Dogbox: 3 Dungeons + Fairies

pei lee

Spoilers, I guess, for Dogbox.

I've started with the three smallest dungeons and their hexes, as a warmup. Lil design ramble at the end.

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The Sump is a poisonous salt marsh, a blighted hole where there used to be a shoreline. The sea has turned its back on the Doggerlands, and took the coastal ecosystem in the divorce.

1. Salt farmers. Hard at work drying kelp.
2. Washed-up drunk. Oleone failscion detective. Seriously considering walking into the sea.
3. Foreign ships on the horizon. A geopolitics expert with binoculars can recognize the star-studded heraldry of Ural Nam, a tiny colony at the furthest edge of the empire. They aren't supposed to have warships.
4. Sinkhole. A random PC falls 20' as it opens underneath them. The salt ruins nice clothes by staining them pink. Further excavation yields a well-preserved corpse (20s).
5. Spontaneous combustion. Two random spells are cast at 4MD. Those who can See Spirits know roughly when and where this will happen, and can help the party keep its distance. Otherwise, you are at the epicenter.
6. Wandering angel. 3HD telepathic telekinetic carnassial folded amber caramel strandbeest. Her name is Jeniel and she was put on this earth to annihilate the lamb to make space for more lions. Summons winds that throw everything not nailed down [sum] feet in any direction. Would serve as steed to one she considers sufficiently brave, loud, and cruel.

Bythesea Castle clings to the crumbling cliff. The walls have collapsed into riprap, exposing the courtyard. The deed belongs to a gentleman in Eldon who'd gladly be rid of it.

Roll a d6 every 10 minutes and whenever a loud noise is made. On a 1, the gunman approaches. On a 6, someone falls into an oubliette (see below).

• Seaside courtyard. Rectangular stone foundations mark where barracks once stood. Thorough excavation yields symbolically mummified and entombed Barbary lions (45s x 3 lions).
• Once-great hall. Faded reliefs of heterodox afterlife scenes: souls digging straight down, lions devouring sinners. Toppled throne.
• Decidedly flaccid tower. Unstable spiral staircase. Wobbling spellmass confined in high study. When the tower falls, the spell will burst, glass the hex, and trans everyone's gender.
• The gunman. 5HD, ram skull mask, double-barreled shotgun. Methodically stalks and shoots. Yelps tonguelessly if surprised. Thru the eyes of his mask, all humanity appears as starved lions.
• Oubliettes. The ground falls out from under you. Each oubliette is 10'x10' and locked behind a sturdy door. Roll a d6 for contents, skip repeat entries.
1. Wail jar. Contains a single continuous scream (Save or go deaf for a day). If you fall on it, it breaks, and the scream escapes all at once.
2. Second century skeleton. Incomplete escape tunnel.
3. Mad scrawl. Written in blood: SINS ECHO MAKES FOUR ACTS ACCOMPLICE MAKES UPSTANDING INFINITY
4. Lotus pose mummy. Crumbling into translucent sand.
5. Bella Bythesea. Oleone vampire failscion. Imprisoned during the Glorian purges. Abhors violence, holds grudges, loves parley. Unscrupulously altruistic. Drinks blood thru her long long hair.
6. A pile of matted animal skins, bones, shotgun ammunition. The door is unlocked. The gunman sleeps here.
7. Angry corpse pile. 7HD oozething. Clumsily, silently strangles with seven skeletal hands. Stunned for a few rounds if you fall on it, during which it appears to be a roomful of corpses.
8. Mad saint ichabod. Unliving Rhayadder failscion. The door's been bricked up.

 

The Village is scantly populated by common-bloods with fish-like mutations. Rumor says the village is cursed, but their nets are always full.

1. God damned mosquitoes. 
2. Pushy fish oil salesman. Rhayadder failscion, handsome and honey-voiced under his mutations.
3. Bad air. Save or contract the fish-faced plague. (Progress by 1 stage each day on a failed Save. Stage 1: -2 CHA. Stage 2: You can breathe underwater. Stage 3: -2 CHA.)
4. Gulper hounds. Stats as mangy strays. Heads, they're hungry; tails, they're desperately hungry.
5. Fishbone altar. Wicker and offal in a lordly shape. Disappears after a week if left alone. If disturbed, the perpetrator is hounded by cultists (see below).
6. Creepy children. Sing songs about Leviathan. Engage you in lightly blasphemous powerscaling debates.

The Well is the heart of the village. Local legend claims a freshwater spring appeared where King Larsene laid down his crown, bringing life to an otherwise desolate salt marsh.

• Garden. Open to the public. Equine spouts of metal-rich water. Locked iron grate over the well. A pair of old biddies, praying.
• At night: biddyless; patrolled by a gulper hound. Faint chanting from the grate.
• Shed. Trowel, rake, wrench, hammer. Common-blood gardener, mildly bioluminescent, watering dandelions. The grate key's in one of her sixteen pockets.
• At night: the gardener goes home.
• Coast. Inside the well: 150' down, indigo cavern, alien coastline. Carved driftwood throne (24s) facing the depths.
• At night: cultists pray to the fish-faced plague. A fisherman, a priest, a candle-maker, and a Larsene post-grad failscion. They suffer from a shared delusion of being the Queen of the Doggerlands, taking turns in the throne. 2HD each, anglerfish bite, vulnerable to sycophancy.
• Cultist Hideout. Tucked away side cavern. Contains 4 azure robes and a tome of daemonology (80s; last checked out of the Chere School for Restless Girls Haflord-Brough Library 3 years ago).
• Depths. Lair of the fish-faced plague. Can be summoned to the coast with cult rites or leviathan songs. 12HD; intangible to non-royals; foul-mouthed, delusional. It costs d8 HP to resist its commands. At the very bottom of its lair lies the cast-off crown of Glorian Larsene (800s).
• If the fish-faced plague is exorcised 1) the mutations will be lifted from all the villagers and their animals, and 2) no fish will be caught here ever again, causing a terrible famine.

The Fairy Forest is wild and dangerous, a trap from which missing children and overconfident hunters never return.

1. Wailing infant. Common blood. Nestled in a tree stump.
2. Haunted well. Two spirits: one does the silver axe fable thing; the other drowns unmarried men (myopic, often mistakes women for men). They keep ruining each others' routines.
3. Humble wand'rin' donkey. Transformed Norbury failscion. Dead set on sex with a fairy.
4. Bereaved bear.
5. Father Greenwall. Devinsen failscion anchorite. Thinks the Church is too secular nowadays. Too grumpy to pray. Knows each fairy by name; if a scene calls for a wedding, they have him officiate.
6. Fairy ordeal. One has led another into the woods to murder them. If you don't enter the scene, you begin to fade into narrative obscurity. (See below.)

Castle Elfred will find you, if you enter the forest. All unmarked roads lead to this overgrown ruin, where Lady Redlock was married, had two children, and eventually went insane.

• The Walls. Accessible from the courtyard via dense latticed ivy. Perfect place for a dramatic swordfight.
• The Banquet. Piled high with fairy food; eat even a crumb and you'll turn into an animal. The silverware (40s) is fair game though.
• The Garden. Aggressive overgrowth has gouged out the kitchen and servant's quarters. The fairies don't notice the difference. Bed of silver roses: thorns cause death-like slumber, no Save.
• The Throne Room. The Fairy King (they take turns) is attended by two animals in knight's armor (bellicose boar and stoic stag).
• The Upstairs Bedchambers. Fairies don't sleep, so these are undisturbed.
1. Red room. Open window. Eagle's nest on the pillows; cuckoo eggs.
2. Blue room. Two cribs. Pinned butterfly display (20s).
3. Gold room. Empty.
4. Black room. Stinks of death. The body in the bed is putrefied beyond recognition. 4 silver rings on the hands, 3 on the toes (5s each).
• The Chapel. Perpetually ready for a wedding. A silver harp (45s) plays itself in the corner.
• The Tower. Furnished observatory. 100 sovereigns worth of furniture and lenses. Astronomical journal describing the many faces in the moon. Romance-ready balcony.
• The Dungeon. Directly beneath the tower. Stretching rack (fairies love this goofy human shit). Pair of shriveled corpses.

The fairies (3HD) of Castle Elfred are a mix of Loch's masked players and the Veinscrawl drow: masked immortals in borrowed bodies, cloaked in madness and spells, acting out an endless stage-play only they understand to an audience only they can perceive.

Masked players is mandatory reading for this next bit:

1. Chorus. Ever-present swarm of talking animals. Provides helpful context and passes judgement. Not technically a fairy; instead, victims of fairies become a part of the chorus.
2. Valto. Would sell her whole family for a bent red wooden cent. Occasionally unintentionally heroic. She can fly, perform sleight of hand, and light housefires with her pipe.
3. Coffer. Voice of reason and straight man. Pretends to be incapable of love. Has the exact right tool for any situation, which usually gets stolen right out of his hands.
4. Grandfather. Alternatingly scheming and doddering. Nepotistic, ambiguously foreign. Does the kind of all purpose magic that involves waggling your fingers and saying "abragadzooks!"
5. Ant. Long-suffering, incredibly acrobatic servant to whoever the villain is this time. Sometimes must be freed from service to solve the problem. Can swordfight and backflip like a motherfucker.
6. Sara.
7. Ubria.
8. The Horrible Creature.

The average fairy scene goes like this: two fairies appear on the battlements, swordfight and banter for 8 minutes, then vanish. Another teleports into the middle of your party, delivers a lengthy soliloquy, drinks poison and dies (she'll be back in act III).

[All fairies can step "on-stage" and "off-stage", vanishing into the otherworld and reappearing elsewhere after a few minutes. It is said that a fairy can only die a true death in the otherworld.]

Getting caught in a fairy scene is dangerous. Get too involved, and you risk getting stabbed or beheaded: fairy plots are oft indulgently R-rated. Be a wallflower, and you'll literally transform into a flower on the wall. (Save vs narrative obscurity) The best survival strategy is to identify their roles and enter the narrative as a complementary character. Being a theater major helps.

An example fairy plot. Start at a random act, then move all players to the next scene every 10 minutes:

1. Sara and Valto (sisters) discuss love in the garden. Ubria taunts Grandfather in the throne room, is arrested by Ant. Coffer soliloquys in the chapel. The Horrible Creature is in the dungeon.
2. Grandfather instructs Sara at the banquet. Valto picks Coffer's pocket in the garden. Ubria and Ant escape The Horrible Creature in the dungeon.
3. All characters crash the banquet. Grandfather dies.
4. Valto gloats in the throne room. Sara, Coffer, and Ant scheme in the dungeon. Ubria and The Horrible Creature have a drinking contest in the garden.
5. Sara confronts Valto in the throne room. Coffer and Ant catch Grandfather before he goes to heaven at the top of the tower. Ubria and The Horrible Creature sleep in the garden.
6. Valto, Coffer, Ant, and Grandfather have a 4-way duel on the walls. Sara's right back in the dungeon.
7. Coffer succumbs to his wounds in the chapel. Ubria rescues Ant from The Horrible Creature in the throne room. Sara sells her soul to Grandfather in the dungeon.
8. Sara finds Coffer in the chapel, Valto picks Sara's soul out of Grandfather's pocket and uses it to save Coffer. Ant saves Ubria from falling off the tower (and into the jaws of The Horrible Creature).

Fairies are to you and your highborn class as you are to the average peasant: distant, eccentric, trapped.

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I'm pretty happy with the first two dungeons. They're supposed to point you back towards the manor by virtue of being quick, deadly, and sort of incomplete. Gunman shot your leg off? → Go home and get daddy's blunderbuss. Giant evil fish? → Get a bigger blunderbuss.

They also set up themes and mechanics that I want to use in the basement dungeon: I'm building a palette.

The fairy castle is a bit of a headfuck. I'm not sure I could run it, but I'm also not sure what party could survive it. I'm tempted to call it a "late game area" and leave it as is. It's obviously a last minute addition; I just had to do something with fairies, yknow.

[note to self: double the number of fairies to make writing acts on the fly easier, it feels kind of awkward with such a small cast]

The dungeons are all a bit stripped down compared to more naturalistic fare-- all setpieces, no stairwells or trapped hallways (I think I'm a 5e gm at heart). I usually write dungeons like this, as a bullet skeleton, before going back and adding missing rooms. This time, maybe I skip that step.

 

As part of the starter box, I'll eventually try to make this runnable by people other than me, which means I'll need to do some playtesting at some point. If you ever run or want to run any part of these posts, hmu, and also thanks!!!1! ^u^