Midden, Week 3

An homage to Morrowind by artist 'apathie'. I wasn't thinking of this when I wrote 'ash ghoul', but it fits.

 

15: Hall of the Right

An ossuary made entirely of right arms and legs.

16: Incinerator

A room-sized furnace with a heavy stone door on great iron hinges.. Every surface has a thin layer of ashe.

A narrow passage with a smaller but similar door leads down to the city of ashes.

17: Hall of Hooks

A cold room, hatched with dense layers of black and brown stains. It smells like rust. The walls are covered in long nails pointing inward and up at 45 degree angles.

(?) A heavy metal grate leads down to the blood pit.

18: Blood Pit

Dark, low ceiling, hideous smell, sticky floor. White, sweet-smelling flowers burst from the walls.

(!) The stick floor is a carnivorous blood ooze.

19: Hall of Skulls

A vast ossuary made from skulls of every kind, arranged into a spectacular set of swirling patterns.

(?) A narrow stair leads down to the necropolis.

20: Jewel Midden

A glittering pile of gold and jewels beneath a heavy grate.

(??) True jewels, pretty rocks, gold, bronze, and glass baubles are mixed together; sorting them takes a long time. Raw baubles (to be sorted later) are worth 10 coins a bag.

Low passages lead to the blood pit and city of ashes.

Region: City of Ashes

Restless and vengeful dead lie under piles of dirt and ashes, discarded and forgotten.

21: The Unwanted

Something like a mine works, filled with the ruin of crude houses made from heavy stones, potshards, and mine tailings. Ash covers all and heaps in every corner.

(!) Many, many mindless ghouls slumber under ash piles and the ruins of their homes.

Midden, Week 2

The cleaning demon is a Beksinski painting, but worse. Heavily inspired by the recycling monster in The Stars Are Legion.

 

 8: Fisher’s Grotto

• A little room in the rock, connected to the boardwalk.
• A hoarder’s room, filled with weird detritus & crude fishing rods. If you need something, it might be here.
• (!) Lair of the Fisher, an antisocial mutant. Likes to trick intruders into upsetting the Judge. Might be persuaded to trade.

Region: Ordered Halls

The cleaning demon makes its home here, ordering the filth of the midden.

9: Hall of Leavings

• Ascends from the wound in the earth.
• A rough tunnel, like a mineshaft. The floor is covered with crunching layers of worthless human possessions – dice,  wretched clothing, clay amulets, fractured lamps, knucklebones, soiled ragdolls.
• (!) DIfficult terrain due to the detritus. Movement makes noise.

10: Hall of Swords

• A vaulted gallery, its sides piled with weapons and armour of all kinds, broken, corroded, chipped, and ruined.
• (??) Whichever weapon or piece of armour you want, a successful search will reveal a crappy but usable version.

11: Cleaning Demon’s Lair

• (!) Lair of the shaggy, many-jointed nightmare beast that tends the midden. Intruders are to be placed in the Hall of Hooks until it can sort them out.
• An immaculate stone room that smells like death. The reek is overpowering.

14: Hall of the Left

• An ossuary made entirely of left arms and legs.

Midden, Week 1

1: Wound in the Earth

• An indescribable smell. Air thick with gloom, flies and rot.
• The ground is sticky black earth heaped with bones, paving stones, broken statues, roof tiles, broken weapons, tufts of hair or fur, and potshards. A widening chasm reaches 90’ up to the open sky. Gnarled bushes with purple leaves clutch the walls.
• This is the base of the midden on L1.
• Two rough, shallow sets of stairs are bored from stone and earth:
• one descends slightly, to somewhere damp. One ascends, littered with broken trinkets.

Region: Toxic Sump

(!) Radiation sickness (start a clock), centred on the Headless Judge.

2: Radiating Mire

• Descends from the wound in the earth.
• A narrow earth tunnel. Ankle-high water glows phosphorescent blue the dark. Clusters of strange plants and fungi burst from the floor and walls.
• (!) The far exit is blocked by a cluster of explosive bluefruit.
• (!) Do not, under any circumstances, drink the water.

3: Hall of Gods

• A vast stone room with phosphorescent puddles. Rows of statues of every size are stacked at every angle.
• (?) If you worship a god, you can probably find it here.

4: Drowned Ghoul Lair

• (!) Bloated husks of men, curled foetal against the walls, filthy water at their ankles. They rise hungry if disturbed.

5: Colossus Boardwalk

• A maze of rickety wooden scaffolding, chained to headless stone colossi.
• (?) The colossus sump is 100’ below. The water glows faintly.

6: Colossus Sump

• Phosphorescent blue water, opaque and 30’ deep (up to the knees of the giants?).

7: Headless Judge

• This colossus has a break in its chest. Inhuman viscera throb within. One hand holds a colossal executioner’s sword.
• (!) The colossus sleeps, but intruders will be punished if it is woken.

Water Roads, Week 4

 New Area: The lost path

The Air in this section is much better, aside from the Mole Midden. Only real danger is the Bone Eater. Molerats avoid this place unless lured here for some reason.

22: Mole Midden

• A reeking pit, 30’ down, filled with detritus. The walls are sheer and slippery. Fungi cluster in the bottom walls like pale blue balloons. Smells like death.
• (!) Fungi are bluefruit. Explode on collision, making a loud sound and releasing toxic spores.

23: Singing Cavern

• Wind whistles through this craggy cave tunnel.
• (?) humans can squeeze through. Too narrow for the Bone Eater.

24: Lair of the Bone Eater

• Smells like wet dog. Floor is littered with tiny fragments of bone.
• (!) The great shaggy shambler nests here. Only eats dead bones, but not averse to speeding up the process.

25: The Secret Garden

• Dimly lit – natural light shines from sinkhole high above.
• A large cavern filled with pale, purple-leafed foliage. A little spring trickles into a small pond. Alarmingly large frogs luxuriate in the cool air.
• (?) The frogs are peaceable.
• (?) The water is cold, clean, refreshing, and completely safe.
• (?) The pond is deep – a sinkhole that leads to the Sunken Passage.

27: Sunken Passage

• Completely submerged, dark natural cavern. 20’ ascent to the Secret Garden on one end, and Lotus Garden on the other.
• (?) The faintest of lights from the direction of the Secret Garden.
• (??) A skeleton is huddled on the floor, clutching something that glimmers – Headtaker, a demon-possessed two-handed sword of bronze.

28: Secret Garden Skylight

• Forty-five degree climb through a narrow, craggy passage leads to the base of the cliffs in the city’s side, beneath the storm water drain.

29: Narrow Caves

• Winding passages of craggy stone. Crawlspace only.

Surprise Twist: Back to the Sunken Passages

30: Temple Treasury

• A bare cellar of smoothly fitted stones. There is a hole in one wall where the masonry has collapsed, large enough to crawl through (leads to narrow caves). A stone chest sits against the opposite wall, with a cat-sized gargoyle carved from the same stone as its flat lid.
• (!) The gargoyle will animate and bite the hands of anyone who tries to move the lid, naturally.
• (?) Inside the chest: 4d6 silver ingots.

31: Secret  Sanctuary

• A circular room with a circle of nine cracked clay vessels within.
• (?) Each vessel holds a fistful of lapis lazuli beads worth 10 coins.
• (!) The beads are cursed – the  New God of the deep will know the thieves.
• (??) A secret door connects to the Leaky Valve room – just push on the wall.

Water Roads, Week 3

Back yet again for the week's rooms. This time things have taken a disturbing turn. I've actually been holding back on the fleshy, chthonic body horror of this region, leaving it mostly implied, but I'll be glad to move on to a different sublevel tomorrow.

15: Cave entrance

• Easy to miss, a small natural cave of rusty grey stone. About 4’ high.

• From outside, the air feels cool, damp and musty.

• From inside, there is a drought of dry desert air.

16: Nursery

• A dozen molerat pups tucked into alcoves in the waxy walls; they lean their heads out and mewl for food as creatures pass them.

17: Guard Room

• (!) A pair of hulking, bipedal, unsettlingly human-like molerat Hunters. Their arms are tipped with dagger-like claws.

• The hunters are impassive, but will move to block intruders.

18: Queen’s Room

• (!) The molerat god, an ogre-like creature, still, with a head covered in glassy black eyes. Bodies of molerats and humans dangle from Her back and sides – their heads fused to Her flesh.

• (!) A pair of impassive Hunters flank the chamber.

• (!) The god’s emissary, an eyeless former human chewing a deep lotus flower, sits by her feet. Offers interesting intruders the option of joining with the god and abandoning their cares, instead of being eaten.

• (?) The God’s pheremones are what allow the hive to function in its current state. Her death would throw them into strife.

19: Lotus Garden

• A lush thicket of bioluminescent flowers. Smells like death.

• (?) Deep lotus is a well-known narcotic and entheogen that only grows underground.

20: Scriptorium

• An uneven domed vault, its entire waxy surface carved with bizarre sigils. A lumpy statue made from wax and broken jewellery sits in the centre. Something crouches in the corner, busy with its work.

• (!) The eyeless Molehuman Magus scratches runes with a knife. He can be persuaded to part with occult knowledge, in exchange for the murder of the god, so that his lover can ascend in Her place.

21: The Princess Usurper

• An eyeless Molehuman with a pair of Hunters. She lovingly sharpens their claws with a file while humming tunelessly.
  

• (?) The princess responds to all conversation with 'mmm hmm' and 'ahh'.
  

Water Roads, Week 2

Second Section: Qanat

8: Qanat

• A long, broad tunnel with a very slight incline down to the East. The stone floor is a little damp.

• (?) Smell of must and guano from the direction of the qanat station.

9: Qanat Station

• Carved stone handholds descend 20’ from the covered wellhouse to the qanat below. Smell of musk and guano from inside the tunnel.

• (!) Lair of land bats. By night they pace the desert in search of game.
  

• (?) Dead stone shells of old farmhouses cluster around the wellhouse. We are in the desert outside the city, now.

Third section: Molerat Hive.

Air is damp and musky. Oxygen is low; mild hypoxia will eventually set in. Molerats are generally placid, but will take easily subdued intruders to the larder. Tunnels are low enough that humans must crawl or duck, but the rooms are quite large.

10: Replete Hall

• A broad hall, lined with something waxy and organic in shades of olive, pink and brown. A row of bulbous, pale, hairless mammalian creatures sleeps against the wall.

• (?) Tapping a repletes face causes it to vomit a little sweet liquid – this serves as both food and water.

• (?) Occasionally, a worker will trot by to deliver food or take nectar.

11: Foraging Tunnels

• Winding, nearly identical tunnels.

• (!) Navigation checks to avoid getting lost. Don’t forget the oxygen track.

12: Midden

• Filled with various gnawed bones, including human ones.

13: Larder

• A captive man sleeps here, apparently insensate. Various vegetable roots are piled around him.
  

• (?) The man, Skiff,  is drugged and suffering from hypoxia. He was captured on the surface after getting lost in the desert and brought down here, along with a friend, who was eaten.

14: Ventilator

• A molerat with enormous webbed hands fans the air listlessly.

Water Roads, Week 1

We're now under the Necropolis, with sunken shrine and some other weird stuff that connects to that. This is actually the bottom level of this dungeon -- the main dungeon goes up, in the various ziggurat-like terraces of the central fortress -- but it will provide a useful shortcut to the overworld (or a secret entry to the necropolis, I guess).

The Drowned Fane

1: Shrine

    A chamber with a high vaulted ceiling, 20’ up. Pitch black. Submerged, except the top 10’ of the vault. Completely submerged passage to the East; short submerged passage to the west. Dirt-blackened reliefs of waves and playful dolphins.
    (?) Floor is littered with offerings that glitter in lamp or magelight, including a golden bracelet and 3d6 gold coins.
    (!?) There is a hole in the centre of the floor, leading to the abyssal lair of the infant god.
    (!) Oxygen in the air pocket in the ceiling is real but limited.
    (!) Stealing the offering coins raises the alarm level.


2: Sunken Passages

    Completely submerged passages with no air pockets. A faint current pulls toward the South.


3: Spiral Stair

    Hewn from the stone and rising out of the water. Water trickles down, echoing down the long spiral.



4: Lair of the New God

    60’ down, a rounded cavern formed naturally of gleaming jade, lit by the bioluminescence of the slumbering, many-legged child of the deep.
    (!) The god sleeps, unless alerted. Victims are subdued, encased in a gooey membrane containing air, and glued to the lair’s wall.


5: Leaky Valve

    Big brass wheel in a broad vertical pipe controls the valve that releases water from the aquifer. The valve leaks: water pools on the floor and runs down the spiral star #3.
    (?) The wheel is stuck.
    (!) Opening the valve will flood the stair and the areas beneath even more, eliminating any air pockets.
    (?) It may be possible to seal the valve, leading to the eventual draining of the submerged areas.


6: Dam

    Corridor is jammed with all manner of junk – flotsam, stones, clay.
    (!) This leaky dam connects to the qanat system under the desert. Breaking it releases all of the water from the flooded areas (except #4). Anyone caught in the flood will be carried along into the (now water-logged with very cranky inhabitants) land bat nest.
    (?) The seal is not perfect -- you can feel the faintest of currents leaking out.


7: Trough

    A section of the walls and ceiling of this old chamber has caved in, and a crude tunnel winds off above water level. The water is only 10’ deep – beyond this, the muddy ground is tramped with many strange footprints…
    (!) The molerat hive draws its water from here.