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| 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.
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