Key to the Tomb of the Gods

**The Key to the Tomb of the Gods** is an object from the comic storyline *Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Gods*.

## Description

The Key to the Tomb of the Gods was a circle object made of stone which was divided into three equal sections. The object was covered with symbols and hieroglyphs of unknown translation but which did include a map to the temple. The function of the key was to open up the main gates of the Tomb of the Gods, a large structure in Siberia which contained several mysterious, god-like creatures of unknown origin.

## History

The Key to the Tomb of the Gods is believed to be of non-human origins and pre-date human cultures altogether. The key was discovered in a diamond-mine within the Popigai Crater, a crater formed in Norilsk, Siberia during the late Eocene epoch. In 1931, the key was discovered by Henrik Mellberg, Francis Beresford-Hope, and Marwell O'Brien.

The three men used the key of the gods to locate the Tomb of the Gods only for all but those three men to die. Mellberg, Beresford-Hope, and O'Brien all were driven insane upon reaching the Tomb of the Gods and later fled for civilization. Upon reaching civilization, the men divided the key into three equal sections and took each third to a different part of the world to keep it out of the wrong hands.

In 1936, adventurer/archaeologist Indiana Jones was contacted by Henrik Mellberg to track down the piece belonging to O'Brien as he had gone quiet and Mellberg feared the worst. As it turned out, O'Brien and his key was captured by the *Ahnenerbe*, a Nazi faction dedicated to hunting down objects of Germanic ancestral heritage and which was lead by nazi Friedrich von Hassell. Von Hassell had Mellberg assassinated though Jones took his part of the key before it could be obtained by the *Ahnenerbe*. Mellberg's key was however stolen by Janice Le Roi, a woman archaeologist motivated by profit who was rivals to both Indiana Jones and the Ahnenerbe.

Jones proceeded to track down Beresford-Hope's key in Tibet where it was owned by Francis Beresford-Hope's son Alex Beresford-Hope. Indiana Jones travelled to Tibet with his affiliate Marcus Brody and his aviator Jock Lindsey. Lindsey's plane crashed when its engines stalled forcing the crew to disembark prematurely. While Jock repaired the plane, Brody and Jones became allies with Alex Beresford-Hope and used his fragment of the map to track down the temple to Siberia. The crew travelled to Shanghai and set off for Tibet aboard a freighter only to ambushed by Friedrich von Hassell and the Ahnenerbe while stopping in Japan.

By this point in time, Janice Le Roi had allied herself with the nazis to assist in hunting down the Temple of the Gods with their two thirds of the key. However upon obtaining all three key thirds, Von Hassell betrayed Le Roi before casting both her and Jones adrift at sea. Both archaeologists however had created replicas of the key's map and joined forces to beat the nazis to the temple. In Siberia, Friedrich von Hassell killed Alex Beresford-Hope when he refused to use the key to open up the Tomb of the Gods. Here, many of Hassell's men became possessed and mutated into monsters by the powers within the temple as he opened up the temple and entered the tomb.

Upon reaching the tomb, Jones fought off van Hassell's monstrous nazi soldiers while realizing the scale of horrors within the tomb. To prevent further paranormal occurrences from the tomb, Indiana Jones tossed dynamite into the tomb and destroyed it, presumably killing the nazis inside. Indiana Jones regretted this decision due to his position as an archaeologist with Brody comforting him over the decision.

## Appearances and allusions

### Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar

The key to the Tomb of the Gods in mentioned in the flight-log of S.E.A. member Jock Lindsey, referring to the adventure in Tibet where Indiana Jones obtained it.

## Trivia

* The Tomb of the Gods is greatly inspired by the works of horror author Howard Philips Lovecraft (1890-1937). Namely, it is inspired by the sunken city of R'lyeh which is a city that was inhabited by the alien god Cthulhu before being sunken by Earth's original dominant intelligent-species, *The Elder Ones*. Cthulhu subsequently was drowned and entered a temporary sleep of death for millennia during which time he used telepathy to affect the dreams of humans and form a cult dedicated to reviving him.

## References

1. ↑ https://www.easywdw.com/easy/blog/jock-lindseys-hangar-bar-updated-menu-review-and-happy-hour-revisited/