Monterozzi Necropolis
In 1220 the city of Tarquinia is hardly very significant. Yet to the ancient Etruscan this was far from the truth. One of the twelve Dodecapoli of the Etruscan League. The city’s legendary founder was none other than Tarchon - a hero and king mentioned by Virgil. Later the city’s inhabitants were visited by Tages, the founding prophet of Etruscan religion. The legend goes that farmers were ploughing furrows, deeper than ever before, when suddenly Tages was dug up. He bade the ploughmen to gather a large crowd, and began divining. His predictions were carefully committed to writing by the Etrurians. This became the foundation of haruspicy. These writings were subsequently improved by the accession of many new facts, all of which confirmed the same principles. Later these writings were studied by the Roman’s and the modern students of the Etruscan Art.
Under the Roman Monarchy a collegium of sixty haruspices thrived in the city. In 509 BC when the Monarchy was ended a conspiracy, dubbed the Tarquinian conspiracy by historians, plotted to establish a new king. The ploy failed though. Eventually the city would yield to Roman domination. After Tarquinia slowly lost its significance, the small fortified settlement visible today was out-rivalled by the more strategically placed city Civitavecchia.
The most interesting feature of the modern city is located upon the southeast of the hill named Monterozzi. Here a vast necropolis is located, with some 6,000 graves. Above ground are man made hills, tumuli, as well as various odd stone urns. The tumuli cover subterranean chambers carved into the rock below, containing wall paintings, personal possessions of the deceased, and their sarcophagi. The frescoes depict many scenes often of animals, dances and rituals. There are 200 of these burial chambers, most of which are more or less intact. A few of them are easily accessible from the tumuli, though a staircase or descending path. The necropolis has a magical aura of 4, which becomes stronger in certain chambers.
The most significant of these graves is The Tomb of Augurs. Though not the largest of the burial chambers, it's the one with the highest magical aura of 7, aligned with divination. The walls are decorated with frescoes. The rear wall depicts two augurs standing on either side of a door to the underworld. Above them a lion and leopard killing a deer. The right wall depicts funeral games, where nobles and servants weep and mourn. Wrestling and bloodletting is depicted. A masked figure wearing a pointy hat, a long, black false beard. The masked man seemingly represents Charun, the Etruscan demonic Charon. The masked man is holding onto a lashed black dog who is pouncing upon a human victim. Above the funeral games flies birds. The left wall depicts another masked man dancing.
The tomb has a sarcophagi of painted Nenfro rock. Depicting a youthful laying haruspex male examining a liver. He wears a conical hat and holds a lituus, a crooked wand. Since the discovery of the site, Hermetic Haruspexes have believed it to be Tages own tomb. They venerate the tomb too much to disturb it by examining the bones. The paintings of the room is said to be his final prophecy, though none have been able to decode it as of yet.
Story Seed: A Liver in the Fields
A ploughman from Gossolengo, in the province of Piacenza, works his field only to one day find a strange bronze object buried in the soil. Having no use for it he sells it and it eventually ends in the hands of the PC. Once cleaned it's clear that it resembles a sheep’s liver, covered in inscriptions that aren't quite Latin. The liver is in fact still an Arcane Connection to Tages (or to another ancient haruspex, if desired) and his tomb in Monterozzi Necropolis. Tages is now a daimon, and would reward whomever returned his talisman to his grave richley, likely by divining their future. The Liver of Piacenza have it's own enchanted divination powers though, making giving it up a bittersweet deal.