Level 10: Palace of the Blood Queen, Week 4

Bastien Lecouffe Deharme

 

22: Ziggurat Stair

(past)

• (!) Two Iron Maidens at the top of the stair. Passphrase: onyx.
• (?) Golden lion doors to level 11.

23: Chamberlain’s Roost

(past)

• Lair of the chamberlain. Opulent rooms and vast black hardwood desk.
• (!) The Chamberlain, stuffed layers of silk and fur, gold chains, rings over white gloves, brass keyring on his belt, luxuriant ringlets and beard framing a mask of comedy. Hovers above the ground.
  • Mien: the cat that got the cream. Followed by a gaggle of interjecting sycophants.
  • Wants: amusement
  • Needs: to gather the keys. Do you have a stray key?
  • Fears: the Empress, and no other.
  • Knows: everything, including the passphrases.
  • treasure: jewellery worth 200 coins, keys to the palace rooms & vault.

(present)

• Still the chamberlain’s lair, but ruined. The chamberlain is alone, undead.

24: Throneroom

(past)

• The Empress holds court, surrounded by masked courtiers and trestles laden with food and wine. The emperor’s throne lies empty. The Eldest Princess, Mira, is chained to one wall, dead, her blood pooled in a trough at her feet.
• (!) The Empress Aurelienne, blood queen of the ziggurat.
  • Mien: a cat playing with its food
  • Wants: flattery, and to humiliate
  • Needs: blood
  • Fears: treason, her daughters
  • Knows: surprisingly little. Passphrase to her rooms. Doesn’t know (yet) that Mira wasn’t the one who stole her giant black diamond, the Storm Adamant.

(present)

• Stone and ashes. The dais is empty.

25: Her Rooms: Foyer

(past/present)

• (!) An Iron Maiden, encased in steel plates pinned to her body with rivets. Blocks all unauthorised guests. Passphrase ‘chrysanthemum’.

26: Her Rooms: Closet

(past/present)

• (!) Locked, with needle poison trap.
• A truly vast collection of expensive clothes.
• (??) d100 coins worth item each time you dig through.

28: Her Rooms: Bedroom

(past/present)

• Pristine four-poster with furs and silks. Heavy desk with writing paraphernalia.
• (?) Portrait of a family: Emperor Titus, Empress Aurelienne, Princesses Mira and Erhua, and sickly little Prince Ambrose.

27: Her Rooms: Bath

(past)

• 6 young women hang from meathooks, bleeding into Her gilt marble bath.

(present)

• (!) Lair of the blood queen, undead and insane. She sleeps in the bath and wears the Storm Adamant (unless someone stole it in the past?).

28: His Rooms: Foyer

(past/present)

• (!) An Iron Maiden. Passphrase: amethyst.
• On display: two exquisite suits of armour, gilt and shining, one formal and one for the field, plus His gun and sword.

29: His Rooms: Solar

(past/present)

• Vast hardwood bureau. Shelves lined with books of every kind. Luxurious carpet.
• (?) Inside the desk: papers, seals, His lion signet ring.
• (??) A thin, door-shaped seam on the one section of wall without book-cases.
• (??) Secret switch under the desk opens the door to the secret room.
• (??) If you want a particular book, there’s a good chance it’s here.

30: His Rooms: Bedroom

(past/present)

• Opulent and immaculate.
• (??) Under the mattress: The Storm Adamant, a thumb-sized black diamond set in a gold pendant. The wearer can turn into smoke at will.

31: His Rooms: Secret Room

• Bare stone room with a spiral stair ascending to Level 12: Archive.
• (?) Brass switch on the wall to open/close the secret door.

Level 10: Palace of the Blood Queen, Week 3

'Enothar'

 

15: Guard Room

(past)

• (!) 12 guards in crimson livery and shining cuirasses and helmets, armed with rifles and swords.

(present)

• (!) The guards remain, undead in rotten livery.

16: Larder

(past)

• Peons in smooth masks and loincloths sit shackled in rows.

(present)

• Empty brick room with iron rings for shackles.

17: Chamber of Her Beauty

(past/present)

• Portraits, in all shapes and sizes, of one person: the Empress.

18: Rooms of the Eldest Princess

(past/present)

• Hardwood four-poster, silk covers, the works.
• Signs of a struggle.
• (??) Under the mattress: wooden case with scissors, needle, thread, and potions of enlarge and reduce.

19: Balcony

(past)

• Intense, drunken conversations beneath the blood moon.

(present)

• A view of the city. Ziggurat plaza lies a good 100’ down.

20: Servant’s Rooms

(past/present)

• Mostly deserted hall lined with garrets & cubicles of the help.

21: Dollhouse

(past)

• A grand dollhouse in the form of a palace, roughly similar to this one.
• (?) The roof can be lifted.
• (??) The dolls are alive; 6 miniature lords and ladies.
  • Want: to escape and be returned to normal size.
  • Fear: torment at the hands of visitors, especially the Eldest.
  • Know: the Eldest has the potions.

(present)

• Six tiny skeletons in dolls’ clothing inside the house.

Level 10: Palace of the Blood Queen, Week 2

Ivan Belikov

 

I'm back!

8: Hall of Leaves

(present)

• Riot of overgrown shrubs, flowered and thorned

• (!) Thorn trap. Trees saw at exposed limbs.

(past)

• Perfumed garden, lovers' trysts in shady alcoves 

9: Serving Hall

(present)

• Collapsing sideboards.

• (?) Broken dumb waiter chute leads way down to the kitchens in the  fortress of doors.

(past)

• Harried servants rush hither and yon.

10: Amusement Arcade

(present)

• Manacles in a wheel of pine. A skeleton on the ground, alongside rusted hatchets.

(past)

• (!) 3 drunken aristos throwing axes at a tarred & feathered person in tied to a spinning wheel. Participation is compulsory.

• (?) The victim is Nil, a clerk, guilty of trying to smuggle victims out of the spa. he knows the layout of the palace.

11: Dressing Room

(past/present)

• Statues of nude nymphs and satyrs, some serving as furniture, one proferring a golden pomegranate. Wall panel frescos showing people in various states of deshabille and playful poses, sometimes amorous. Changing screen of polished bronze.

• (??) The fruit is fixed fast, but can be twisted to switch the wall panels to mirrors. One panel opens to reveal a secret passage.

12: Imperial Box

(past/present)

• Luxurious couches and table, marble balustrade, overlooking the Courtroom on level 5.

13: Imperial Stair

(past/present)

• Descending spiral of marble stairs.

• (?) Connects to the imperial stair tower on level 8.

14: Rooms of the Youngest Princess

(past/present)

• Hardwood four-poster, silk covers, the works.

• (??) Under her mattress: the diary or Erhua. Inside cover holds two little brass keys, 1 for the imperial stair tower and 1 for the spa.

  • (?) Diary of a teenage narcissist with a thirst for blood. Finishes: Mama is up to something. I’ll keep these little keys as insurance.

Level 10: Palace of the Blood Queen, Week 1

Sebastian Kowoll

 

1: Ziggurat Stair

• (?) Rises into ornamental gardens before the gates; descends into the Temple of All Gods 3.

2: Palace Grounds

• Dead grass and spiny bushes, raked with old scorch marks. Two colossal bronze statues with smiling faces, covered in verdigris, flank the palace doors, themselves shaped like outstretched hands in relief.

• (!) The statues are imperial war automata. They use their death rays against anything approaching the palace, from any direction.

• (?) The doors are heavy but unlocked.

3: Foyer

• Marble statues, tall mirrors, chaises longues

• (?) dresser with silver plate & candlesticks

4: Passage of Ages

• Dancing mementos mori in relief. Chequered marble tiles; clean and polished to the East, dusty, cracked, and invaded by weeds to the West.

• (!?) Leaving from the East takes you into the past version of the palace (the sky and time of day are different here). Leaving from the West returns you to the present.

5: Great Hall

(present)

• Floored with tiled hardwood and dragonbone. Glittering chandeliers high above. Sideboards against the East wall. Wind whispering through 4 empty hearths.

• (?) Sideboard has silver plate worth 1000gp (5 slots).

(past)

• Aristocratic revellers in masks. Musicians, drink, scurrying servants.

• (!) Being here without looking the part will draw unwanted attention.

6: Hall of Mirrors

(present)

• Lit by high windows. Lined with full-length mirrors, cracked and dusty. An empty pond with old fishbones.

• (!) The blood queen can appear, see, and pass through intact mirrors, though she has no reflection.

• (??) One of the panels is a secret door; it moves when pushed.

(past)

• Sounds of revelry from beyond.

7: Cloakroom

(present)

• Moth-eaten garments and dusty carnival masks hang on racks.

(past)

• A servant in a mask of comedy keeps watch.

Level 9: Temple of All Gods, Week 4

Marcus Luotero

 

 

I'm back! A few days late due to life getting in the way, but I made it. Hard to believe there are only three months left in the year.

This level turned into less of a funhouse and more of a weird amalgam of paths and themes -- a sublevel made of sublevels. I'm OK with that, though I feel it needs more monsters and traps. Next month will be much more thematically coherent, with a nice little gimmick, as well.

22: Forgotten Colossi

• Dusty stone colossi holding lanterns and reliquaries, under a hazy red sky, ankle-deep in sand .

• (?) Beyond the portico: sandy desert, as far as you can see.

23: Shrine of Rain: Frozen Courtyard

• Portico pillars piled with snow. The wind howls; an alien sun leaks bleakly through.

• (??) flickering fire within the sanctuary.

24: Shrine of Rain: Tomb of Tears

• A frozen waterfall against the wall. Shaggy demons with icy antlers huddle around flickering braziers.

• (!?) Lair of the Congregation of Tears, silently mourning their dead god.

  • Mien: rumbling, depressed

  • Wants: some kind of hope or purpose

  • Needs: fuel to keep their braziers lit

  • Fears: the dark

  • Knows: a little about the other temples

• (?) A dwindling pile of charcoal in the storeroom.

25: Shaft of Portals

• A cylindrical room with portals at many different levels, each about 30’ up or down from the next. The floor and ceiling are shrouded in darkness.

• (?) There is no floor – it leads 120’ down into into the Shrine of the Dark: Pit.

• (?) There is no ceiling – it leads 60’ up into the midden chute on level 10: the Palace.

26: Maze

• (!??) The halls here are superimposed on the map, passing ‘through’ one another as they move in impossible directions.

• (!) Shadow demons stalk these halls, waiting for easy prey they can snatch away.

27: Temple of the New: Facade

• An ancient and monumental facade of white marble and columns. Completely free of any ornamentation.

28: Temple of the New: Renegade Magician

• A dusty room with books and personal effects piled about.

• (!) Lair of the Emperor’s renegade high priest, now a cantankerous lich, Qargan.

  • Mien: Hmm? I’m busy. Oh, wait, visitors!

  • Wants: to kill the emperor & his cult, and claim the secrets of the archive for his new god.

  • Needs: followers for the New God, so that it will begin to manifest. He isn’t very good at recruitment, and something happened to his old congregation.

  • Fears: the Avatar of Empire.

  • Knows: all about the palace (as it was), and the existence of the archive at the city’s highest level.

• (?) A veritable library of books on magic, history, religion, and all manner of arcane subjects, including Qargan’s spellbook. He may not appreciate people digging through them.

• (?) Qagan is happy to expound on the wickedness of the emperor’s murderous regime and the need to birth a new god to take its place in the cosmology. He has no idea the empire is dead.

29: Temple of the New: Cella

• A vast but mostly blank marble statue, suggesting a person, but without detail.

30: Shrine of the Forest

• Musty courtyard overhung with canopy of massive trees. At its heart: a fungal menhir the size of a house, hard, grey, and pocked with holes of varying size.

• (??) The largest hole – 2’ across – is filled with glittering offerings: weapons, golden goblets, jewels, and a golden war mask, but you have to climb inside to reach them.

  • (?) Treasure is worth 300 coins, including a magic axe, Red Torrent.

  • (!) The menhir will of course release its spores if interfered with – save vs. infection. Psychic contact with the vengeful forest god will be established shorty thereafter.

  • (??) A passage within the menhir leads to a tree bough in the forest garden.

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.