Slave Trenches of Hakotep

For another meaning of "Slave Trenches of Hakotep", please see The Slave Trenches of Hakotep.

The Slave Trenches of Hakotep are a series of large earthworks in Osirion built by Pharaoh Hakotep I between the Barrier Wall mountains and the headwaters of the Crook River, near the Kho-Rarme Pass. The earthworks run in strange geometric shapes across 17 square miles of desert, only from above can their true form be appreciated as the trenches form an ancient Osirian Hieroglyph that roughly translates as "Let Earth call down and bind the Sky".

The trenches' depths vary from only a few feet to fifty feet at its deepest but averages around thirty feet, their width can also vary widely but on average is around fifty feet. The trenches are often filled with drifts of sand and the bones of the slaves who died in their thousands carving them. The walls of the trench are dotted with some thousands of obelisks in various states of erosion and disrepair, about half of which are still intact. Each once housed a bound elemental, normally earth or air but sometimes fire, and the trenches still buzz with this mystic energy.

The trenches also feature towering menhirs made of polished white stone that have weathered the millennia much better than some of the surrounding stonework. The eleven menhirs are each devoted to one of the Osirian pantheon deities: Osiris, Horus, Isis, Thoth, Khepri, Ptah, Maat, Sekhmet, Ra, Sobek, and Set. The trenches also house several underground complexes which few have ever survived to explore. According to an Osiriontologist known as the Sand Sage, a tower-sized panel of hieroglyphics composed of the purest amber is located deep within the Slave Trenches. These hieroglyphs are numbers which are slowly counting down.

The trenches are inhabited by a unique form of undead called ossumentals that are found nowhere else. The trenches' inhabitants include Kenjutret, an immortal roc that once served as the loyal pet of Hakotep I as well as a sphinx obsessed with the mystery of the trenches. The area surrounding the Slave Trenches of Hakotep is known to be home to a variety of undead and elementals, rift drakes, a tribe of ash giants far from their home in the Mana Wastes and even a phoenix.

References

Paizo published a map of this location in the Mummy's Mask Pathfinder Adventure Path issue The Slave Trenches of Hakotep, which is also set in part here.

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.