Hypothesis: they followed a very strange polytheistic religion where places of worship were presided over by a "designer" and a high holy ritual was the "dungeon crawl", a bloody and lethal elimination contest in which rival teams of worshippers competed to reach a final sanctuary and receive their blessing. Human sacrifice awaited those who failed but nobody wanted to kill their friends and family so it was all automated: pits with spikes, crossbow traps …
@cstross@futurebird
"So yeah, word got around that we had a lot of gold. Bands of well-armed psychopaths started showing up for some light murder-robbery.
A couple of elders devised a plan: plant something expensive at the end of an obvious cave or pyramid, fill it with traps and let them kill themselves trying to get to the thing."
"What? Fight them directly? What part of 'psychopath' is difficult to understand? No way we're dealing with those people directly. You get hurt doing that." 🧵
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