I C A R C H 

Setting: Valley of the Shadow of Death

You are standing in the middle of a seemingly infinite plane. You walk in any direction for as far as you can go, then you see a mirage. You see a monstrous solid rock wall (Death) and at the base is a small Egyptian style temple. You enter the temple and there is a single obelisk with an encryption relating to what lies ahead. At the back of the temple there is a small colonnade that leads to a solid stone door. You can easily push open this door. This the one and only entrance through the wall. There is no way around the wall, so that all must pass through this temple. The second door is twice as thick and of the same material. After the second door, you enter a cavern entirely dark, not to mention the stone is black. At each end of the cavern there is a torch signifying "where you are now" and "where you seek to go." Standing at the entrance to the cavern you cannot see the bridge that spans the gap. The bridge, however, is designed to get less and less stable the closer you get to the next level.So by the end, the bridge has become so thin that most would doubt pursuing any further. Instead of the commonly thought of, dissension into the underworld, I thought of it as ascension.  At the end of the bridge there is a landing flanked by two sculpted lions. Past the landing, you enter a room lit by flaming torches with a giant steep staircase banked by two sides of rising benches. The benches are where the court sits. There are columns and beautiful vaulting. At the top of the stairs you come to a platform and in the center is a single throne where the judge sits. The judge decides which of the three doors that lie behind him you will take. Although the three passages all exit together the course of events that unfold on the other side differs. Those that take the right passage exit and are not allowed to take the boat across. They decide to try to swim across themselves. They fail to and result in going to hell. Those that take the middle passage are kindly received by the boatman, Charon, and are brought across. Those that take the left door end up walking along the banks for as long as it takes for them to realize that they cannot cross without the boatman. Those are in purgatory. On the other side of the river, Styx, there is a gentle rolling hill. At a niche in the hill, is the House of Anubis proudly looking over the river.

The House of Anubis has three parts: the center is a seven-sided room with radiating chapels. Inside the
septagon there is a dome capped by a pyramid, the symbol of a pharoah's monument to his afterlife.
Anubis, himself, sits beneath the dome. In Anubis' daily schedule, he awakes in the right wing. His right
bedroom has only one small window. In the morning, Anubis is a jackal/child. He becomes mature and sits on his throne for the remainder of the day. He leaves his throne at sunset and goes to bed in the left wing. The left wing has windows on all sides. This is where Anubis dies every night as an old jackal/man. During the night, his body disappears and it undergoes a metaphysical/philosophical change and the cycle repeats. In the chapel directly behind Anubis' chair, there is a large veil. This veil has the power to make others become like the dead, invisible, that is to say. There are two doors at the back of the chapel. They lead you down a staircase to two pools, one higher than the other. The pools are the fountain of youth. The water falls during one part of the year and shoots back up unnoticeably for the rest of the year, repeating the cycle. There is a small walkway between the two wings.