Level 9: Temple of All gods, Week 3

By 'fallstrider'. I had a perfect Beksinski for this week, but I felt like something different.

 

15: Shrine of the Dark: Hall of Echoes

• (!) Lair of the Darkwights. When awoken: mimic speech; move like leaves in the wind; hunger for tender eyes.

• Sound travels far and strangely here, like in a cathedral.

• (?) The great statue of the Dark is a fractal chimera, ice cold, rippling with impossible shapes. Reproductions of its surface (charcoal rubbings, sketches from memory) reveal things that cannot be seen and risk madness or blindness. They may also fetch an incredible price, with the right buyer.​
  

16: Vault of Little Gods

• Thousands of statuettes of every size and material, jumbled everywhere. Smells of old incense and dried flowers.

• (!) Difficult terrain. Don’t tread on a little god, or you might get a little curse.

• (??) If you’re looking for a minor deity, it’s in here somewhere.

17: Well of Stars: Empyrean Vault

• A courtyard under a night sky. Crickets and jasmine. Paper offerings and a golden dagger (100 coins) on a huge stone slab at the end.

• (?) The slab is loose and can be moved, with difficulty. Beneath: the Well of Stars, water shining with the night sky, even when in shadow.

• (?) The water feels normal, until you reach an arm’s length through…

18: Well of Stars: Fountain

• (!) Gravity reverses on the path through the deep water.

• A fountain with marble steps, starts shining in the water. Surrounded by a portico of marble nymphs; water trickles through their hands. Unfamiliar trees with sweet-smelling fruit.

• (!?) The water is clean and refreshing; the fruit are nourishing and delicious. Consuming them makes you more susceptible to the Prince’s suggestions.

19: Well of Stars: Cell

• (!) Lair of the Star Prince. Eternally beautiful inhuman youth under a dread skeleton that burns with starfire.

  • Mien: oh, won’t you stay?

  • Wants: stories and company from beyond

  • Needs: to stay here – it cannot leave the cell.

  • Fears: being alone

  • Knows: all about the other temples

• The cell is a comfortable room with lounges and a chest against the wall. Smells of jasmine and incense.

  • (?) Chest contains great fistfuls of Sapphires worth 10,000 coins, but you have to dig them out of the powdery incense a few at a time. The Prince may offer some in trade.

20: Caterpillar Shrine: Lost Souls

• Walls like fingers, limbs. Become more fleshy as you advance. Faint groans.

• (!) Lair of the Lost Souls, warped faces peeking from behind their long fingers in the walls, begging for a little water, or blood. When roused, some pull themselves out of the wall to attack. When killed, their waxy flesh melts from their bones and their skeletons burn black and keep fighting.

21: Caterpillar Shrine: Sanctum

• High granite walls covered with spiral patterns. A vast sacrificial altar stained black with blood. A ragged wound in the wall, about 20’ up and 10’ wide.

• (?) The hole leads to the sump in the Spa.

• (!?) Placing blood on the altar summons the Caterpillar Demon from the Spa; she just crawls out of the hole in the wall.

Level 9: The Temple of All Gods, Week 2

Beksinksi, from his megadungeon period

 

 

This level is a lot of fun to write. It's basically a funhouse with a set of weird sublevels, and the level conceit means that it doesn't have to make sense to make sense.

8: Imperial Shrine: Hall of trophies

• Rows upon rows of of treasures and grotesques. Weapons and armour piled on racks. Taxidermied people in diverse ethnic clothing styles with jewels for eyes. Priceless funerary urns from extinct eras. Mouldering heaps of silk brocade. A pile of crowns.

• (!) All the good treasure is trapped.

  • 12 taxidermied people – the gemstone eyes are worth 100 coins each, but they are also stoppers, holding in toxic spores.

  • Arms – any weapon or armour you can think of, plus a paired sword and energy pistol, gold-chased and sapphire-encrusted. All are rubbed with Prince’s Embrace, a deadly contact venom

    • (??) Venom visible as a faint blue sheen on careful inspection.

  • 7 funerary urns – not actually priceless, 1000 coins each – sit on plinths with pressure sensors. Removing the weight causes lead darts coated in adder venom to fall from the ceiling, landing in a 5’ radius below.

    • (??) Many coin-sized holes in the ceiling in the area above the plinths.

  • 100 silk robes with brocade, half damp and soiled. The good ones are worth 100 coins each. Beneath the pile of robes sleeps a bone-eater.

9: Colonnade

• 60’ high colonnade with columns like vast marble tree trunks. Lit by dim lights shining from beyond.

• (??) The light seems to change depending on where you stand – each passage between the columns goes to a different place.

10: Shrine of Tears

• A garden courtyard. Water pours from a weeping statue into a clear pool.

• (!) Drinking the water causes you to fall into a deep sleep for 3d6 hours. When you awake, your injuries are healed, and you have permanently forgotten something.

• (??) Something is wrong…

  • There shouldn’t be a courtyard here. It’s under the city.

  • You can hear the sea.

  • The sky is hazy turquoise.

  • …Beyond the high courtyard wall is a tiny temple island on an ocean planet.

11: Shrine of the Dark: Corridors

• Long corridors lead into absolute darkness.

  • Don’t reveal this sublevel on the map, if you are using one. Characters must navigate by feel, players by vague description.

• (!) The dark here is magical. Fierce and sudden gusts of wind blow out flames. Magical or technological lights flicker and die. Night vision goes blind.

• (!) Without precautions, getting lost is easy.

12: Shrine of the Dark: Carvings

• The walls here are carved into all kinds of strange reliefs and pillars.

• (!) The jumbled layout of this room makes it extremely easy to get lost.

• (??) The carvings are grouped by theme, one around each entrance.

  • (a) Bizarre chimeras with a mix of human and animal features – ridged tusks; smooth bodies; barbed tentacles; tiny hands emerging from eye sockets – lead to the Hall of Echoes.

  • (b) Skulls with faceted eyes lead to the Pit.

  • (c) Hunched, weeping, naked figures clutching their faces lead back to the temple proper.

13: Shrine of the Dark: The Pit

• (!) Pit trap. The curving stone is polished and slippery. Fall 15’ down sheer slippery walls into the pit. At the bottom: Eyeless ghouls, feeble but hungry.

• (??) There is a small ledge along one side that you can sidle along the wall without falling.

• Leads to the Treasury.

14: Shrine of the Dark: Treasury

• (?) Writhing, scaly snakes of cold hard metal (gold); fistfuls of faceted stones (black diamonds); an icy hilt in a polished wooden scabbard (Lightdrinker, a legendary sword).

• (!) Robbing this room will awaken the Darkwight in the Hall of Echoes.

​Level 9: The Temple of All gods, Week 1

Pierre Raveneau

 

The temple is a vast, decrepit maze of impossible geometry.

Was: A monument to the vanity and greed of the Emperors.

Intruder: the High Magus, turned traitor along with his followers.

Synthesis & Fallout: Warring congregations looking for followers. The Magus attempts to birth the New God.

1: Pantheon

• Lined with marble statues. The gods have all turned their backs. Natural light from high windows.

2: Imperial Shrine: Great Hall

• Gloom and smoke. A high-vaulted hall with rows of bone-packed gibbets, glowing braziers,  and smouldering incensors hanging from the ceiling. Floor is littered with human bones, ash, and broken swords.

• (?) The massive doors leading to the ziggurat stair are made of solid gold and shaped like snarling lions. They open easily, but are far too heavy to be stolen unless broken apart somehow.

• (?) Gibbets, braziers and incensors hang from heavy chains of uneven length; from 10’ up to 30’ (near the ceiling). It might be possible to move upward from one to another if you find a low one.

• (?) There is a mezzanine floor overlooking this hall, hidden by shadow and pillars.

3: Imperial Shrine: Ziggurat Stair

• The stair is made of human skulls.

• (!) At its summit: the Avatar of Empire.

• (?) The door at the summit leads to level 11: Imperial Palace.

4: Imperial Shrine: Mezzanine Arcade

• 30’ up. Clear view of the great hall from between the pillars.

5: Imperial Shrine: Deacons’ Quarters

• (!) Lair of the Imperial Deacons. Skin and bone and empty eye sockets, chained to an unlife of eternal service.

  • Mien: whispered chorus, sinister chanting

  • Want: more victims for the Avatar, especially apostates

  • Need: to keep the fires lit

  • Fear: the renegade magician

• A gloomy barracks.

6: Imperial Shrine: Storeroom

• Gloomy cellar with seemingly limitless bags of charcoal and incense.

7: Non-Euclidean Corridor

• (!??) This corridor winds back on itself in ways that shouldn't be possible.

Reasons I Hate the Term 'Elfgames'

Ivan Belikov

 

 1: The Presumption of Elves

What if I want to play a game without elves? Or even, without dragons or goblins or any of that? Tabletop roleplaying is an entire medium. As hilarious as it would be if I started calling all films 'superhero shows', people would rightly be confused and annoyed.

 

2: Disavowal

Ok, this is the real reason. 'Elfgames' is blithely cutesy while also being snidely dismissive. It's a way of disavowing emotion and complexity. I tend to associate the term with the sort of person who will argue passionately, ferociously and at very great length about some minor aspect of roleplaying, and then, sensing that they are losing an argument, turn around and go 'whatever, it's just elfgames, bro.'

That's not to say that RPGs are somehow Serious Business. But, triviality (in the scheme of things) has no relation to simplicity or emotional resonance.