Country: Helghan, map #12
Ruled by:
Population: 3000
Primary Business: logging
Alchemist: no
Magic Shop: no
Sage: no
Wizards' School: no
Notes: This small town was the lair of a creature named Euryale; she eventually left the town with the assistance of the players, after they freed her from her imprisonment there. The inhabitants were all eventually unstoned, and has become a living town again.
Also known as the City of the Screaming Statues, it has a population of perhaps ten thousand. The town was controlled by a female humanoid creature who apparently stoned many thousands of people in the town. The stoning woman was actually a servant of a lich from a neighboring country, sent to terrorize the god-empress into paying tribute. The god-empress slew the lich, but the town was already lost and she didn’t care to help them. The stoning woman, actually a powerful sort of demon-medusa named Euryale, was left to fend for herself.
The town itself is laid out in a precise grid, with no roads remaining coming into it, but most of the buildings are relatively intact (being made from stone and baked mud brick, with little wood; only the peasant houses have collapsed, generally killing those inside as their stone bodies were shattered). The significant valuables in the town have all been cleaned out, except for Euryale’s treasure, which she kept in a pocket dimension, that can be vaguely seen as an apparently false stone doorway into the astral to those who can see such, whenever she is clearly visible. There are a few medium to small temples of the various Egyptian gods, with Ptah’s being by far the biggest. The grounds of these temples are no longer consecrated. There are numerous tombs, graveyards, and a few small burial mastabas (clay block piles, early precursors of pyramids).
Deshret, which is surrounded by forest, is patrolled regularly by army patrols; see Helghan page for details.