The Necropolis of Anser is the tower and burial complex at the center of Bubble 543 on the fifth floor. Its broad upper surface holds the settlements of the air quadrant, while a descending system of catacombs forms the subterranean quadrant. The structure rises from an island in the surrounding sea; part of it is accessible below the waterline. Its tomb contains the remains of Emperor Anser, and the ghost of his wife, Quetzalcoatlus, guards the underground route. Liberating the Necropolis is one of the four victories required to open Bubble 543's stairways in The Gate of the Feral Gods.
Tower, island, and catacombs
Carl, Princess Donut, and Katia arrive on the Necropolis's upper surface without initially grasping its scale. Hump Town sits within a high-walled, bowl-shaped area beneath the bubble's dome. Carl recognizes that the bowl stands over a tomb. Mordecai explains that the apparent ground is the top of an exceptionally tall tower, with the island and sea far below it. The air quadrant and the subterranean quadrant are consequently parts of the same structure, though their starting conditions and routes to victory differ sharply.
The upper settlements are not entrances to an ordinary, compact crypt. Beneath them is a maze extensive enough to fill Carl's party map when he finds a scroll of the Necropolis's catacomb plans. He discovers it in a cramped chamber above the tomb, reached while investigating the upper settlement. The scroll vanishes after its information is transferred to the party's maps. Carl's reaction to the newly visible passages establishes how much of the structure had been hidden from crawlers trying to navigate from below.
Morris Sp, a crawler in the subterranean quadrant, describes a descent from an underground village to the Crypt of Anser at the bottom, where the stairway lies. The village occupies a cavern inhabited by Nude Glabers, undead creatures resembling naked mole rats. Dozens of paths lead away from it. Some passages are too narrow for Morris to pass without help, and the corridors contain different traps. His group can disarm some of them through Bobby's skill, but doing so slows its progress through even the upper levels. The staircase is therefore known as a destination long before the crawlers can reach it.
The maze's missing maps are an immediate obstacle. Morris's group receives a quest to obtain one of two copies. One opportunity is lost when the group kills a pig it mistakes for a monster, only afterward realizing it was an NPC connected to the map. Carl's acquisition of the other map leaves the underground group without either copy. Morris believes the maze cannot reasonably be navigated without one. Carl, meanwhile, can see the plans on his own map, making information about the same location unevenly available to the crawlers attempting to liberate it.
Anser's burial and the competing accounts of its past
Morris tells Carl that Anser was an emperor for whom the tomb was built after his death. According to Morris's account, Anser's court and wife were sealed inside while still alive. Quetzalcoatlus survives in the dungeon as a noncorporeal guardian that can pass through the tomb's walls. The underground crawlers hear her screams before they encounter her. Morris's account is information learned within the quadrant, rather than a direct view of the original burial; the later discovery of Anser's sarcophagus confirms the emperor's remains but does not independently establish every detail of the court's fate.
The tomb's history is also part of the conflict on the surface. Crixus, a dirigible gnome sniper, tells Carl that Anser subjugated the Bactrians, Dromedarians, and Glabers, and forced the camel peoples to build his tomb. Crixus treats the surviving camel settlements as remnants of Anser's rule and uses that history to justify the gnomes' hostility toward them. His account is politically charged: it records the gnomes' stated grievance and their view of the Necropolis, but his accusation about collective guilt is his own judgment.
At the start of the floor, the Dromedarians on top of the Necropolis are caught between Bactrians and dirigible gnomes. Hump Town's walls and the tower's elevation provide a setting for that stalemate, while gnomish aircraft and the floor's sandstorms threaten its residents. The people living above the catacombs are thus exposed to a separate campaign from the crawlers underground. Both conflicts converge on the same ancient monument: the upper settlements occupy its roof, and the lower passages contain the guardian and stairway.
The treasure hunters and the ghost queen
The Necropolis attracts outsiders because of the Gate of the Feral Gods, an artifact believed to be hidden in or associated with the tomb. Shamus Chaindrive, a bugbear treasure hunter, searches for the structure for almost twenty years. His submarine eventually reaches an underwater entrance beside the tomb's main chamber. He finds that a young mage and the dirigible gnomes have also been trying to reach its treasure. Chaindrive deploys Ruckus, a self-replicating sentinel, against rival seekers. The sentinel continues to threaten the island long after Chaindrive's death.
The mage is Ghazi, called the Mad Dune Mage. His stated interest in the Gate is the study of teleportation, but the account Carl obtains says that Ghazi wants controlled contact with the Nothing. The Gate's three components end up divided among Ghazi, the gnomish commandant, and the changeling Henrik. The artifact's pursuit therefore spans the tower's surface, the surrounding territory, and the submarine rather than remaining confined to Anser's burial chamber. The Necropolis is the object of their search, while the separate holders and their motives complicate any attempt to take it.
Henrik's changelings seek Quetzalcoatlus for a different reason. Juice Box explains that the queen possessed a power affecting plants. Her people hope that gaining this ability could help them produce food to address defects appearing among changeling children. Henrik plans to touch the ghost after the gnome Wynne gives her a temporary physical form, allowing a changeling to copy her. Wynne, held and tortured for that spell, tells Carl about the plan. He also says he possesses a map to the temple, but Low Thi kills him before Carl can free him or secure the information. Henrik's group proceeds into the maze despite losing that intended way to reach a corporeal Quetzalcoatlus.
The ghost's nature makes the burial site hazardous in ways its mapped passages cannot solve. Morris's party receives a quest to find and kill Quetzalcoatlus, yet the queen can move through solid walls and is not an ordinary physical opponent for crawlers clearing traps one corridor at a time. A cleric's writing later read by Carl identifies electric shock among the means of defeating a ghost of her type. It also warns of her scream and touch. Those details become operationally important once the complex fills with water and the group can conduct electricity through its interior.
Flooding the Necropolis
The underwater side of the structure becomes decisive after Chaindrive's submarine, the Akula, is found attached to the Necropolis below the sea's surface. Vadim Zbar, one of the water quadrant's survivors, explains that the submarine's lower torpedo tubes are pumping ocean water into the tower. Its nose is fixed to the base of the complex. The flooding changes the underground route from a trap-filled descent into a submerged one and leaves the tomb raiders at risk as the water rises. Carl's group first needs to stop the pump and drain the structure before it can finish the final quadrant.
Carl, Katia, Tran, and Vadim descend to the submarine while Donut remains above. Vadim's knowledge of its controls makes him useful to the attempt, although another water-quadrant survivor, Britney, warns that returning below is likely to kill him. Inside the vessel, the group encounters the aftermath of Henrik's expedition. Quetzalcoatlus appears in the submarine and attacks with a scream that badly injures Vadim; Henrik's corpse shows that the ghost has killed him. The encounter confirms that the tomb's guardian is no longer merely a distant sound in the maze. Her movement between the Necropolis and the attached submarine directly obstructs the effort to reverse the flooding.
After the submarine expedition, draining is managed through a mechanism connected to the tower. Carl deliberately stops it before all the water has escaped. He has learned that Quetzalcoatlus is vulnerable to electricity, and a remaining volume of water could carry a strike through the passages she haunts. This decision leaves the Necropolis partly flooded as a planned attack, even though its earlier flooding had made the underground quadrant more dangerous and had apparently killed many of its occupants. It also places the surviving tomb raiders in a perilous position when the attack is prepared.
Liberation of the subterranean quadrant
Carl's plan uses the Necropolis's height and the floor's storm. Gwen connects a long lead from the drain mechanism to a standing lightning tower and shuts the drain so water remains inside. When a storm strikes the tower, the current is meant to travel through the interior waterways and kill Quetzalcoatlus. The guardian is visible on the boss map in the lower part of the complex. Carl can track her position but cannot safely reach or control her through the maze, so the electrical route offers a way to attack the tomb as a whole.
The plan is complicated by Orthrus, a gigantic puppy caught against the tower and threatened by the same storm. His movements damage the structure: a section of the upper bowl breaks away, and falling stone threatens people below. The storm also creates danger at the lightning towers outside. Morris, Low Thi, and Bobby continue the underground operation while Gwen, Carl, and others fight on the surface. Low Thi draws Quetzalcoatlus away from the connector; a death warning follows his message. Morris reports that Bobby has been crushed, then confirms that the connection is made. Another death warning follows immediately. Carl cannot determine whether the ghost or the sudden electrification kills Morris.
The lightning strike energizes the tower and the flooded interior. A bubble notification then declares Anser's tomb guardian destroyed and the subterranean quadrant liberated, crediting Gwendolyn Duet, Low Thi, and Morris Sp. Its permission for crawlers who began in that quadrant to travel freely arrives after all of them have died. The notice also announces that all four quadrants are liberated. Bubble 543 opens its stairway locations, although the island and water remain after the dome above them disappears. The liberation ends the Necropolis's role as a closed quadrant without erasing the physical complex.
Gwen, Tran, and their team later explore the drained underground level. They recover what remains of the tomb raiders and uncover Anser's sarcophagus. It contains the skeleton of a goose wearing an ordinary, unenchanted golden crown. Carl learns that electrifying the water had triggered the catacomb traps as well as defeating the guardian. Quetzalcoatlus's corpse yields a partial map with locations on the sixth floor. These discoveries replace the treasure hunters' grand image of the tomb with a specific burial and a useful piece of onward information; they also show how much of the Necropolis was inaccessible until the water and its guardian were dealt with.