Precursor and Ancient Defenses

The point of this thread is to talk about ancient defenses in your story in old tombs, be they active means of keeping out adventurers and various murderhobos or a form of test to find those who are worthy.

The limit to this thread is they must be some form of ancient trap or defense, there is no limit on creativity, location, or even setting be it fantasy or Scifi. No debate on practicality unless someone asks for interesting ideas on how to make the story compelling with these traps.

Alright, let's begin, what are your preferred ways of preventing adventurers from entering your abandoned temple.

An old one I had was to use up all the oxygen in a chamber. Set a bonfire, close all the doors, and walk away. Very handy if you want to preserve old artifacts. Of course, the room needs to be airtight.

Another would be a carpet on a frictionless floor. The only thing keeping the carpet steady is a series of ropes attach to the walls. Underneath the carpet is a pit trap so as soon as you step over the pit the carpet gift raps you as you fall in the hole.

Edited by Belisaurius on Dec 19th 2018 at 8:10:55 AM

Interesting, that second one seems rather Kevin Mc Allister-ish.

One mind would be magical mirror that allow to redirect a laser everything the light of a prisma wake up and said prisma wake up when it feel the aura of anyone near by.

A little overcomplicated but is just a field version.

The problem with protecting a Temple is that while you want to keep the wrong sort out, you need to let the right sort (worshipers) in. Since said worshipers might not have the proper key, it behooves the precursers to create some sort of filtering system. Using a secret ritual as the passcode seems like the obvious solution. This can be done with an AI recognition system, or by casting the correct magic spell, or by brewing the correct alchemical potion. If the precursors are meant to be portrayed as sympathetic, then a favorite one of mine is by using the correct musical melody, a la "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Fail to pass the text, of course, and everyone in the room is screwed. The automatic defense system becomes activated, or the floor falls away into a spiked pit, or poisonous gas is released. A mass of carnivorous insects is another favorite of mine, a la "The Mummy." The more sympathetic type of precursors might simply emit a screeching intolerable, but ultimately harmless tone.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 20th 2018 at 9:58:00 AM

Of course, if you really need to hide something the best way is to leave no path open. The Egyptians were fond of this one, sealing chambers behind structural stones weighing many hundreds of tons or filling in tunnels with rubble.

I'd put a big sign on stuff saying "GO AWAY!".

Alternatively a sign that says in "Please come in let's talk"

Going with the soft sci-fi route.

Safe storage for any valuable artifacts not in use. A long life AI with multiple backups running a self-maintaining self-repairing defense grid. It would primarily rely on being heavily obfuscated from anything but the most persistent and long-term examinations and then having the "easy" way in be a number of very difficult to bypass inert barriers. Once you get through a few miles of that and into the main complex an array of varied hard kill systems do their best to fry, zap, perforate, explode, burn, gas, dissolve, lacerate, grind, pulverize, vaporize, and/or outright obliterate the intruders from existence. Everything from static traps to roaming hunter-killer units that the site can manufacture and has a massive cache of materials to support the whole facility buried in it. Enough to make a large armies worth whose sole purpose is to guard the temple. Multiple redundant power systems, AI and support AI, and duplicate maintenance centers. Basically, it stops shy of being a proper military machine for anything but the interior. The AI uses a multipart system of biometrics, passcodes, and personal encryption keys to ID any valid personnel. No one else is ever permitted and any deviation results in death for all involved.

Any worship, study, or research centers are located in an alternate location anything truly precious is kept in this location and its exact coordinates are kept a closely guarded secret known to very few. This is helped by anything that is to be removed from storage is shipped one of several clandestine transport hubs which run underground and inject into surface locations for normal guarded transport.

Basically, multiple layers of obfuscation and other protection from different facilities but the hardcore protection is a deeply buried subsurface super fort. Which if you do find it, does it best to murder every intruder down to the atomic level if possible.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Dec 22nd 2018 at 8:31:37 AM

If you're a Starfish Alien precursor that has an environment most other aliens can't survive in(say you like ammonia seas, monoxide-filled air and being -50 degrees celsius) use that to your advantage. Set traps to cause machines and robots to fail via EMP and other viruses. Set traps to bust life-support systems and space suits of the aliens visiting, and let your planet do the hard work

What if you're trying to keep out other Starfish Aliens