Monster Lairs – Gibbering Mouther – Temple of Madness
Slab
Ages ago a mage sought to create a crown that would give him ultimate knowledge. He would know everything there is to know. Unfortunately for him, he was successful and called his creation, the Crown of Knowledge. The crown flooded his mind with knowledge, including knowledge not meant for mortal kind. His brain simply could not handle it all and he went mad, lashing out at everyone and everything with alien magics. The mage was eventually defeated, and he and his crown were locked away in a tomb, never to be seen again.
The mage’s madness was not stopped by death, however. It warped the area around him, corrupting all life, and the land itself. The surrounding vegetation died off, becoming petrified wood that would randomly lash out at anything that moved nearby, their branches like stone tentacles.
Those who die before they reach the temple are the lucky ones, for within the temple itself are the remains of previous would-be tomb raiders; transformed into horrific creatures known as gibbering mouthers. Doors surrounding the central chamber hold off countless gelatinous cubes which also envelope and dissolve potential intruders.
Should one someday make their way past all the dangers and steal the Crown of Knowledge, their fate is perhaps the most unfortunate of all. For it is the fate of any who possesses the crown to go mad as its creator; lost to the forbidden knowledge of the universe.
