Inspiring Illustrations - A Crown of Snakes and Flowers

NOTE: These are adventure seeds and setting work for my own Hyperborea campaign inspired by the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerors of Hyperborea Gazetteer.

20). A Crown of Snakes and Flowers

When the doom finally came upon the great city of Kor the King was lost, his body and the crown of Kor never found. It is said that the nameless beast, which no power seemed able to stop, slew the king and consumed his body leaving only a bloody bag of flesh behind, but there are rumors that the king escaped through tunnels beneath the city which led beyond the walls into the dense surrounding forest.

Escaped or slain, he was never seen again but within the forest of Koth (called Trogos by the native tribes of ape-men and fish-eyed troglodytes) the crown of Kor, adorning a worn and ancient skull, has been described as the center of an inhuman and barbaric shrine. The crown is of reddish gold formed into bands of snakes and flowers, and so the shrine is a strangely bright affair of flowers laid in offering while snakes writhe about the rotting bodies and man and beast beneath their floral coat.

Tribes of the frog-like reptilian trogs surround the shrine, and their fondness for snakes has led them to cultivate true monstrosities as pets. What other relics of mighty Kor may be found if this truly be the lost crown, and are the worn bones and fleshless skull the pitiful remnants of its once powerful king?