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