[Gygax 75] Closing Up The Cadaver

 

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I'm doing a worldbuilding challenge. The story so far:

Gygax 75
Week 1 - The Setting
Week 2 - Carving out the Valley
Week 3 - Into the Mines
Week 4 - Hitting a Wall
Week 5 - Divide and Conquer
Week 6 - Finishing up the dungeon...

This is the last week I'll allow myself on the dungeon proper. The maps are rough and the key is loose, but I'm already 3 days late so [unintelligible scrabbling].

I won't whine much about how hard this challenge has been. I will say it's been a hugely introspective process for me to document the whole process so thoroughly.

Here be dungeon.

LEVEL 1: ABANDONED MINE

Horseshoe Gate: Guarded by giant painted dogs. They can't cross the threshold; they suspect an iron circle has been laid by the miners. One of their own is deep in the mine, trapped after descending an open shaft in pursuit of a fae trinket.

Miner's Shrine: A pile of bones, coins (15s), and moldy food. Set to appease kobolds.

Miner's Stockpile: Piles of spare equipment; heavy copper pickaxes; buckets of chalk. A mine cart track runs thru here to the Haunted Collapse. A woven grass mat covers the dropshaft into the Flooded Tunnels. The caverns open toward the Ghouldog's Den; a red chalk message reads "BEAST AHEAD".

Haunted Collapse: The mine cart tracks run into a collapsed tunnel. Approaching the collapse causes numbness of the legs (1d6 cold/minute); looking through a silver piece reveals a huge, anemoneform ghost.

• Excavating the collapse takes an hour (half for a well-equipped team), and reveals a human corpse, legs crushed in the rubble. The ghost is banished if the corpse sees sunlight. The corpse can be accessed carefully from below via the Knocking Tunnels.
  
• Behind the collapse is a crashed minecart with a lodestone the size of a baby hippo in it. This is the Scar; it's solid iron, warped like soft serve, and emits a 5-foot radius anti-magic field. Like all iron, magic cannot act directly upon it. Also revealed by the collapse is a deep hole descending to LEVEL 2: TOXIC CAVERNS.
  

LEVEL 2: TOXIC CAVERNS

The Kobold Hive is spread across many rooms. Kobolds eating, playing with rats, foraging for glow worms, gnawing mushrooms on deep tree roots, etc.

The Hive Entrance is full of poisonous gas.

• Any room kobolds occupy fills with gas over a few rounds. The gas can be poisonous (1d6/minute w/out breathing apparatus) or explosive (fireball the whole room on ignition). Kobolds are immune to their own poison but not to fire.
• You can smell explosive gas and see poisonous gas. Both can be cleared with a strong gust.
  

Kobold Hive: Kobolds nest in the ceiling over a deep pit full of guano and gas. 3 hours of excavating would reveal a worked stone gate beneath the guano.

Throne Room: The Kobold King is a burnt corpse with thick black tendons (as a ghoul with anti-magic blood). The body belongs to a blood sorcerer? wandering ghost? It isn't intelligent.

Dig Site: Here, the kobolds dig for Chernobog's bones with tools they've stolen from the miners. They're squabbling over whatever dangerous artifact they've recently dug up.

Ancient Gate: Entrance to LEVEL 3: CRIMSON TOMB. Requires a bowl filled with the blood of a king to enter. (Possible solutions? wring some out of the Kobold King; catch + bleed a blood sorcerer; establish a small country; first PC to fill it with their blood turns out to be a royal descendant)

LEVEL 3: CRIMSON TOMB

Sorcerer Camp: Room is empty except for the remains of the previous adventuring group. Chalk messages warn of traps ahead. Most are disabled, but not all.

Clay Barracks: Massive silo of terracotta soldiers, interspersed with giant totem-men. Those on the walkway can safely pass over.

The Gardens: Elegant forests of metal trees traced by rivers of mercury. The iron oak is overgrown (complete anti-magic room). You can climb its branches up into the Bone Caverns. In the center is a meteoric seed.

The Dungeons: The Carmine General's greatest pleasure was torture. Thus, all his worst enemies were buried with him. The tombs are broken by the roots of the iron oak, and their corpses roam free (as the Kobold King). 2 Blood Sorcerers hide inside an empty tomb, trapped by irondead.

The Tombs: Guarded by totem-men. The General himself clutches the Carmine Hand in a simple coffin with a mercury moat. His wives are as follows:

• A cherry dryad trapped in an iron circle (the same one which blocks the horseshoe gate). They couldn't trick her into the coffin, so they settled for the next best thing. She is sane, violent, and straightforwardly upset.
  
• A deeply haunted corpse and powerful blood sorcerer. She is intelligent, immobile, and in the market for a pair of graceful hands (for somatic components). She also thinks she is the General, and shares his passion for torture.
• Tracing the source of the moat reveals a hidden tomb. The secret wife came from the moon, unwillingly. A coffin full of mercury and fine clothes is all that is left. A woman's visage on the front weeps liquid mercury. The dress is palest blue and prevents magical detection; the stitching is designed to hold fast within the skin.

A few of Chernobog's bones are in the tomb (as magic artifacts) or in the caverns (bone devils). She can tell you anything she knew while she was alive (a lot) and describe anything that ever was or will be happening near her bones.

***

See you Friday for SOMETHING NEW AND DIFFERENT