The Golden Bough

"O goddess-born of great Anchises' line,
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.

...

If you so hard a toil will undertake,
As twice to pass th' innavigable lake;
Receive my counsel. In the neighb'ring grove
There stands a tree; the queen of Stygian Jove
Claims it her own; thick woods and gloomy night
Conceal the happy plant from human sight.
One bough it bears; but (wondrous to behold!)
The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold:
This from the vulgar branches must be torn,
And to fair Proserpine the present borne,
Ere leave be giv'n to tempt the nether skies."

- Virgil, Aeneid

 When the soul is not long gone from the body, it may be recalled with the spell Raise Dead. Once the soul has passed across the river Styx, however, the only way for the dead to be brought back to life is to stage a rescue in the depths of Hades.

Fighting all the guardians of the underworld is an almost impossible task. Those brave few who would tread the darkened way are advised instead to seek the Golden Bough - a branch of gold that  grows in a secluded grove far from civilisation. The quest for the Bough itself is not without dangers, but once one has acquired it the passage into Hades becomes easier. The ferryman Charon is bound by duty to convey anyone who carries the Golden Bough, but only if they promise to present it as a gift to Proserpine, who is queen of the underworld. 

As for the return journey - Charon will not ferry the spirits of the dead back to the land of the living. The enterprising resurrectionists must find a different path back to the surface.

Tomb Serpent

Scarce had he finish'd, when, with speckled pride,
A serpent from the tomb began to glide;
His hugy bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd;
Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold:
Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass
A rolling fire along, and singe the grass.
More various colors thro' his body run,
Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun.
Betwixt the rising altars, and around,
The sacred monster shot along the ground;
With harmless play amidst the bowls he pass'd,
And with his lolling tongue assay'd the taste:
Thus fed with holy food, the wondrous guest
Within the hollow tomb retir'd to rest.

- Virgil, Aeneid

like this but bigger

 The Tomb Serpent resembles an enormous snake, covered in blue scales streaked with gold. When the serpent moves, it creates flames from the friction of its body against the ground. If disturbed or attacked, its thrashings can quickly build up a large blaze. As the name implies, the Tomb Serpent is usually found in the tombs of great heroes, and many believe that it is sent there by the gods to protect the heroes' legacy.

Offering holy sacrifices of food and wine outside the tomb will lure the Tomb Serpent from its lair and distract it for a short period of time. However, one must be careful to learn the religious traditions associated with the tomb; if the wrong rituals are observed, the Tomb Serpent will be thrown into a vengeful rage.

Via The Shoulders of Atlas

Thus arm'd, the god [Hermes] begins his airy race,
And drives the racking clouds along the liquid space;
Now sees the tops of Atlas, as he flies,
Whose brawny back supports the starry skies;
Atlas, whose head, with piny forests crown'd,
Is beaten by the winds, with foggy vapors bound.
Snows hide his shoulders; from beneath his chin
The founts of rolling streams their race begin;
A beard of ice on his large breast depends.
Here, pois'd upon his wings, the god descends:
Then, rested thus, he from the tow'ring height
Plung'd downward, with precipitated flight.

- Virgil, Aeneid

   

 For those who know of such things, the shoulders of Atlas the Titan are not only a destination in themselves but also a gateway to all other possible destinations in the world.

Standing at the western edge of creation, Atlas leans in over the world so that his upper reaches can be reached from anywhere at all. Most flying creatures are able to travel high enough to land on his shoulders or his head, though few have the courage or determination to do so. From this vantage point, it is possible to look down on the entire world at once, and then plummet towards any destination one chooses. Though the philosophers are baffled by how this occurs, it is clear that for long journeys, a trip via the shoulders of Atlas is much quicker and easier than travelling straight from A to B.

Visitors to this cloudy realm may also visit the pine forests atop the Titan's head, where a strange race of mammalian humanoids dwell; the tangled ice caverns of his beard, where the remorhaz make their nests; and his snowcapped shoulders, where the meltwater collects into streams and flows down to waterfalls that end in the west where Atlas plants his feet.

It is not too unusual to meet other airborne travellers in the skies around Atlas's crown. Dragons, air spirits and hippogriff riders are the most common. Generally they prefer to ignore passersby, though there are a few sky pirates who like to lie in wait within the crook of the Titan's armpit.

(Note: It seems like the iconic image of Atlas holding up the globe is a later invention. In the original Greek myths, his job was to hold up the sky, which is more exciting in my opinion.)

(Note II: and yeah did you know that the reason he holds up the sky is because if he didn't then the sky and the earth would just be screwing each other all the time? What an apocalypse that would make!)

From the Classics: The Cave of the Sibyl

The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,
Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd.
She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits,
The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits.
What she commits to leafs, in order laid,
Before the cavern's entrance are display'd:
Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind
Without, or vapors issue from behind,
The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air,
And she resumes no more her museful care,
Nor gathers from the rocks her scatter'd verse,
Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.

- Virgil, Aeneid

The mad prophetess who lives in this cave does not admit visitors. If any person tries to force her to tell their future, they will earn the wrath of the Furies. Instead, this Sibyl writes down her visions on leaves of paper and posts them outside the entrance to her cave. She uses tree sap to affix the paper to the rocks and trees, like a prophetic bulletin board. However, the sap is not very strong and whenever the winds blow roughly, the papers are carried away.

Many men have come here to pore over the loose pages, searching for their fate amongst hundreds of others. A certain village which lies downwind of the cave has become noted for its prescient inhabitants, who often know what is going to befall them before it actually happens. A little further afield, there is a sage who has spent most of his adult life compiling the pages of the Sibyl into a single tome. The specific prophecies he sells on to those who seek them; what interests him are the more esoteric pages which seem to tell not of the future but of the past - perhaps of the very genesis of the world.

Rumour has it that this sage was once betrothed to the woman who is now the Sibyl, before she was struck down with her holy madness.

From the Classics: Harpies

We spread the tables on the greensward ground;
We feed with hunger, and the bowls go round;
When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry,
And clatt'ring wings, the hungry Harpies fly;
They snatch the meat, defiling all they find,
And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind.

- Virgil, Aeneid

The Harpies in the Aeneid don't actually attack the humans who intrude upon their domain. They just swoop down, steal all the food, and shit on the banquet table (I'm pretty sure that's what Virgil means by 'defiling'). Even when Aeneas and his companions attack them, the Harpies just kind of sit back and laugh because they can't be hit except by +1 or better weapons ("the fated skin is proof to wounds"). The danger to the travellers is not that the Harpies will kill them, but that they'll starve to death.

This is a cool twist to the monster that is lost when they become directly aggressive. Instead, I want to have the Harpies appear whenever the PCs are trying to eat their meals and snatch up all the food they can. This will work best on an island, in a deep ravine, or some other place where the PCs can't easily come and go. After a few days of no food, the PCs will start to feel weakened from starvation. The Harpies' defences make them difficult (but not outright impossible) to kill. What will the players do in such a situation? Will they turn their energies to exterminating the Harpies? Concoct a plan to eat their food in secret? Or just get what they came for in this location as quickly as they can and then escape?

From the Classics: Bleeding Myrtle

There, while I went to crop the sylvan scenes,
And shade our altar with their leafy greens,
I pull'd a plant - with horror I relate
A prodigy so strange and full of fate.
The rooted fibers rose, and from the wound
Black bloody drops distill'd upon the ground.
Scarce dare I tell the sequel: from the womb
Of wounded earth, and caverns of the tomb,
A groan, as of a troubled ghost, renew'd
My fright, and then these dreadful words ensued:
'Why dost thou thus my buried body rend?
O spare the corpse of thy unhappy friend!
Spare to pollute thy pious hands with blood:
The tears distil not from the wounded wood;
But ev'ry drop this living tree contains
Is kindred blood, and ran in Trojan veins.'

- Virgil, Aeneid

The bleeding myrtle is a strange plant that generally grows only on distant isles. When given the chance to spread further afield, it seems to favour the sites of great battles or other slaughters. When planted over a grave site, the bleeding myrtle can give them speech from beyond the wall of sleep. The soul can only be compelled to speak by picking the leaves of the myrtle, which draws blood and causes the trapped spirit much pain.

Some unhappy folk, unable to cope with the loss of loved ones, cultivate graves of bleeding myrtle to converse with the reluctant shades. It is said that a certain noble lady has an entire garden of the plant, wherein each of her female ancestors for eighteen generations are buried.

Others covet the plant for more practical reasons. The dead keep with them many kinds of useful information. Even one who was an enemy in life can be forced to answer questions if one is willing to pluck cruelly at the bleeding leaves. Once all the leaves are picked, however, the plant wilts and the trapped soul departs forever.