time from the culture(s) that John and the lyctors grew up in, their immediate reaction is to just utterly dismiss her worldview out of hand. I can forgive planet murder but I draw the line at being mean and culturally chauvinst towards my personal friend Harrowhark Nonegesimus

#locked tomb #harrowposting #if i had a pathetic necromancer who was raised on Pluto by penitents i would hype them up so much #everyone clap and cheer for Harrow's space pietism or I'll blow the nine houses up #god's greatest crime? disrespecting my baby girl's theological positions

[worldsbestsunglasses]

oh my God oh my God oh my God (stuffing my mouth like I've been starving for years) (just discovered cheese sticks)

#locked tomb fictive #wy dont we have these in the nine houses oh my god #is my dad like allergic to cheese or something #come to think of it its probably just the ninth that takes issue with cheese. fuck

[dm-paul-weber]

Tomb of Annihilation Battle Map Moa's Shrine Island 3500x3500

#Tomb of Annihilation #Chult #Omu #Forbidden City #Roleplaying #rpg #ttrpg #vtt #roll20 #D&D #9 Shrines #nine shrines #trickster gods #Dungeons & Dragons #Dungeons and Dragons #DND #d&d5e #5e #map #maps #Lava #Jungle #volcano #moa #Dungeon Master #ToA #DM #homebrew #homebrew5e

[theriverbeyond]

how do we know in the books that john is indigenous? can you say more about how his indigeneity is important to his story?

hello! so there is a word of god post on race (doesn't mention John but mentions that Gideon is "mixed Maori"), BUT I frankly don't think word of god statements are worth any weight without actual in-text support (see: the "dumbledore is gay" situation). SO!

Specific evidence that John Gaius is Maori, as revealed in Nona the Ninth:

When he is listing his education, John mentions having gone to Dilworth School (John 20:8). Dilworth is an all boys boarding school in Auckland and accepts students based on financial need instead of academic or sporting achievements. Demographics appear to be about 70% low income Maori boys, indicating that it is highly likely that John is Maori

John reports that P- said he looked like a "Maori-TV pink panther" (John 15:23) when his eyes turned gold. Maori TV is a TV station that is focused primarily on Maori culture & language revitalization, with presumably all or mostly Maori hosts, and tbh I don't see why P- would say this unless John was himself Maori

John uses a te reo Māori phrase ("kia kaha, kia māia") (John 5:20) when he is saying goodbye to the corpses in the cryo lab before the power is shut off. Though it is possible he said this as a non-Maori kiwi, but in combination with the previous two points of evidence I think this all very strongly points to him being Maori

He also renames his daughter Kiriona Gaia, "Kiriona" being just literally the name "Gideon" in te reo Māori

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter but to ME this is all pretty solid proof

Why is this relevant to The Locked Tomb?

In Nona the Ninth, we learn that before he completed apotheosis and ate the solar system, John was basically trying to save the earth from capitalism-caused climate change. Climate justice and the rights of indigenous people over their own land are deeply tied together, in the same way that climate catastrophe and capitalism/ imperialism/ colonialism are linked. disclaimer that this is NOT my area of study and others have definitely said it better; this is just the basic gist as I understand it, but on quick search I found some sources here and here if you want to do some reading.

TLT is not a series that hands you anything on a silver platter, but i don't think it is a stretch to see John as an indigenous man trying to save the earth and getting ignored and shut down at every turn by primarily western colonial powers (PanEuro, the USA) who declare him a terrorist and then as a reader thematically connecting that to the experience of indigenous climate activists IRL

there are absolutely TLT meta posts that have discussed this before me; tumblr search is nonfunctional and I have been looking for an hour and a half and cannot find anything specific even though i KNOW i reblogged multiple posts about this in the first few weeks following NTN's release. sad & I am sorry

I think that by the time the books take place, John is 10k years removed from the cultural context he grew up in, with the Nine Houses having become a genocidal colonial power in their own right (with more parallels to be made between John's forever war for the resources of literal life energy and like, oil wars), but I also think that John Gaius is a fictional character who can represent and symbolize multiple different things in service of telling a story. (not to mention the potential thematic parallels being made to how oppressed people sometimes are pressed into replicating the power dynamics of their oppressors and continuing the cycle--now that is a tumblr post i KNOW i read last year and definitely cannot find right now, once again sad & I am sorry)

How Radical Was John Gaius, Really is a forum thread that was locked by the moderators after 234534645674564 pages of heated debate

#john gaius #nona the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt meta #i need to fix my tagging system fr #john meta #tlt thoughts #trb.txt #if anyone wants to add anything or correct anything PLS do so!!! i did my best hope this helps anon. this took me 2 hours

[shayberri789]

My theory on the NtN ending:

Cassiopeia wasn't the only one to betray Jod thousands of years ago. She wasn't the only one to see that what Jod was doing was wrong and put plans in place to deal with it.

Anastasia the first almost had perfect lyctorhood and watched her God kill her cavalier in front of her so she couldn't do it. Maybe she really would have died. Maybe she would have gone the paul route. Maybe she would have survived and Samael would still be around. But he was killed in front of her and she had no say in it.

Alecto was odd, and a little dangerous, but she's the soul of the earth and if Jod could kill the most important person to Anastasia of course he could kill the thing who loved humanity so much she gave them power over life and death.

And when the Lyctors were convincing him to kill his pet revenent beast, the pin point of his greatest sin and a being in constant pain and hurt, maybe Anastasia, the one left behind, the one maybe magicked to silence through a sewn tongue, cursed jaw, felt sympathy and kinship with Alecto. Maybe she knew Jod would never truly kill Alecto. Maybe she was the first person in hundreds if not thousands and millions of years to look at Alecto with compassion and actually say "I will help you if only you tell me how". Maybe she made a promise to protect Alecto, maybe she made a promise to look after her while she sleeps. Maybe she made a promise that one day she'd come and wake Alecto up and they'd solve things together. Maybe one day they can undo what John did and maybe Alecto can have peace, finally, one day. And maybe Alecto swore that for the debt of waking her again she would do anything for Anastasia, any one thing, if Anastasia woke her up in a time when things could change.

But by the time Anastasia, frail with her necromancer build and squirreled away at the edge of the solar system, started reaching old age she realized it was too soon to wake her up. Too soon to send her into the lyctor viper pit again, not while Anastasia was so weak. So she tasks her daughter with guarding the tomb. "This door must stay shut until the day comes when the emperor must die" she says, and her daughter repeats this to her son, and so on and so forth until the body in the locked tomb becomes Armageddon. Not locked away for her own protection, not awaiting the day for the tomb keeper to wake her up and try again, not awaiting the day when the nine houses get to restart. No, she's the greatest enemy of god, she must be locked away lest she start Armageddon, locked away for the protection of the emperor and their duties to her tomb an icon for devotion.

But the bloodwards hold for 10000 years and one day the curse of silence will be lifted from the jaw of the ninth house tomb keeper, and the oath to Alecto is preserved in the Anastasian bloodline. And the daughter of the tomb keeper has awakened the monster once again

#this is me attempting to put a storyteller spin on a hc thats been buzzing around in my skull since i finished ntn #shay posts #tlt #the locked tomb #alecto the ninth #alecto the first #alecto theories #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #anastasia the ninth #anastasia the first #nona the ninth #alecto #griddlehark

[centuriespast]

Tutankhamun's gods Harry Burton (1879–1940) Griffith Institute, University of Oxford

Howard Carter found twenty-nine small statues of deities in Tutankhamun's tomb, all concealed within twenty-two small black shrines, the doors of each shrine secured by a cord and seal fastening.

#Sekhmet

[katakaluptastrophy]

"I’ve already pretty much revealed that Alecto begins with the descent of Christ into Hades." - Tamsyn Muir

That's right...it's time for more Bible study for fans of weird queer necromancers!

It's currently Holy Week, the week where Western liturgical Christians reenact the events of Jesus' death and resurrection in real time. And today, it's Holy Saturday. So Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday. He rises from the dead on Easter Sunday. But what happened in between? His body lay in the tomb...but his spirit was otherwise preoccupied. Because on Holy Saturday, Jesus went to Hell.

But why would Jesus go to Hell? Because the resurrection was not just about saving the people who came after it - it was a bit more...wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.

To be a bit more specific, he didn't visit Hell Hell. The place Jesus visited isn't Hell in the sense of eternal punishment of the damned, but Hades or Sheol or the Underworld or Limbo - a place for those who were mostly good but lived before Jesus' resurrection had made salvation possible. So before his resurrection, Jesus went to make that salvation retroactive. Particularly, according to tradition, to major figures from the Old Testament, including Adam and Eve.

So Nona the Ninth ended with Harrow walking off into the River in search of theological truth. And Alecto the Ninth apparently begins with Harrow in Hell:

Alecto the Ninth, ACT ONE HARROW IN HELL CHAPTER 1 At a point in the slit she was carving through life, Harrowhark Nonagesimus woke to find herself lost in a dark wound. She had been walking when it had all gone black– any path ahead or behind was blotted out; now she was here.  - Tamsyn Muir reading at TorCon

This is riffing heavily on the beginning of Dante's Inferno:

"In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost." - Dante Alighieri, Inferno

But lots of people go to Hell. What's so special about Harrow going there? Because the traditional name in English for Jesus' chthonic salvation adventures on Holy Saturday is "the Harrowing of Hell." "Harrow" comes from an Old English word meaning to attack or despoil - a very martial way of expressing the idea of Jesus as the victor over sin and death.

Harrow ended NTN realising that she cannot trust John's account of metaphysics. That she needs to discover the reality for herself. The faith of the Nine Houses and John's own styling as god rests on the foundation of the Resurrection - John is the "ransomer of death, scourge of death, vindicator of death", his power is understood to be absolute: "Let the whole of everywhere entrust themselves to him. Let those across the river pledge beyond the tomb to the adept divine."

And yet even that prayer - "let those across the river..." - introduces doubt. Magnus jumps in to silence Abigail when she expresses her heretical belief in the River beyond, and Harrow herself scoffs that "it has been thousands of years since anybody bothered to believe in the River beyond." Abigail believes that John knows nothing about what exists beyond the River. And what about Hell? In HTN, Ulysses the First is described as "languishing in Hell" after his run-in with a Resurrection Beast. John himself describes the stoma as "the mouth to Hell", "a portal to a place I cannot touch - somewhere I don't fully comprehend, where my power and my authority are utterly meaningless."

In the Book of Revelation - the Bible's account of the end of the world - Jesus holds "the keys of death and Hell". John may have resurrected the dead, but he does not comprehend what is beyond it. Both the destination of the good, the River beyond to which the souls of little Isaac and Jean should have traveled lightly after their short and brutal lives, and the Hell that lies beneath the stoma are outside of his power. He is a few keys short of the full divine bunch. He can manipulate death, but he is not really its master.

And so Harrow walks off into the River to look for something or someone she can call god. Harrow, who shares a name with the defeat of death across time and space. Harrow, who is of the unbroken line of Anastasia. Anastasia was kind to Alecto, who like Eve is the mother of all and like Adam walked on the empty earth with god.

In Orthodox icons, the Harrowing of Hell is depicted with Jesus triumphant, leading Adam and Eve by the hand from their tombs. The traditional term for this image is an anastasis, the Greek term for resurrection. Adam and Eve, whose sin broke the intended shape of reality, are restored to wholeness with god.

How will Harrow answer her questions about god? What really is beyond the stoma and what would it mean to conquer it? What does it look like, metaphysically, to restore the world of The Locked Tomb to wholeness, and what will it cost?

#the locked tomb #tlt meta #harrowhark nonagesimus #john gaius #alecto the first #anastasia the first

[amylouioc]

Grianstad shona daoibh!

In Ireland, the Winter Solstice is often associated with the Newgrange passage tomb in County Meath. Each year, as the sun rises on the Solstice, it aligns perfectly with tomb to illuminate the passage within.

Lots of historical, scientific and even crazy (I’m looking at you Ancient Aliens) theories exist as to why this occurs, but there is also some stories within our mythology associated with the event, including the Dagda’s affair with the Goddess Boann.

The Dagda was thought to be an Irish god of fertility and strength. A wife of one of his aides, Boann, a goddess of the River Boyne, was particularly entranced, and the couple soon began a clandestine affair. Affairs don’t stay secret when a god of fertility is involved, and Boann quickly fell pregnant around springtime.

Boann resided at Newgrange, and when her husband left for a hunting trip, the Dagda cast a spell to make the sun standstill for nine months and pause time. Boann carried her baby to term and eventually gave birth to Aengus, a god of youth and love. Despite it now being Winter, on Elcmar’s return he felt as if only a day had passed and the affair went unnoticed. That is until one day, when an adult Aengus would eventually arrive to duel Elcmar for Newgrange, which he deemed his birthright.

#irish mythology #artists on tumblr #irish folklore #newgrange #winter solstice #aengus #the Dagda #Boann #celtic polytheism #amylouioc art #my art #celtic mythology #fantasy illustration