Three men in medieval garb have gathered in a back room. Two are sitting at a table.

One wears has an elaborate hat that looks vaguely like a crocodile head. He addresses the two at the table from a few feet in front of the fireplace. The backlighting makes him look more dramatic. He’s sure of it.

“…it came to me in a dream. No, a vision from the god himself! We must build him a temple!”

The two at the table glance quickly at each other.

“Like, in Bruce’s back yard? I’m not sure how your wife’ll feel about that Bruce.” Bruce looks cornered and start’s stammering, but the priest interrupts.

“No. not in Bruce’s backyard! This must be a grand temple, at least eighty feet tall. Look!” he pulls a surprisingly good illustration from his coat pocket.

“Ooh, that’s quite good Ted. I didn’t realize you could draw.” says the unnamed man.

“I didn’t draw this Tim. I had Barry do it.”

“Ooh, will he he be helping?”

“No, his wife just had twins remember?” says Ted.

“Oh yeah….”

They stare at the image for a minute.

“You see this door?” says Ted. “It leads to a long tunnel filled with elaborate traps with magical triggers. Fire, and spikes, and pits, and things like that. We’ll put a random magical artifact at the end to glorify the Mighty Crocodile!”

They stare at the image for another minute.

“Um. Ted.”

“Yes?”

“Where will we get the stones?”

Ted looks to the heavens, and in what he thinks are very priestly tones announces “The Crocodile will provide Tim.”

“Well um. Sure but… that’s not like, a cart’s worth. That’s like a small quarry’s worth. I know that Crocodile is like, god of trickery and all, but you can’t just sneak off with a few thousand tons of stone without anyone noticing. Especially if we build an 80’ high statue in the middle of town.”

“We’re not building it in the middle of town Tim. I’ve found the perfect spot deep in the swaps. A place truly befitting the Crocodile god.”

“The swamps?!” Tim and Bruce exclaim, and share a concerned glance.

“Ted… I know I’ve only been a disciple of The Church of the Holy Crocodile for about a year, but I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

“This is The Will of The Crocodile Tim!”

“Well, um. Sure, but… I can only come on Saturdays, and this looks like it’ll take a team of masons at least 30 years to build working full time. And… like… there isn’t any swamp around here anyway.”

“The Crocodile Will Provide Tim. And no. It’s not around here. It will be a three week hike through treacherous jungle. We’ll build it far from any city or town. It shall lay in wait for unwary adventurers!”

More glances are shared between Tim and Bruce.

“Er… yeah, um. Why… exactly are we building a temple to honor a god and putting it where no-one can visit? And once word gets out about the traps won’t it kind-of hamper anyone’s desire to visit?”

“That’s the genius of the traps Tim. Word won’t get out. They’ll be totally deadly and concealed. We’ll hire a staff of janitors with strong stomachs, paid handsomely for their silence. They shall visit regularly, clear out the corpses, and reset the traps.”

“um… I mean, I’m just as happy to see random people getting slaughtered as the next guy, but like… again, I am new here, but since the janitors would have to know how the traps work to reset them, why wouldn’t they just disable them, go take the artifact, and sell it? And where would they live? You said this wasn’t near any city or town. What does their commute look like? Also, what if like one ‘adventurer’…” Tim makes air quotes around this word “gets killed and their friends run off and spread the word about the traps? Are we going to have to hire private security goblins to kill the straglers? That won’t come cheap Ted. They’ll probably want extra pay for living in the swamp too. I mean, I know goblins like that kinda thing but no-one’s going to take on the inconvenience of a multi-week hike to get groceries without extra pay. And do you know how much it costs to make an enchantments like that?”

Ted’s has fully face-palmed at this point.

“Tim!” he breaks in, “The Crocodile. Will. Provide!”

Silence fills the room… for a moment, before Bruce finally speaks up.

“Have you considered, that what with him being a trickster god and all, that maybe this is a trick?”

“That would be quite a good trick.” said Tim, “convincing some poor rubes to spend generations building an elaborate temple, that no-one can visit, in the middle of nowhere, and then paying to staff it for a few hundred years with staff of elaborately paid, and secretive janitors and mercenaries in order to make sure no-one can talk about it and thus guarantee the lack of need for their presence in the first place…”

Hundreds of years later, a band of adventurers stumbled across the Temple of Man and Crocodile in the middle of the swampy jungles of a remote, and mostly forgotten land, called Chult. The outer design had changed but the core idea remained. A forgotten temple, in the middle of the jungle, guaranteed to try and kill anyone who visited it. The Crocodile did provide, in the form of a real-estate scam involving a disgraced prince. Of course, the money was barely enough to hire the masons, and Tim and Bruce, “those faithless cowards”, decided to abandon the cult of The Crocodile God before contributing even an hour of labor. Ted had to act as the janitorial staff and live off of the local frog population, but there wasn’t much cleanup to do, because no-one knew the temple existed.

Well, no-one except the goblins, who did stumble across it and took great delight in sneaking crocodiles into the temple to set off the traps and then watching from the edge of the trees as Ted cleaned up the result.

P.S.

Yes, the Temple of Man and Crocodile is a real thing in Wizards of the Coast’s Tomb of Annihilation adventure. And yes, it is that ridiculous in the actual thing. Its existence, and location, makes absolutely no sense.

Images by Midjourney