ARCHITECT OF THE VALLEY

The hall of records of the valley’s great houses

HOW THE TOMBS ARE BUILT

& how they are robbed

YOUR CHARGE

Build tombs that protect the Burial Chamber. Earn renown by turning intruders away.

Your family’s renown will determine whether you may continue serving the Pharaohs, generation after generation, through dynasties to come.

Each Pharaoh gives you a budget to dig, then dies. You bury him, seal the tomb, and the ages test your work.
Every reign is one round: dig, seal, watch, be judged.
At each dynasty’s end the court weighs your house’s total renown against what it demands. Fall short and your family is dismissed.
Nothing carries between reigns except renown, unspent deben, and the court’s grant for depth and blood.

Cards tagged cyan snare defend the tomb; gold passage and chamber cards only build it.
Pieces are dug in order, front to back. Intruders walk that order.
Corridors and stairs cost more the deeper the tomb already reaches, so the order you buy in changes the total.
The Burial Chamber goes last — nothing may be cut behind it — and then the tomb can be sealed.
Deben left unspent buy nothing, but they do return to next reign’s treasury.

Each snare tests one talent against a number, and every party rolls a bonus of 0 to 2 on that test. A party that matches the number passes for certain; one that falls a point or two short may still defeat the snare.
AGI snares catch the clumsy; WIT snares catch the clever. No single snare stops everyone, and the party you cannot see is the one to build for.
Some snares spring only once. After the first party defeats them they stand open, and every party that follows walks through unchecked.
Repeats grow weaker. The second snare of a kind a party meets is easier for them by one, the third by two. Two pits are not twice one pit.
New snares are revealed as the dynasties pass.

Intruders come one party at a time, in the order the Seer lists them. What one band learns or fears, the next inherits.
Every party carries supplies, and every piece of tomb costs supplies to walk. A Pillared Hall costs three, a Well Shaft two, a stair one and a half. Run them dry and they turn back with nothing.
A long line of the same piece is easy walking — the third and later in a row cost only half. Length alone is not a defence.
MAP CHARTED — how much of the walk the last band lived to chart. Any party that walks out alive sells what it mapped, and the next party only arrives with extra supplies worth half that stretch. Only a party wiped out leaves no chart at all, so killing is the only outcome that keeps your tomb a secret.
DREAD — the tomb’s reputation. It rises when a party flees or is wiped, and a frightened band may refuse to enter at all. The timid break first; a War Band never does.
But a party that leaves satisfied — bought off by a cache, fooled by a decoy, or carrying off your gold — tells the valley the tomb is emptied, and dread falls to nothing. Where you place a lie matters as much as whether you tell one.

Renown comes from treasure kept, raiders slain, and depth.
Depth pays less the deeper you go: full rate for the first thirty cubits, half for the next thirty, and very little beyond sixty. A tomb is not a mine.
Each Pharaoh issues a decree. Fulfil it for +150 renown and +250 deben; defy it and lose 50 renown.
Some reigns carry an event that bends the rules — a famine, a flood, a forbidden piece. The strip above the hillside says so before you dig.
At each dynasty’s end your total renown is weighed. The demand depends on the house you chose at the start.