music and culture. The first theater, a children’s school, and numerous monuments were built in his honor. Many praising books have been written about him, although Aprod himself denied the cult of personality, considering this phenomenon harmful to society. Namely, the cult of personality was the reason for his self-restraint by power. Until his death, he maintained good relations with the Shelber Valley, and bequeathed to cherish them to his only son, heir and future king, a half-breed. The Rohvem Valley fell into oblivion. Quite interesting changes have taken place there, though. The Hamhharaf clan fell. The heiress of the dreadful queen Biel the husband-hating, her own daughter, was not far from her mother. By the way, after the death of Maktum, during the siege of Vayelon, there were no serious contenders for the throne, and if they did appear as a true dictator, she quickly eliminated them. Despite the depressing situation of the people, Biel ruled until old age, falling asleep and choking in a pool strewn with rose petals. Her daughter was also a lesbian and persecuted men for their successes. In some ways, she even surpassed her crazy mother. At festive ceremonies, for example, the new queen ate the fried testicles of her own eunuchs. And at religious rites, during sacrifices, she drank the blood of the most powerful men in order to gain wisdom. Fortunately, she was stopped by the then gaining momentum in politics, the grandson of Maktoum En-Ali, who had been in exile all his life, wandering through the villages of Rohvem. He gathered enough followers, and violently staged a coup d’état. Having publicly outraged the queen, he personally performed not a good procedure, dishonoring her, and gouged out his eyes, taking away to the forest of the dead. Since then, gender issues have only worsened in Rohvem. Constantly hesitating, going to extremes from the stage of matriarchy to the stage of patriarchy and vice versa.
An ERA of PROGRESS
Vayelon, 7748 BC.
Forty-seven years later, the Osiris city-state continued to develop at an unprecedented pace. It is difficult to compare this unique metropolis with anything in our world. This is a kind of a mix of entire eras, enclosed in one time. There is electricity, but no car. Samples of nuclear energy received, but no firearms. Ultra-strong, fullerene materials have been developed, but a computer has not yet been created. Here the antediluvian technologies of ancient Greece are intertwined, with those that do not exist even in the twenty-first century. Such a strange alignment does not make civilization backward or developed against the background of others. In this order, their priorities and needs are arranged, nothing supernatural. In the political structure, little that has changed since the time of King Ormon, but they experiment with the economy every year, introducing innovative ideas in the field of taxation, the first social benefits. Loans and private equity communities are emerging. But even the economy did not keep pace with technical progress. The first metallurgical plants and conveyors were built. Hydroelectric power station, steam engines, and continuous automation: electric elevators, gates, construction hoists and much more. It even went as far as the first micro-board assembly built in to control the new fountain in the park area. The new king loved advances in technology. He saw his authority grow exponentially. Not at all afraid that during his lifetime, like his father, they would begin to deify him. On the contrary, the new king, Narus Rift, loved to be admired. Especially when you don’t even need to do anything for this. Narus was born in honor and prosperity, as they say, in golden swaddling clothes. Megalomania, from childhood instilled in him by those around him. Only thanks to the upbringing of his father, he has nobility, simplicity and justice. He is not trying to get rich wildly and enslave neighboring cities. Although, at this time, he could already bring the whole of Mesopotamia to its knees, and therefore the whole world. Having created a modest strong family, he was a role model for the common citizens of Vayelon. By the age of forty-five, he had five children from his only wife. And, for the first time, he made polygamy and polyandry not fashionable, although even his father had three wives, and his mother had two husbands.
Technical revolutions have become commonplace in the Osirian metropolis. But really big, even by their standards, grandiose changes began only a couple of years ago. They began with the fact that a group of scientists from the Council of the Wise, during the construction and equipment of underground laboratories for the study of poisonous radioactive, chemical and biological substances, stumbled upon old artifacts, technical equipment of the era of the kings of Shelber. These relics became direct evidence that even three hundred years ago, the level of development of the Nahmau already exceeded the level of development of Vayelon. There, they found a non-working, ancient sample of a nuclear reactor, a photographic lens, a freezer, and many different trinkets not seen in Osirian culture. It turns out that after the departure of the last king, the supreme governor – Raipas, sold this junk to the then Vayelonian ruler, in exchange for all his raw materials, including oil, coal, iron ore, various minerals and much more. In order to hide these valuable things, the king specifically ordered to dig underground catacombs, five tiers, fifteen meters deep. About ten years later, this same governor turned to the same Osirian king with a request to hide in his dungeon some items of incredible value for the nahmau. They made a deal, in which it was stipulated that for the keeping and silence of the king, every month, he would receive as much wealth as did not have all his subjects noblemen put together. The king naturally agreed. For this, he even ordered to deepen his dungeon by another fifteen meters, (three tiers of five meters each). Almost every floor was a kind of insurmountable test, with deadly traps. On the lowest, eighth floor, he hid strange magic medallions that the governor gave him, and a bunch of manuscripts, which included the legendary three books: Grul’s unnamed book, and two others, attempts to translate it into Nahmaut, the original writings of Svurt. After a couple of generations, the mysterious, empty catacombs were decided to be used for different needs. The first tier was equipped for a city prison for temporary detention of prisoners sentenced to death. The second tier, a secret, research laboratory, under King Mantarpen, is currently being converted into a «nano-technological development center», or NDC, and the third tier is a repository of the city treasury, or, more simply, a government bank. They tried to equip the fourth tier as a hospital, hospital, or another laboratory, but for some reason they abandoned it, leaving deserted dark corridors and rooms, with different boxes, rusted keys, and incomprehensible tools. The rest, four tiers, remained mothballed for centuries, which is quite logical. Because, on the fifth tier, the mortal labyrinth of Sharimon was built, in which valuable relics were kept, for something so much needed by the king from the distant past. By itself, passing the maze without instructions is impossible. Among other things, it is filled with deadly gases, acids, sharp, piercing objects sticking out from everywhere, sticky and slimy coatings of various substances, smeared with a thick layer on each wall. The best minds of the city racked their brains trying to deceive the system of the ingenious engineer Sharimon, but in vain. They filled, the labyrinth spent a hundred kilograms, but titanium, spinning, plates, like dampers, extinguished an explosion of any force. This is a full-fledged nuclear bunker that cannot be destroyed. After, persistent scientists tried to determine the path of the connected corridors using ultrasound. But, here too, all efforts are in vain. It turned out that each of the corridors was closed with thick metal plates, and they all opened in different ways. Only by solving the mathematical puzzles (the conditions of which are described in the instructions), it was possible to move these massive slabs, working on a principle similar to the principle of graphic keys in three-dimensional projection. Plates are fixed on powerful bearings. They moved along narrow, curved paths like huge keyholes. These wells were, in the direction of movement of the plate, which could have any shape (mainly, a circle or a square). Plates worked like sticks on a joystick. It was necessary to collect the correct combinations of shifts, from four to twelve positions, by moving the heavy slabs up, down, left or right. And all this was in a complex, convoluted labyrinth. Dozens of people disappeared there, lost or poisoned.
Only two years ago, it was possible to find the lost instructions, and to solve the riddle of the passage of the mysterious room. But, if even ordinary residents of the city composed legends about the fifth tier of the dungeon, from generation to generation, almost no one knew
