Ziggurat Plaza, Week 4

Ben Andrews

 

 

 22: Imperial Stair Tower

• Locked (extreme difficulty – purple key or imperial blood unlocks) and magically sealed bedchamber of the captive princess.
• Small barred widows allow a view to/from the courtyard.
• (?) Spiral stair goes down to the spa and up to the palace.
• (!) Lair of the Princess of Sorrow, Erhua. Appears to be someone the PCs know, bound by iron shackles (the shackles are magical and she cannot remove them herself) . Her chains are long enough to allow her free roam of the room. In her true form, Erhua is petulant and sadistic in blood-drenched feathers and grasping talons
  • mien: plaintive whispers, always about herself or her persona
  • needs: to feed on human blood – she can survive in hibernation without eating, but must to feast to regain her full strength.
  • wants: revenge on her parents, who put her here
  • fears: the same
  • knows: the layout of the palace level and how to get there

23: Vigilator Bays

• (!) Lair of the vigilators. Those not on patrol are always here recharging. The recharging ones are dead to the world, but there is a high chance each tick that one will either wake up or return to recharge.
• Rows of alcoves with brass flutes and prongs. Some contain a sleeping vigilator. Workbench with spare parts and d half-assembled automaton.
• (?) The work area has all kinds of parts and doodads.

24: Warehouse

• Rows and rows of shelves lined with pots, chests, sacks and bottles.
• (??) Many units of flour (stale but edible), wine (mostly vinegar), charcoal (fuel), fat and oil (somewhat rancid).

25: Grand Arcade

• Curving marble path with a view of the city below. Planters filled with spiny weeds; apartment doors between the marble columns and arches.
• (!) A vigilator patrols this path.

26: Empty Townhouses (downstairs)

• A row of townhouses, mostly empty aside from the odd bit of rubble or broken furniture. A search may reveal… (d6)
  • 1 = nothing
  • 2 = a child’s doll
  • 3 = 2d6 coins
  • 4 = an antique vase worth 10 coins (delicate!)
  • 5 = a lot of functional but worthless crockery
  • 6 = the husk of a giant beetle grub, long empty

27: Empty Townhouses (upstairs)

• Upstairs balconies overlook the city.

28: Beetle Lair (downstairs)

• The entrance to this townhouse has collapsed, and part of the balcony has caved in along with it. A truly awful smell emanates from with, ripe and rancid.
• (!) The carrion beetles bring the wyvern’s discarded meals here and lay their young in the rotting flesh. The floor is covered in bones, hair, rotting meat, and pale grubs the size of a person. The grubs are mostly defenceless but spew corrosive bile, and their parents will not be happy with any intruders.
• (??) Beneath the whole stinking mess, buried under bones and filth, is a great treasure.

29: Beetle Lair (upstairs)

• (!) Lair of the carrion beetles. As with all lairs, they may not be home, but random encounters are much more likely.
• The room is completely bare aside from dried blood smeared all over the floor, especially toward the stairs. The smell from downstairs is overpowering.

30: Warzone

• Signs of battle: husks of giant lavender beetles, carved up and scorched; a dismembered vigilator automaton.

31: Courtroom Balcony

• Overlooks the courtroom in the Fortress of Doors (level 5). Dusty but intact chaises longues and coffee table.

Ziggurat Plaza, Week 3

Another wonderful Ivan Belikov.

 

15: Freight Elevator

• Sliding brass doors hide a dingy lift.

• (?) No power – doors can be pried open, manual crank on the wall slowly lowers or raises the perforated metal platform. Goes ~100’ down, to the green room in the Fortress of Doors (level 5); or 20’ up, to the Factory (level 10).

16: Market of Grotesques

• Bizarre statuettes of camphor, ambergris, dragon ivory, sandalwood. Wolf-headed nymphs, melting cherubs, moth-gargoyles.

• (?) 2d6 statues are worth a few coins each.

• (??) One is a cult icon for someone’s god. Magically potent.

17: Market of flesh

• Gloom, iron wall restraints, stained floor.

18: Market of Pharmaca

• Rows of little drawers with every kind of herb, drug, and incense.

• (??) Searching can reveal a specific thing if you know what to look for. Otherwise, roll:

  • 1 = health potion

  • 2 = exotic contact venom – blue powder in a tiny clay pot, 2d6 doses

  • 3 = crumbled deep lotus, narcotic and anaesthetic, 2d6 doses

  • 4 = rare incense, worth 5 coins

  • 5 = dehydrated star larva. Add water and apply to wound (or anywhere on the body) and it will crawl in and take up residence as mutant, symbiotic organ.

  • 6 = powdered demon, 1d6 doses. Imbibe to fall into a trance and astrally project.

19: Vigilator Alcoves

• 3 alcoves with brass hooks and spouts.

• (!) 50% chance of a vigilator in one of them; otherwise, check each tick to see if it returns.

20: Teahouse

• A charming and spacious teahouse. Upper story has a balcony with a nice view of the courtyard of bones.

• (?) Hardwood furniture in disrepair; 20 ticks of fuel. 10 slots of fine porcelain cups, pots, & plates worth 3 coins per slot, each, but good luck transporting them.

21: Teahouse Kitchens

• Pots, pans, range

• (!?) There’s an ooze in a casserole dish in the oven.

Ziggurat Plaza, Week 2

Finally, a dragon in my dungeon. And a magnificent one, by Ivan Belikov.

8: West Guard Tower, Lower

• Wreckage of a bulbous invigilator, spilled across the room.

• (??) Random mechanical wreckage – lenses, gold wire, a weird crystal – worth a few coins. Maybe something useful for a tinker?

9: West Guard Tower, Upper

• Musky and strange air.

• (!) Lair of the Wyvern, Gyezlakur

  • 50% chance to be home. If away, test for return each tick of the clock.

  • mien: venomous, playful; a flying housecat-scorpion

  • wants: entertainment

  • needs: fresh meat

  • fears: the demons in the spa – they compete for food, and it can’t fight them all at once

  • knows: the everything that happens in the open below

  • treasure: a pile of worthless sentimental baubles; beneath which, an antigravity harness, still on the skeleton of the unfortunate victim, along with their gilt dagger.

10: Great Stair Arcade

• Tiles mostly intact. Marble columns wrapped with gods and beasts, carved in relief.

• (?) The arcade provides a covered path between the two courtyards, so that people can pass from the plaza door to the temple stair with only a small chance of being spotted by the guard towers.

11: Anatomical Theatre

• A small theatre or stadium with a stone table in its centre.

• (?) Old surgical instruments.

12: Food Market

• Airy vaulted hall, lit by the courtyard.

• (?) Smashed amphorae.

• (??) Two intact amphorae are filled with dates and saffron, respectively.

13: Crippled Invigilator

• (!) A rotund robotic invigilator with broken legs. Its death ray still works.

  • Mien: it’s a robot cop

  • Wants: to destroy intruders

  • Needs: repairs to its legs

  • Fears: the wyvern

  • Knows: everything about this level

14: Arms Market

• Short vaulted hall. Brass gates are held with a huge padlock. 4 large hardwood chests lie beyond.

• (?) The lock is rusted and can probably be broken or cut.

• (?) The chests are locked, and have classic poison needle traps laced with blood poison.

  • chest #1 = an antigravity harness, leather straps with shining metal globes and a brass dial on the belt to adjust the gravity.

  • chest #2 = masterwork suit of custom plate armour, polished to a mirror finish, engraved with amaranth leaves, lined with crimson velvet. ⅙ chance of fitting you without alterations.

  • chest #3 = a stack of 6 vicious-looking daggers

  • chest #4 = an energy rifle with silver and mother-of-pearl casing.

Ziggurat Plaza, Week 1

Veli Nyström

 

Was: central locus for the city. Forum, luxury markets, townhouses, stores, courtyards, guard towers, shrine, freight elevator, crucifixion mast, homes, slave barracks, temple entrances. Guarded by mechanical Invigilators of various types, and death beams from the towers. A demonstration of wealth and power to the world below.

Intruder: wyvern lives in the broken guard tower

Synthesis & Fallout: silent city of traps and lost treasures. The wyvern soars across the countryside, plucking victims and leaving them on the crucifixion mast. The invigilators have gone berserk, trying and failing to destroy the wyvern.

By design, this is not an emotionally strong level (a break from the spa), but there is resonance in the juxtaposition of brutal imperial order and the chaotic violence of the current denizens.

[this approach to dungeon conceptualisation owes a lot to Jesse Burneko]


1: Plaza Door

• The great basalt lion doors are slightly ajar.
• (?) Joins to the stair in the Forest Garden.
• (!) The Peacock Knight stands just outside, with his back to the gate.

2: Courtyard of Ashes

• Ringed by a peristyle with half its tiles missing. Flagstones raked with burn marks and ashes. Old guard tower looms over marble statues, trickling fountain, scraggly trees bursting from the stone.
• (!) The tower has a death ray and will target anyone who leaves the peristyle without the correct insignia. It only looks down, not up.
• (??) The tower has a crystal eye, much like the one in the outer walls of the city below.

3: East Guard Tower (lower)

• (!) An invigilator robot with grimy lenses sleeps in its alcove. If it senses intruders, it wakes up and attempts to apprehend them. The robot is mostly blind.
• (?) A tight spiral stair leads to the top.

4: East Guard Tower (upper)

• (!) The death ray lens, like the beam of a lighthouse. The lens can’t actually focus on anything in the room, but will attempt to track and destroy targets outside.
• A hardwood bureau and chair. Drawer is filled with moths.

5: Temple Stair

• The next section of the ziggurat stair climbs to colossal brass doors shaped like upheld human hands.
• (?) The doors are unlocked, but heavy, and groan when shifted. It smells like incense inside. The path leads to the Temple of All Gods (level 9).

6: Fountain

• White marble spout in the shape of a satyr’s mouth. The flow is a trickle, dribbling down its chin.
• (?) The water is clean and good.

7: Courtyard of Bones

• (!) The wyvern lairs in the broken guard tower that overlooks this courtyard.
• Flagstones scattered with bones of all kinds, under scraggly lemon trees that just from gaps in the stones.
• (?) The lemons are small and tough, but good.

Health Spa, Week 4

Anastasios Gionis, again.

 

 22: Courtyard Stair

• (!) Lair of a Typhon Demon, dozing on a bed of skulls at the foot of the staircase. One of its seven heads is always awake, whispering to itself.
• Dead trees, natural light from high windows. Whispering fountain foaming blood.

(upper level)

23: Sun Room

• (!) Lair of a shrike demon brood. Roll:
  • 1-2 = 50% home, sleeping
  • 3-4 = all home, squabbling over a messy goat carcass
  • 5-6 = all away, but may return via the balcony with fresh prey at any moment.
• Wrecked chairs, tables, and lounges. Whispers of the typhon downstairs. Heavy shutters to the balcony are wide open. Floor smeared with black feathers and bloodstains.
• (?) Shutters can be barred from the inside.
• (??) Traymobile against one wall, miraculously intact, with a silver platter (5 coins) and crystal decanter (5 coins).

24: Balcony

• A great view of the city and gardens. Marble is scored with talon marks. Directly below (30’) is the picnic area of the gardens.

25: Library

• Locked with the gold key.
• Weirdly untouched. A musty little room that may have the book you need.

26: Hall of Vapours

• Connects to ventilation shaft. A pleasant breeze from below that smells like iron.
• (!) Filled with ripe egg sacs, ready to burst with leaper demons.

27: Office of the Keybearer

• Stately office with furniture of oily hardwood. The Keybearer sits the the desk in his armour, keys on a gold chain around his neck, sword on the table.
• (!) The keybearer is gilt armour filled with demonic mutation and gore. It may or may not be lucid enough to parley, or fly into a destructive rage.
• (?) They gold key opens every door in the level except the imperial stair.

28: Refectory

• Kitchen and dining area, ruined and replete with throbbing shrike demon eggs.
• (!) You know the drill with demon eggs.

29: Upper Foyer

• Two locked doors that lead to higher levels.
  • (A) Marble lion door. Stairwell to the ziggurat city. Locked (gold key).
  • (B) Granite dragon door. Elevator to the highest. Locked and magically sealed (purple key).

30: Imperial Infirmar

• Stately marble hall lit by high windows.
• (!) The young prince of the blood, a gigantic bloated child with biomechanical cables connecting his body to the walls. Scores of demon grubs hang from his body. His limbs are bound to the walls with black fleshy lashes.
  • The prince moans and cries, or thrashes and screams when agitated in any way. This will attract the ire of nearby demons.
  • He cannot move unless his restraints are cut.
  • The prince has the mind of a traumatised child, and remembers only pain and that is parents left him here to cure his illness. He is seldom lucid and may become violent.
  • He is kept alive with a constant supply of human sacrifices to the spa’s machinery of immortality. Stopping the supply or cutting him loose will kill him. The demons feed and spawn from his immortal flesh, and want him where he is.
  • The caterpillar demon visits him sometimes, telling him stories and feeding him milk.

Health Spa, Week 3

Anastasios Gionis

 

 15: Trenches: Armoury

• Rows of bizarre organisms feeding from teats in the walls.
• (??) These are bioweapons – spine launchers, acid spitters, and claw-grapnels.
• (!?) Each is a parasite that bonds to its host’s hand when touched, grabbing on and biting in (the pain fades after a minute). To remove the parasite, kill it. It increases your hunger instead of using ammunition.

16: Trenches: Sacrifice Wall

• Row of figures behind translucent membranes set into the wall. There are a few vacant orifices in the row.
• (?) Closed orifices are filled with clear viscous liquid, and can be slashed open.
• (??) Only one figure shows signs of life, feebly kicking at the membrane when someone approaches. This is Dima, a goatherd abducted from his village by shrike demons (or maybe he is someone the PCs are looking for?).

 

17: Trenches: Heart

• A vast bulbous thing, joined to huge black tubes.
• (??) It’s a lot like a heart; a pump system.
• (?) The heart operates the transporter system. All the canals join this chamber.

18: Transporter Canals

• (there are several of these, marked on the map and serving to connect the sublevels and provide shortcuts. Each is a pair, sending material from one location to another. They are all one-way, though you can ‘cheat’ by breaking the walls, which also renders the canal ineffective.)
• Irising portal of hard translucent panels. Opens when touched, spilling a residue of clear, viscous fluid that smells like blood. Floor and ceiling have closed portals that look similar. Grey walls have the texture of fingernails.
• (!?) The transporter begins to operate automatically a few seconds after some one steps in. The door slowly irises closed, then the chamber fills with fluid, the other doors open, and the contents of the chamber are flushed through arterial canals to the destination.

20: Staff Rooms

• Gloomy room filled with scattered old bones and ruined furniture. The wall screens are long rotted away.

21: Massage Rooms

• Lit by skylights. Tables and divider screens are falling apart.
• (??) Room C has a skeleton with a gold ring, earrings, and necklace worth 10 coins each.

 

Health Spa, Week 2

Anastasios Gionis

 

 

 8: Ventilation Shaft

• This room runs up/down 60’. The walls are sheer marble with no incline.
• (??) Prints of blood and viscous fluid on on side, as if made by (??) a hundred little hands.

9: Caldarium

• Steamy bath of bubbling blood.
• (?) Bath is filled with human bones.

10: Frigidarium

• Doors blocked from the inside with stone tables.
• Chilly room filled with rank and frigid water. Several human skeletons in rotted rags.
• (??) Skeletons hide knives and a gilt water pitcher worth 10 coins.
• (?) The water is dirty but not notably harmful.

11: Capillary Trenches

• Cramped hall with walls of bone and pulsing biomachinery, winding and sloping in 3 dimensions. Floor is sticky with viscous goop and scattered with occasional human bones.
• (?) Some rooms are divided only by fleshy membranes which can be cut open.

12: Trenches: Ichor Pits

• Rotten smell. Knee-deep in opalescent, corrosive ichor. Magically potent, disruptive to spellcasting.

13: Trenches: Pit Beneath the Mouth

• Another ichor pit, surrounded by fleshy membranes that can be slashed. Every turn, there is a chance some mule demons will come (the membranes part for them) to bring victims to the sacrifice wall.

14: Trenches: Demon Creche

• A writhing mass of larval mule demons, loudly moaning for food when disturbed.

July, Week 1: The Health Spa

Anastasios Gionis

 

I'm back! Working on my dungeon during July wasn't really feasible, so I've spent the last week feverishly catching up. I'll post last month's rooms over the next few days, and then move on the August (which will also be posted a bit late, probably).

Anyway, here's the Health Spa level. This is hopefully the last of my body-horror levels, after which I can move on to more wholesome forms of evil. Thematically, the lower levels of this dungeon were always supposed to be messy, corrupt, ugly, and compromised in various ways. As we move to the final sequence of levels, the atmosphere should be a bit more... Pristine? Rarefied? Clinical? That sort of thing.

 

Wandering  monsters are various types of demon (mule, shrike, leaper, ogre).

1: Foyer

• Leads to the pomegranate doors. Dark, musty. Floor mosaic of a spiralling ouroboros.
• (?) Periodic, rumbling, groaning sound from the North.

2: Hall of Titans

• Vast hall of echoing white marble. Titanic pillars sculpted into godlike nude men and women hold up the roof. Natural light falls from high windows on the East side.
• (?) The distant wails and groans of a hurt child, somewhere within.

3: Sacrificial Mouth

• An empty room with a circular, flower-like pattern in the centre of the floor. Glyphs are carved into the walls. Faint rotting smell.
• (!) Trap: Stepping into the centre of the floor causes the stone petals to iris open, dropping whoever is standing 30’ down into the digestive sump, where they will be knee-deep in opalescent, magic-inhibiting, slowly damaging ichor.
• (??) Faint seams between the petals in the floor.
• (?) Mule demons come here periodically to deliver sacrifices to the pit.

4: Storeroom

• Gloomy cellar with rusted iron restraints drilled into the walls. Cracked amphorae on the opposite wall.
• (?) One amphora is intact, with a bunch of dried lotus petals in the bottom (2d6 doses).

5: Crumbling Facade

• Marble reliefs cracked and shattered, revealing complex, oozing, pulsing biomachinery.

6: Changerooms

• (!) Lair of a pile of dozing mule demons, guarding the way to the baths.

7: Baths

• Lit by oculus skylight. Sound of babbling water.
• Gorgeous domed bathhouse of white marble, with cascading fountains spouting blood from the mouths of frolicking statues. The blood runs down into terraced baths and troughs, lapping and spilling across the floor.
• (!) Lair of the caterpillar demon, queen of the spa, who sleeps beneath the blood when she is not visiting the prince. One hundred soft sticky hands, one hundred teats, one hundred cruel bony spines, one hundred teeth.
  • Needs: human sacrifices to keep the prince alive, to provide nourishment for her young (raiders in the city currently assist)
  • Wants: to open the locked Imperial Doors to the level above.
  • Fears: magic that is not her own
  • Knows: the layout of the city & the surrounding countryside
  • Treasure: the prince’s protective amulet, a clutch of demon eggs