THE GUEST STARS

For GLÅUGUST 2026, I asked 128 gloggers to write one room each for a community dungeon: no prompt, no theme, no rules. Of those initial 128, a whopping 82!!!!!! submitted rooms.

Thank you all so much for your submissions, and for your patience.

click here ^^^^^^^ for the dungeon

(the links may not jump you around unless you download the pdf) 

 

Play Reports 

• On Unnamed Horizons follows five intrepid mailmen

09/01/26 - Fixes to names and attributions, placeholder room references filled in. (if I messed up your name, let me know and I'll get it fixed asap) 

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.

GLOGtober Day 1: Belliserum's Mind Palace // Through the Veil

Ryan van Dongen

You stumble forth from the catacombs into a blistering sandstorm. A towering palace of sun-bleached stone, cloaked by the desert’s rasping winds, reveals itself to you as you crest a dune. You can hear it churning, the great gears turning, postulating, theorizing, reminiscing.

The gate is open, just a crack. You slip into the mechanism. The bonfire flares to life. 

***

This is a rewrite of Belliserum's Mind Palace for Lich's Through The Veil GLOGhack.

***

What is known:
This is the palace of Belliserum: the Mentor, the archetype of genius, the unclouded one. She is long dead, the second casualty of the war with Archenemy. Her grave is elsewhere, unmarked, in a formless field at the feet of the Monarch.
The palace contains the complete contents of Belliserum’s mind, transcribed in impossible detail on each brick and tile and tapestry.
There is a Standing Stone within the palace—an anchor between the Veil’d world and the Real. If destroyed, the mortal realm will be one step closer to freedom from the unreal.

What is within:
The old: Memories of the world, unmarred. Frozen, as in amber, the truth of all known things.
The new: Miraculous inventions, the triumph of dreams over reality. Music unheard of, stories untold.
The outsiders: Antessa, far from home, drawn to dreams; Brumi, back from the dead yet again; the gnashing Plaque
The indigenous: Belliserum’s paper angels; her stone-wrought golems; her fabric-men; her Fears.
And the Other: A great Fear, buried in the subconscious.

Factions:
Curators
Belliserum was obsessed with the preservation of the self. In all their myriad forms, the curators of her palace bear her visage, stoic and pristine.
Wants: To preserve Belliserum, as she remembers herself. To preserve knowledge.
By: Denying or destroying outsiders. Seeking out or confiscating texts, artifacts, trivia.
But: Their memory of Belliserum is itself eroding. The palace is slowly self-destructing.

Rooms:
A: The Bonfire. Brumi is here, again.
- A monolithic stone gate bars the way forward (leads to H); it is sealed shut with red wax, as if it were an envelope, and emblazoned with a heron.
- A tapestry depicting a red-gold mandelbrot, so detailed it makes your head swim. Brumi is leaning against it.
- A chiseled tunnel behind the tapestry (leads to room B).
- A charcoal note: “Illusory wall ahead.” If you strike the wall, Brumi laughs at you.

Brumi - The Cockroach
Don’t look at me, the door’s closed. I’m not fool enough to try it anyway; they don’t exactly roll out the welcome mat in there.
Knows: Nothing. He wants his money back though. You remember. Don’t be a dick, cough it up.
- If asked about why he’s here: I’m not joining your little suicide mission, if that’s what you’re asking. I die enough on my own time.
Wants: His money back. Like, for real.
Has: A Dead Man’s Coin. If you would die, call and flip the coin. If you win, you don’t die. 

B: The Scriptorium. A handful of fabric-men are milling about, unperturbed by your presence. They read the wall carvings with their fingertips, then adjust them with tiny chisels.
- Piles of overstuffed tomes, umbrella stands full of imaginary maps, bouquets of schematics line the walls.
- An enormous stone golem with a newborn’s face patrols the halls, softly sobbing.
- A chiseled tunnel in the far wall (leads to room A).
- A stairwell in the opposite corner, behind the baby. It goes up (to room D) and down (to room C).

The Waif
Excised from the palace proper, a painful memory given shape and purpose. She knows little but crying and smashing.
2 (20 HP)/2 Stamina/1 Humanity
Attack: (2 Stam) Smashes indiscriminately. Hits all enemies standing close together. Physically and/or emotionally isolated characters have -2 to Dodge.
Armor: 3 (Stone) 

C: The Stacks. A hall as deep as it is long, replete with lengthy memoirs and biographies. All is written in an alien language.
- Unraveled fabric-men are torn to shreds on the floor.
- An enormous, statuesque painting of a woman. The features seem warped, as if half-remembered.
- A stone tiger with a woman’s face prowls the stacks, killing for amusement. Unseen, she calls to the party: Help!
- A balcony ~80 feet off the ground. Possibly reachable by scaling the bookcases, and the network of platforms between them. (Leads to E)
- A monolithic stone gate bars the way backward (leads to H); it is sealed shut with red wax, as if it were an envelope, and emblazoned with a heron.
- Stairwell to B + D.

The Man-Eater
A solitary hunter of great cruelty. It speaks in taunts and pleas, but these are tricks; she possesses more instinct than intelligence.
4 (30 HP)/4 Stamina/1 Humanity
Attack: (2 Stam) Pounces from the shadows. If the players have not yet figured out how to track her, they have -4 to Dodge her ambushes.
Defense: Sunder weapon on fangs.
Armor: 3 (Stone) 

D: The Cogs. A monumental stonework machine, cantankerous yet calm like running water.
- A great loom, from which fabric-men are born. One stumbles out every ten minutes or so. At the same time, other fabric-men enter and unravel themselves. Two golems turn the mechanism, unperturbed by the player presence.
- A woman in blue, sitting in a corner, reading from a tome to an enraptured crowd of fabric-men. They seem to show affection for her; they see Belliserum in the lines of her face and the gray of her hair.
- Two stairwells (lead to B, C, and E).

Antessa - The Ashfoot
What hey, travelers. Care for a tale? I’ve told this story four times so far, and these ones still haven’t tired of it.
Knows: About the Fear. She can feel it; the Palace is crumbling under the weight of itself.
- If asked about Belliserum, or whatever’s going on: I can feel it… her fear. It is etched into these walls clear as day. It is fear that built this Palace, and on fear it persists. Perhaps, she is still afraid.
- If asked about the monsters: I will say, I have seen myself in more than one facet of this place. I could swear I looked just like one of them when I was a little girl.
Does: Antessa has both the talent and the will to train sorcerers, an exceedingly rare combination in this age.
Needs: To meet Belliserum, or whatever aspect of her remains.
Has: A Burning Soul. Consume to begin your journey down the path of the pyromancer.
(If you kill the Fear, Antessa gives up her quest, believing Belliserum is dead, and joins the hub. If you pacify the Fear and lead Antessa to it, see THE DAUGHTER RETURNS below) 

E: The Plunge. A stairwell into creeping, whispering darkness.
- In many places, the stairwell has been destroyed, burnt to a crisp.
- Black tar creeps up the walls toward the upper levels.
- Two wax-and-paper angels stand guard, one with a child’s face, one with a young maiden’s. Their heron staves (TREASURE!) exhale fire intermittently at the encroaching dark, forcing it back.
- At the bottom, a thick layer of Plaque. Unless burned away, it eats through the soles and devours one whole. It pours forth from a crack in an eroded stone doorway. (Leads to F)

Paper Maiden
Her delicate, flickering heart threatened to burn her to cinders. One day, she locked it away, and filled her chest with flame instead.
3 (20 HP)/2 Stamina/5 Focus/1 Humanity
Spells: Nurses a fireball in her chest, then hurls it.
Attack: (1 Stam) Strikes with Heron-stave. Foes struck ignite.
Defense: Parry 

F: The Root. The palace foundation, a subconscious space filled with carved stone columns. The chamber is abyssally dark and flooded with knee-high, flowing Plaque. Something enormous is thrashing in the Plaque.
- The Standing Stone, the anchor, humming with energy, supports the weight of a weary mind.
- A monolithic stone gate bars the way forward (leads to H); it is sealed shut with red wax, as if it were an envelope, and emblazoned with a heron.
- But you don’t have time to think about that
- It is among you
- It is here

The Fear
the grotesque, weeping, sponge-like head; the maw, writhing, wriggling, frothing; the arms, too long and reaching, the hands, too fingersome and fidgeting; the crone within, whispering, begging for release
8 (50hp)/5 stam/3 focus/3 humanity
Attacks:
Enemies Close: Swipe. Sends all enemies flying into columns.
Enemies at a Distance/Grouped: Gorilla charge at largest group of enemies. (+2 to Dodge to avoid)
End of Round: Glances at closest enemy. Save or become piss-your-pants terrified of anything that reminds you of it, forever.
When at half hp: The Plaque crawls over the Fear. It grows heavy, hunched, and horrific, and begins weeping fire. All attacks cause a burst of fire.
At 0 HP: The Plaque consumes it, then surges forth. The Palace begins to crumble. 

G: The Column. A stairwell sick with Plaque.
- Sealed exits lead to A, C, and F.
- Leads down to H. 

H: The Heart. In this hidden place flooded with Plaque, a bloated heart forces its way out of a display case. It has grown thick and black, like a knot of serpents, weeping venom from its chambers. Those who approach feel eerily at peace.
- If destroyed, the Plaque falls silent. Whatever it is destroyed with becomes a Congealed Weapon. (2x damage vs everything, so long as no flame is nearby). If the Plaque is silent, the Fear is pacified.

THE DAUGHTER RETURNS. If Antessa meets the pacified Fear, the latter will regard her for a moment, then leap into her. The Vessel is claimed. The true battle begins.

THE UNCLOUDED ONE
She’s a perfect fit.
5 (30hp)/4 stam/∞ focus/4 humanity
Defense: Dodge (flies via explosion thanks to innate pyrokinesis)
Spells: Firebomb, slumber, mass teleport, wish, etc. etc.
End of Round: Set closest enemy on fire, no save.
When at half hp: Gripped by fear, THE UNCLOUDED ONE attempts to teleport away. If curators are still on the map, she teleports you with her to them. Otherwise, she teleports you with her 1000 ft above the palace.
At 0 HP: She pupates for a few minutes, then explodes like a ton of TNT. The Palace is destroyed

***

Hell yeah, did it in one day. Now someone else write the other 5 Standing Stone dungeons.

Three Bandwagons Stacked On Top Of Each Other

Vayra’s Questions

1) What class knows the most martial arts? Are they real martial arts like kung fu, or made up ones like krav maga?
For each Fighter template you have, you can invent/roll for a combat technique. So, yeah, you can make your own martial arts.

2) Can I start out having already made a deal with the devil or do I have to do that in game?
Do it in-game if you want mechanical benefits. Do it before the game if you just want the story hook.

3) Do you want me to write an 8-page backstory? Can I write an 8-page backstory, if I want to? If I write something down in it like I'm the timelost princess of the brass city and the daughter of the sun and I commanded legions in the Hell War but was betrayed by my father's vizier but I don't know that, or that I'm elf conan and cooler than everyone else, will that be true?
You don’t need to. I’ll read it if you do, but again, no mechanical bonuses unless it happens in-game.

4) If I eat someone's heart, will I gain their powers? What about their brain?
Yes yes yes. Dragon hearts give dragon traits. Wizard brains give spells. Innocent hearts give ghoulishness.

5) These classes are boring, can I be one from somewhere else? What about from a different system entirely?
Not as your first template of the campaign. Otherwise, sure, if it matches flavor + format.

6) If I make a sword, which one of us gets to name it?
You do.

7) Am I allowed to kill the other player characters? What would I have to do to be allowed to? Do I win if I kill them all? Actually, how do I win in general?
There aren’t even rules in the game for PVP. I guess you win if you get to a point where you can say “I’m satisfied with the life my PC has lived.” Then you turn them loose.

8) What language stands in for 'Common'? Or what are we all talking to each other in? Like the party, mostly, but also everyone else?
Common. It’s the language all civilized folk speak, for some reason. Different cultures have different accents/dialects of it (Stone + Common = Dwarf, Old Tongue + Common = Elf) which you can learn and use as skills, but everyone you’d normally want to talk to can be talked to.

9) How do I learn how to talk to rocks? No not once a day just, like, normally?
Each Scholar template gives you a skill or a language of your choice. Every language lets you talk to at least one thing. So yeah, talk to rocks.

10) Which kinds of wizards get to serve kings and live in towers and shit and which ones are run out of town or stoned to death in the streets? Can I be both? At the same time?
Schools of magic are intensely regional, based on the religions and various heretical sects. Necromancy is more often practiced where taboos around dead people are less strict. Pyromancers are hated by most elven circles. Illusionists are despised among dwarves. So you’re always both, depending on where you are.

A World in 13 Items  

1. Unusably rusty sword, 5 holed coins on a string dangle from the pommel.
2. Trowel, bloodstained, caked with mud, smells like sulfur.
3. Coil of rope with saw-toothed grapple.
4. Mirror-pristine dagger, thick-bladed, barbed at the hilt with a long handle.
5. Iron-bodied broom with long, light teeth, battleworn.
6. Wax-bound candlestick, dented, depicts stalwart badger knight.
7. Canteen on a wet(?) leather strap, full of black sand. Blessed.
8. Boot-fitting iron brace, worn straps, single jutting nail on the middle toe.
9. Six ceramic Promisebeads on a simple red cord, tied off in a sailor’s knot, each ringed with shallow grooves and microscopic, flowing gold-lined script.
10. Head-sized silver cube, vibrating, angry, feather-light. Tastes like magic.
11. Homemade cuirass hammered out of dark cauldron.
12. Dense, garnet fox-gem. Attracts unwanted attention.
13. Frayed tome, floating in large jar of ooze. Unharmed, mostly full of musings about riding weird animals for fun and profit.

Dungeon Poem Challenge 

 

Runaway’s Refuge → BBEG escapes justice, you track them here (???)
Hand-carved underground sanctum (see here)
Walls: packed-dirt, easily collapsible. Break too many → ceiling caves in.

1 - Open-air entrance//tiled with flat stone//shallow graves//bird-like skeletons
2 - Clay jugs//pickled monkey tail//move like snakes//easily charmed+commanded
3 - Vampire bamboo//move slowly by growing violently//speak thru shish-kebab corpses
4 - Smoke-room//3m smoke shafts to surface//hookah & live djinn-tobacco//can only talk in 5sec intervals//only grants useless wishes//pretends to more power
5 - Worn door used as bridge//kraken-shaped door-knocker//opens to sea monster’s stomach//inside, elderly cannibal wearing fancy clothes, raving
6 - Wormtiger burrow//dig as running human//tiger claws and worm jaws//look it up
7 - Foam-choked stream//north to sea cove + mermonkes//south to giant stone face//every dungeon has one//bloodless hippo corpse on shore
8 - Purple cushions + hippo dung//indestructible stained-glass door//guard hippos in wall compartments//can teleport EXTREMELY short distances
9 - Bath-shower-shrine-thing//runs off into river//huge bat-face-pus-demon j chilling//everything in the dungeon hates him
10 - Excavation room//deeper than it looks//at the center, BBEG//digging themselves to hell//oops it worked
11 - Behind bars//operating tables//demons mid-disassembly//a horn-and-flesh disguise
12 - Secret passage//cave-in//exit to the surface//beneath a stone shaped like an elephant trunk
13 - What you’ve been looking for//tailor’s toolkit//shrine to unidentified lover//baby hippopotamus

The Logistical Nightmare That Is This Winter

I made a short TTRPG as a final project for my Apocalyptic Literature class (my first real dungeon pdf!!!!!). Not my finest work, but maybe worth expanding on in the future?

Credit to my girlfriend for the name (definitely the best part of the whole thing).

Belliserum's Mind Palace (2/2)

by Francois Schuiten

Thanks again to my amazing girlfriend, who inspired and basically co-authored this whole dungeon.

Read part 1 here.

Belliserum’s Mind Palace (1/2)

by Bruce Pennington

 All credit to my wonderful girlfriend, who inspired and basically co-authored this entire dungeon.

EDIT: Part 2 is up

Our tale begins, as all tales in fantasy roleplaying games must, with a wizard. Belliserum of the Vaste was a master of the arcane arts, yet she was a human wizard with human limitations, and the mortal mind only has so much space for arcane formulae and esoteric knowledge. Worse still, in her advanced age, Belliserum found herself plagued by pathological forgetfulness (her contemporaries had no name for this phenomenon at the time). In typical wizardly fashion, Belliserum devised a solution bordering on madness: a physical castle within which her memories could be safely kept.

The Mind Palace was designed as a direct extension of its master’s brain. Information was encoded in every book, brick, and tapestry, which were carefully copied and restored by a retinue of curators. Belliserum could then access this knowledge from anywhere on the material plane via a phenomenally clever bidirectional scrying spell, the nature of which has been lost to history.

Of course, she’s dead now—has been for many centuries—but the palace remains. It was originally sealed in an underground cavern below the Vaste, until a sudden sinkhole and subsequent excavation revealed its ivory-white spires to the world. Nowadays, scholars and thieves alike delve into the Mind Palace to translate its arcane secrets... or sell them to the highest bidder. These mercantile agents don’t take kindly to competition, but perhaps they are preferable to the palace’s original inhabitants: curators of the upper cortex, and nightmares born wholesale from the dead wizard’s malfunctioning brain-castle.

Perhaps your party is on the payroll of some ambitious merchant-lord, or perhaps they seek forgotten truths for their own sake. Roll a d12 to see which potentially game-ending information they’re hunting for.

1d12	Dead Wizard Secrets
1	The true name of a real bastard of a devil
2	The favorite foods of each member of the faerie judiciary (as with most elements of faerie culture, the judiciary’s membership has not changed in centuries, trapped in whimsical torpor)
3	Where the giants went
4	Blueprint: anachronistic technology (gunpowder/telegraph/tandem bicycles/really anything your players want)
5	The location of an unguarded hellhole not even Satan knows about
6	Blueprint: The original Bag of Holding
7	Ritual of the Covenant of Accursed Mortality (allows gods to be killed permanently)
8	Recipe: Immortality elixir, but with a catch
9	How to raise/train/befriend/debate your own dragons
10	Lyrics to the Song of Twilight’s Revival (restores elven fertility)
11	“unbody me tomorrow” (memetic cure-all vaccine)
12	Spell: Belliserum’s Bolster Intellect (allows information exchange between the caster and the Mind Palace, forever)

 

Giulio Camillo Delminio's "theatre of memory"

 

There are four dangers inherent to the Mind Palace. I’ll discuss two of them here and follow up later this week.

The Palace

The Mind Palace is an architectural abomination, a mass of bone-white turrets and bartizans at odd angles, as if a thousand castles were swept into a pile and mortared together where they lay. The inside is a labyrinth of stairwells leading to gardens leading to master bedrooms leading to wine cellars, connected by a confounding array of vertical corridors and twisting crawlspaces.

Every square inch of the palace is crawling with information—books full to bursting with loose pages, paintings and carvings so intricate they make your head swim—and if you watch closely you’ll see it all changing in waves. Tiny ripples in the masonry pass from room to room, leaving the engravings ever so slightly different from what they were. These ripples accumulate in size, and if a big enough ripple forms, entire rooms will move.

Whenever the party rests in the palace, there is movement. Roll twice for extended rests. These apply to previously explored rooms unless otherwise stated.

1d12	Palace Movements
1	The room the players are resting in drops one level down.
2	An explored room disappears. The players may rediscover it later, repopulated.
3	A connection between two explored rooms disappears.
4 - 7	The movement occurs somewhere else in the palace (no effect on the known map).
8 - 9	A connection to a new room appears.
10	A connection to a new room on a different level appears.
11	A new room appears between two explored rooms.
12	The room the players are resting in raises one level up.

Whenever the party enters an unexplored room, roll a d6. On a 1-3, it’s a scriptorium, an etched stone chamber full of bookcases and tables for copying manuscripts. Roll on the encounter table to see what’s up in there. Otherwise, the room is one of the following you haven't explored yet:

1d6	Rooms in the Mind Palace
1	The Pit: A 40’x40’x100’ hole where a room should be. There are 2-4 doors visible on the walls and ceiling, all leading to different rooms/dungeon levels. The walls are slick with shadow, and a low moaning echoes from the horribly dark pit floor. There is no monster; it is an aspect of the decay, calling hungrily for more knowledge. If you feed it, you’ll gain its favor. If you fall in, you’ll be in the deep palace, and that’s probably punishment enough.
2	The Market: An open plaza dominated by a circular meeting table. Doors in all 4 cardinal directions. 2d6 curators are here, split evenly between two factions (roll 1d4 for each side’s identity). They’re trading heavy parchment strips and book binding materials for gear clearly looted from another adventuring party. If the players play their cards right, they can barter for anything on the table. The parchment strips are more valuable than they appear: they’re components for creating a new curator.
3	The Elevator: A 10’x10’x50’ vertical stone shaft with unusually high ripple activity. The door to the next room is at the top of the shaft, overlooking a sheer drop. An enormous book is affixed to the central lectern which, when opened, poses a series of nonsense riddles. The palace accepts any answer, raising or lowering the floor by 20’ per answer depending on its plausibility. Two plausible/implausible answers in a row should be enough to go up/down a floor. With repeated suggestions via this Q&A process, the chamber can be coaxed to produce a single mundane item per day.
4	The Garden: A dimly lit room full of tattered, translucent fabric growing in sheets from the ceiling. 1d4+1 curators are here, two of whom are harvesting the fabric while the rest transcribe memories. They complain about the absolute state of the place and how myelin once grew thick and healthy. If you do them a favor or offer enough stuff, they might let you take a few napkins’ worth. Wearing myelin around one’s head grants a +1 vs. fear/charm/mental enchantments in general.
5	The Cradle: An unsettlingly organic room, where the stone and brick flows like flesh into twisted spires. Tendrils of stoneflesh descend from the ceiling to converge into a throne in the center of the room, within which rests the remains of a human in fine silks. In his hand rests a locket, which contains two feathers of different colors. If you lie in the cradle and recount one of your memories, the memory will disappear from your mind.
6	The Gate: A tall, dark room with a tall, dark gate. There’s a normal exit to the side that you really should take instead. Ignore the tall gate. There is nothing behind it worth seeing. There is nothing behind it you want to see. There’s seven great stone locks, and all the keys have been hidden and broken and destroyed. (Behind the door is tiny pamphlet of memetic curses wrapped in rose petals the size of wagon wheels. Reading it grants visions of the future (advantage on all rolls) and sets your health to 0 for as long as you know the secret. If you tell someone else the secret, you no longer know the secret. Alternatively, it causes instantaneous brain death, depending on your DM style.)

Whenever the party searches a room for the first time in the Mind Palace, they find a stone key. They can also find stone keys in the bellies of monsters, or in unique rooms.

The Monsters

The upper levels of the Mind Palace are, for the most part, as they were during Belliserum’s life: immaculate, structured, and full to bursting with concrete information. The deep palace, however, is dirty, disorganized, and overrun with concepts and emotions given form. This is what happens to information in the Mind Palace when it decays: between an illegible jumble and nothingness, the idea begins to revolt against its slow demise and leaps from a symbolic existence to a literal one.

Down in the deep palace, where the decay is most prevalent, there are very few salvageable memories. What remains of the place is overrun with instincts, primal urges, and reflexes made manifest. That doesn’t mean its entirely devoid of interest—it’s a curator-free shortcut between most locations, and loose memories tend to fall down there when no one is paying attention—but you’ll want to steer clear unless you have a really good reason to wander into monster territory.

Luckily for the DM, monsters have none of the same qualms about wandering into your territory.

1d6	Deep Palace Monsters
1	Phantom Limb: In the corner of this room is an incomplete suit of armor kneeling on the ground next to a handful of phalanges. The first character to approach it looks down and watches their arm come right off their body, no save. The disembodied limb will hover near its owner, stealing from/attacking them and generally being a nuisance. Damage dealt to the limb is also dealt to the original owner… because its still attached. The monster is a tangle of invisible tentacles spilling out of the armor. It tricks your brain into thinking of your own limbs as a hostile entity in the hopes that you’ll cut it off and leave it behind.
2	Amygdala: A large, spindly, eight-limbed humanoid with a head like a sopping wet sponge. It waits in the corner of the room, hunched over and shivering with what appears to be excitement, staring at the party with unblinking intensity. It’s deathly afraid of you, and fights like a cornered rat. Behind it is the door to the next room. If you start attacking from outside of its range, it’ll fly into a frenzy and leap at you (HD 8, or whatever seems appropriately unreasonable). Getting its blood on you (its constantly dripping out of its sponge-face) provokes pure fear; save vs. charm or be piss-your-pants terrified of it and anything that reminds you of it, forever.
3	Earworm: A flying, pink ribbon worm humming at a strange frequency. It hunts by vomiting its branching proboscis in a cone and drinking blood through it. It’s slow, soft, and collapses into brackish sludge when slain. Any living being who hears its song must save vs. charm or become a host for the Earworm. When the host goes to sleep, the earworm rematerializes from their dreams and begins to feed on them as they sleep. The only way to get rid of it for good is to remove it from your memory.
4	Isnt: You aren’t alone, but nothing is in the room with you. One of Belliserum’s mostly-intentional creations, designed to guard the palace from intruders. It’s an anti-mimetic, a self-censoring idea you can’t think about for more than a few seconds at a time. Stats as whatever you want it to not be. It can only be described in terms of what it is not: It isn’t blue. It isn’t small. It isn’t next to our fighter. It isn’t dead yet. It won’t attack unless you’ve wronged the palace in some way, but you can’t loot this room while it isn’t in a different room. (Pinning down its location is the first challenge, but once your players figure out a strategy, you can assume they know where it is.)
5	Homunculi: Diminutive humanoids with oversized hands, feet, lips, and genitals. They typically travel in packs of 2d6 and move like toddlers in clown shoes. Whatever they feel, the rest of the world must feel as well: hurting them will make everyone in a 40’ radius hurt, and caressing them will make everyone in a 40’ radius uncomfortable. Constructs are immune to this effect. They’re attracted to light, warmth, music, and smiling. 50% chance to be encountered as 1d4 Homunculi accompanied by a patrol of curators, who find them repulsive and use them as meat shields/anti-human grenades.
6	Oblitus: An old hag with milky, vacant owls eyes, cackling to no one in particular. Those who meet her gaze are stunned (save vs. charm), standing dazed as their party members appear to be fighting an empty room for no reason (on a successful save, they are slowed instead. make another check each turn they meet the hag's gaze). If all party members are stunned at once, go ahead and fast forward to the moment where the party collectively snaps out of their daze and realizes their pinky fingers have been bitten off. The Oblitus can see into the minds of those she locks eyes with, gaining access to their spells. If you’re harboring a memetic disease/parasite, she’ll take it from you (often to her detriment). The curators can’t see her.

by Brendan McCarthy

 History of the Palace (DM stuff)

The Mind Palace was more than a simple vault. It was capable of learning, constantly sprouting new towers and hallways to accommodate the wizard’s intellectual appetite. Eventually, Belliserum learned to sublet sections of the palace to perform complex calculations for her, allowing the architecture to think without direct supervision. Sometimes, it would even surprise her.

Right before Belliserum’s death, the palace was doing most of her thinking for her. At the time, she likely attributed her sense of self more to the palace than to the decrepit old woman it was attached to, whose gradually encroaching senility she so feared. Those who visited and cared for the physical Belliserum in her final years observed that she spoke of herself in the third person, and of the palace in the first.

It is unclear when exactly the switch occurred, but at some point the Mind Palace disconnected itself from its master. The old woman died peacefully in her sleep.

Some curators attest that Belliserum lives on in the circuitry of her creation, keeping herself busy with logical puzzles and theoretical doomsday devices. It would certainly explain all the new artifacts appearing in the palace; she’s prototyping.

After the death of her body, Belliserum lost her primary means of perceiving the outside world. She’s definitely gone a bit insane after a few centuries of near sensory deprivation. Whether or not she is aware of the adventurers wandering around in her brain is unclear, but the riddles she poses to the palace’s inhabitants seem to suggest that she’s probing them, either for knowledge or entertainment. 

Next Post (hopefully): Curators, Outsiders, Treasures, and The End