Monday, December 30, 2013

Dirtsimple Dungeonsquads

I was playing around with the idea of DMing a dungeon for a single player.
The idea is that the player controls a squad of 4 characters (fighter, cleric, thief, wizard)
The rules are cut down to a dirt simple interpretation, so the (a) the player doesn't have to worry about too much stuff and (b) hopefully the player can get through a small dungeon in a single session.



Simplifications I've Made

You have no ability scores.

HP and Armor are both folded into HP.
(fighters have more HP because they can wear better armor.)

Weapon damage and attack bonus have been folded into Damage.
All attacks hit, but the damage is a bit variable.
Damage is based on class, not weapon type.

Saves, Checks, Combat Manuvers are usually against DC 11.
Usually, you get +0 or +5 to these checks.



Ideas
-I sorta had tournament-style play in mind when I wrote these.
-These might also be suitable for teaching children or babies or something.
-If you want a better simulation of low-level DnD, cut all the HP totals in half.
-If you want to include miss chances, just say that whenever a damage die rolls max damage, it does no damage instead or something.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Sister Witches and Monastic Wizards


Wizards and Witches

In Centerra, men and women are equally adept at magic. However, attitudes towards women and magic use vary across the continent (most of which is dominated by the Church). These attitudes usually take one or more of the following forms:
  • Danger: Magic is dangerous and women will incompetently endanger themselves and/or others.
  • Immoral: Magic is corrupting and women will all become evil thralls to demons.
  • Burn the witch!
In truth, magic is dangerous and corrupting, and male wizards explode their heads, unleash horrible psychoplasmic plagues, and become skin-cars for demons with alarming frequency. Just the same, these prejudices are enacted against women with both communal shunning (in the east) and state-ordained executions (parts of the west).

Friday, December 27, 2013

The Hybrid Dungeon

This is the result of a long (looong) series of emails with one of my friends about dungeon design.

He makes the argument that having a linear (or at least, minimally branching) dungeon allows for fewer arbitrary decisions and more GM control over how the encounters develop.

He's got a point.

Unscripted encounters sometimes suck because they are so random, and scripted encounters can be pretty epic when done right.

I mean, we're all familiar with the maze-like dungeon that has a set-piece lich encounter at the end that always unfolds the same way. We use a linear presentation for liches and epic shit in dungeons even though we use random encounters throughout the rest of the dungeon, because we always want the lich to be epic.

It's a conservative choice, though.  The scripted lich is usually pretty cool, but the most epic encounters I've ever had have resulted from the collision of random tables.  But I guess DMs don't want to risk their final encounter relying too much on a random encounter.




Anyway, I wrote this.  I expect it to be at least a little bit controversial, and that's fair.  I'm still rolling over some of these ideas, and I have yet to put a lot of them into practice.




How Organic-Random-Variable Should a Dungeon Experience Be?

I.
This relies on the assumption that organic, random, and variable are all the same thing.  Organic dungeons lean on simulationist ideas of construction (instead of gamist), and as such, tend to be laid out with lots of many ways to enter, exit, and travel through them, because forts often have many ways to enter and have few linear parts.  Many loops.  Many ways to enter the dungeon.  Because there are so many ways to move through the dungeon, there will also be a lot of variability for how players experience the dungeon.  Some groups will have a much easier time than others, simply by getting lucky in choosing which way to go.  So organic dungeons are correlated with more random experiences, which are inherently more variable.

II.
Purely organic dungeons can suck for a variety of reasons.  They can be confusing.  They can be too easy.  They can be too hard.  They can be difficult to balance.  

But these are all symptoms of bad organic dungeons. Because they tend to make more internal sense within the game world, players can use more common sense when navigating them, instead of relying more on DM explanation. And they are not random. Players that think before charging in will have a better chance of finding pathways more amenable to their goals. Excessive branching can be cut down, and extraneous branches can be filled with easy encounters or non-damaging encounters, so that players aren't unfairly depleted when their reach the boss. Keys and chokepoints can be used to cut down the variability of a dungeon path, so that the "easiest" and "hardest" paths are comparable.

III. 
Organic dungeons have many advantages, too.  Because they are based more on simulationist concerns and less on gamist concerns, they react better to unforeseen stresses.  Like when the players decide to siege, flood, infiltrate, or sabotage the dungeon and its denizens.  They are also able to react more appropriately when players attempt unusual strategies that the designer did not foresee.  By including organic considerations like where the dungeon inhabitants eat, sleep, and excrete, the players have more options to formulate effective outside-the-box plans.  (Attempts to poison their water supply always fail if there is no water supply, for example.)

IV.
But there is no reason why a dungeon should be hobbled to a commitment of being purely organic.  Consider a hybrid dungeon, that contains both scripted and organic elements.

The hybrid dungeon has a well designed set of paths through it.  These are the most obvious ways to navigate the dungeon to any goals within it.  These are balanced, fair, and fun.  These are the orthodox pathways, and they should be readily available to the players who attempt them.  This should be a complete dungeon, and it should be fun and awesome, and not lacking in any way.  A player should be able to play through the orthodox dungeon happily and successfully.  It will have branches, but these will be designed so that either (a) the player usually knows when they are choosing a side passage instead of the direct route to their goal, or (b) short enough and not so brutal that the dungeon will become unwinnable if the player chooses all the non-direct passages.

Around this orthodox core, we should build the shadow dungeon.  These are the things that are not obvious to players.  In fact, many of the players will not discover or even care about some parts of the dungeon.  These are the secret passages and subtle shit.  These are there to reward players who look for lateral solutions to things, who would rather interrogate than fight directly, or would rather step off the well-scripted core of the orthodox dungeon and get into a more chaotic dungeon.  The shadow dungeon will usually make the dungeon a little easier, but not always.  If a player spends time and resources finding a way to climb onto the roof, they should (usually) be compensated for their good sense and hard work.  The important thing is that the shadow dungeon is neither necessary nor obvious.  In a way, it's not part of the dungeon at all.  It's anticipating the players will want to hack the game, twist the rules, and look for an easier solution.  The shadow dungeon is there because the designer anticipates the the players will attempt to hack the dungeon, and has considered them when designing the dungeon.  In this way, the shadow dungeon is a dungeon of contingencies.

Remember that the shadow dungeon is not always physical rooms the way the orthodox dungeon it.  The shadow dungeon is putting in considerations for what happens if the party allows themselves to be taken prisoner, or decides to look for a map in town, or decides to parachute onto the roof.  It is simply anticipating that players will try to hack your dungeon, and planning ahead in a way where good ideas are (usually) rewarded.

The shadow dungeon is necessary because some groups will always look to jump off the tracks that you have laid for them. If they spend time and effort looking for a way to circumvent the orthodox blockade you've put in front of them, they should find one.  Yes, this does mean that it takes more work to design a dungeon.  But certain players will look for shortcuts and hacks, and it is better for the designer to plan for these things than for the DM to scramble to improvise when the unexpected happens.  Remember that not all parts of the shadow dungeon are easier than the orthodox equivalents. They might be much more deadly, but that is the risk you take when you decide to do a gamble such as allowing yourself to be taken prisoner.

And lastly, around the orthodox dungeon and the shadow dungeon, we place an organic wrapper.  These are the toilets, grain stores, and the ecologies that allow dungeons to function when players stress the dungeon in ways that no one could have predicted.  Hopefully.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

The House of Hours

+Scrap Princess wrote a very excellent list of random things:
This list of random things was so excellently put together that I looked at it and was FUCKING INSPIRED to turn it into a dungeon of random things.
Originally, I wanted to crowdsource it, but then I realized (a) there probably aren't enough people reading my blog and (b) I really wanted to see if I could do it.
So, here is THE HOUSE OF HOURS, a.k.a. SCRAP CASTLE



I wrote 80 rooms before I had anything resembling a plot. So, it understandably looks pretty random.  Right at the end I though of a unifying theme, and retconned it in.
Hook: There's a town and they're freaking out because the hospital on the outskirts of town has suddenly bricked itself up and no one is answering the door. What's more, the hospital is now CREEPING LIKE A SPEEDY GLACIER towards the town, knocking over birds' nests. Also, it spawns weird Freudian psychosexual monsters. When the players get there, they see that things have gotten worse, and the hospital is now an upside-down castle surrounded by a ring of fire.
Hook2: Upside-down castle surrounded by a ring of fire and it's probably full of treasure.
Factions in the Dungeon: Plague Ghouls and Bee People (but there's also a few wizards, 2 liches, and the Baker)

Layout: The dungeon connects to it's own demiplane, so the dungeon has it's own private outdoors. This outdoors-inside-the-indoors is called the Moor, and you get there by going through doors on the inside of the dungeon, which then exits you into the Field of Hours, where you usually exit through a number of quaint little shops and cobblestone streets, surrounded by a huge moor that also has a small swamp. It's always twilight, with a big moon in the sky and the sun just below the horizon. (This section is probably going to have to be a mini-outdoor adventure, but it's bounded so if you ride away from the town you just end up approaching it from the other side.)
From the Moor you can also summon the Bog Giant, who contains the “real” hospital in his belly, which is like this indoor dungeon inside the outdoor dungeon inside the indoor dungeon that you thought you were going inside of the first time.


THE HOUSE OF HOURS a.k.a. SCRAP CASTLE
Note 1: All elderly people in the dungeon will be able to see the stormclouds in #75. It's sort of “beside” normal vision, so it doesn't interfere with your perception none. However, whenever the DM rolls for a random encounter, there is a 90% chance that the elderly people in the party will see lightning and hear thunder, potentially giving them advance warning if they can figure it out.
Note 2: The echo chamber (#84) will repeat the things that the party has said when they enter the dungeon. You may wish to write down fragments of phrases that PCs say while in the dungeon. Or not, you know, and just rely on your memory.
Note 3: Rooms #6, #61, and #89 all have big round mirrors on the floors. These are portals. Each of these three rooms has a different set of items arranged around the portals (candles, pyramids, and lilies) that function as BOTH keys to the room and batteries for the portal it contains. 16 keys equals a full complement. If a key to a room is placed in the center of a mirror, the mirror will become a portal to the room that the key is linked to. If you ever create a portal to a room that has less than 12 keys arranged around it, there is an X-in-12 chance of a teleportation mishap, where X equals the number of remaining keys around the portal (use your favorite mishap table). Example: Alice goes to room #89 where there are 16 lilies arranged around a mirror. She puts a candle from room #6 in the center of the mirror, which then opens up a portal to room #6. Stepping through the portal, she has only a 10-in-12 chance of arriving safely, since room #6 has only 10 candles arranged around the portal. Each portal only remains open for 1 minutes, and each key is consumed when it is used to open a portal.

When you first enter the dungeon, you'll hear the following exchange:
Child's Voice: “How long will I have to stay here, mommy?”
Woman's Voice: “I don't know, sweetie. Probably just a few hours.”

ROOM KEY
  1. Upside down castle, in the bottom of a gulch, the upside-down castle is surrounded by a moat of fire. Most of the windows and doorways are choked with dirt (refills if you dig it out).
  2. Bowl of brains. In the center of this room sits a giant bowl (lip is 7' off the ground). Inside sleep 11 old men with oversized heads, clutching each other for warmth. They each have a jewelled torc welded around their neck that cannot be removed without cutting off their heads. Nothing will rouse them except damage. When angered, they will all attack at once. They are flying, psychic brains that still have their living human bodies attached (which are completely unneccesary). However, they are not used to being flying, psychic brains and their psychic blasts sometimes only cause nosebleeds, incontinence, etc (instead of exploding your head.)
  3. Rogue Glacier. This locked room is an oversized jail cell. A winding passageway allows for passage through the prisoner, the rogue glacier. The glacier picks pockets as a level 10 rogue. Stolen items are sometimes visible in his icy body.
  4. Oversized key. Huge bronze key on a red pillow. Weighs 100 pounds. Hookah nearby, filled with yellow water and eels. Unlocks the tortoise in room 45.
  5. Crude desperate map. In this room, a party of adventurers has been turned inside out. One of the corpses still clutches a crude map that is covered in a honeycomb of lines and angles. Desperate script says, “There is no way out of this infernal jungle! I've dulled my sword from chopping and my brain from mapping!”. (This is in reference to the mock jungle in room 68.)
  6. Candles. 14 candles and 1 obsidian pyramid are arranged around a convex mirror (6' across) on the ground. These candles will never burn down while they are in these positions. One unlit candle sits in the middle of the mirror. Distant organ music fills the air. This room is a portal room (see Note #3) and placing an obsidian pyramid or a lily in the center of the mirror will open a portal to room #61 or #89 respectively. The full complement of candles around the mirror is 16, and any mirror less than that causes the mirror to cloud further, with a risk to travelers if there are ever less than 12 candles. Each candle removed from the circle causes the organ music to become worse and worse. Room #61 has a crocodile savant in it that may enter this room and attack if the portal is ever opened.
    1. The candles have a magic ability: if a lit candle flame is blown in the direction of an unlit torch, candle, or campfire, the candle will extinguish and the torch will light. Inversely, inhaling sharply over an unlit wick in the direction of a torch will extinguish the torch and light the candle.
  7. Shark's teeth. This room appears to be a natural history museum. A tyrannosaurus skeleton dominates the room, and several dioramas show naked, primitive humanoids chasing down dinosaurs wearing headdresses and tearing out their throats with their teeth, as if if the proto-humans were raptors or wolves. A glass case holds 21 different types of stones, of which 5 are fat gemstones. Smashing the glass case will sound an alarm (roll for encounter) but the lock can also be picked. 1d6 rounds after the party enters the room, 3 fossilized shark skeletons will descend on wires and attack like ghastly marionettes, while the “puppeteers” hide in the gloom. Cutting the wires also neutralizes the sharks.
  8. Wooden sword. A wooden coffin holds a set of wooden bones, recognizable as a dwarf. When disturbed, it will attack as a skeleton (with slashing claws), but one that is vulnerable to fire and slashing weapons (instead of blunt ones). In a steel scabbard, the wooden dwarf skeleton has a wooden sword (as fragile as ordinary wood). If translated, dwarven runes on it read “This is a sword”.
  9. Ghosts. 8 sullen ghosts occupy this room, playing board games for all eternity. The board games are all missing pieces, but the ghosts have all forgotten the rules anyway. One of the board games is actually a treasure map that shows the path to the King's Grave in room 8 (the bottom of the board says “Snakes and Ghouls”). The ghosts are unfriendly. They will attack if anyone messes with their board games, but they will mellow out if anyone brings them the game piece from Room 97.
    1. One of the ghosts the ghost of one of the PCs. Although the PC-ghost has forgotten nearly everything, it can tell the party that it has been here for thousands of years. Amid shrugs, it will mumble something about time travel. It also knows the details of one random room, where it died. Any PC who dies in the upside-down castle will also become a ghost, trapped in this room forever.
    2. People who die in this dungeon cannot be resurrected unless the other ghosts agree to let the departing spirit go. They will not do this unless the party is on their good side, such as if they have returned the game piece from Room 97.
  10. Frozen lake. This room has a frozen floor. In the center of the room, broken ice indicates that something has fallen through. A rusty bronze golem paces around on the room's floor, 20' beneath the ice level. Heavy characters (full plate, encumbered) risk falling through the ice.
  11. Old Coins. A pile of coins sits in the middle of this room. They aren't cursed, guarded, or trapped or anything, but they were minted by a pre-human dynasty of snakemen. Tapestries of solemn snakemen viziers line the walls. A tin spoon in buried in among the coins.
  12. String. This appears to be a dining room full of furniture and food. String is tightly wound around everything in this room, and every cubic foot in this room has as least 3 high-tension strings spanning it from different angles. The food (including a turkey, goblets of wine, etc) is suspended above the table by the strings, like an art student's senior project. Passage through the room is extremely difficult (Dex checks) because it requires navigating the crazy tangle of strings.
    1. If the strings are cut, the food above the table will crash down, splattering gravy on the nice upholstery, spilling wine, and sending plates crashing to the floor. (cut 3 strings to clear the room, roll for random encounters). If the party wants to weave through the room, a small hoard of powdery thief-mice will come out of the wall. The mice will steal d100 coins and a knick-knack (shiny button, potion) from each player while they are too entangled to swing a sword, and then disappear back into the wall.
    2. The silverware is silver, but the real prize is an egg cup in the exact center of the table, which contains (surprisingly heavy) chicken egg which contains ambrosia of the gods. It can be sold or eaten, in which case it raises a random stat by 1 point.
  13. Cup of wine. A procession of petrified butlers marches forever towards the dinner in room 12. The lead butler's silver platter holds a single cup of wine (which is exquisitely delicious). The stone butlers all wear uniforms and hold silver platters, but extracting these will usually require breaking off some stone fingers and limbs. If restored to flesh, the butlers are all werewolves obsessed with wine and lambs.
  14. Manta rays. Sagacious manta rays observe you through the walls of this underwater tunnel, which eventually leads to the shore of an indoor lake. The “beach” is entirely composed of huge, cyclopean cubes of lead. The telepathic manta rays are sages, and can be persuaded to identify stuff or ferry passengers across the lake. (They don't know much about the dungeon, but are experts on plankton, kelp, and algebra.) Their prices are steep if you pay in gold, but they are eager to taste new and interesting foods. An island in the middle of the lake is filled with upside-down trees. In the center of it is a mail box (actually a retarded MIMIC, a.k.a. CIMIM).
  15. Barbed leather. This empty suit of magical barbed leather armor sits in a crystal display case. It was made from a rose elemental, and the thorns are nearly 2” long. Another display case holds a shark fossil, suspended by strings. Another display case is packed floor to ceiling with skulls. If the display case containing the suit of armor is opened or disturbed, the armor will animate, leap out, and run away. If it escapes the room (and it probably will) add it to the wandering monster table. If encountered, it will only run away. If cornered, it will fight (it has a whip and a scimitar). As a magic armor it has two powers. First, things attacking it with natural weapons are damaged by the razor-sharp barbs. Second, it can shoot soothing pollen out of its sleeves, which calms insects automatically and other animals if they fail a saving throw. This calming effect is extremely short lived, but the suit of armor can produce huge amounts of pollen every day.
  16. Clock tower. Everything in this room is made of paper. A column of sunlight pierces the papery arches of the ceiling, 100' above. In the center of this room is a huge clock tower with what appears to be a gargoyle who has just lept off it, now frozen in time. The hands of the clock are clearly made from black iron and gold, and there is a visible doorway on the landing behind the clock face. Approaching the clock tower causes time to pass slower. If you stand in the doorway and watch someone approach, you'll notice they move slower and slower as they approach it, so that they will never arrive (think Zeno's arrow). Additionally, approaching the tower also causes you to age, so that you will always die of old age 1 foot away from the clock tower. A party of humans walking towards the tower will likely age 1d6 years in the few seconds before they realize what has happened, and 1d6 hours will have passed outside of the room. This powerful effect can be skirted by creeping along the walls (paper-covered bricks) of the room. This enchantment can only be dispelled by destroying the face of the clock tower.
    1. Arrows and fireballs shot at the clock face will never reach it (not in your lifetimes). Light and light spells will not be noticeably affected by the time effect, and will reach the clock tower normally. (The concave mirror in Room 39 would actually be perfect for this task, and will be able to ignite the tower and burn it down in only a couple of minutes). Spells that travel to their destination are useless (magic missile, fireball, BUT lightning bolt works fine) while spells that conjure things at a certain location work fine (like summoning an acid ooze on top of the tower would work.)
    2. Once the tower is destroyed, the time gargoyle will be unfrozen in time and attack. The gargoyle is made from smoky glass and has garnets for eyes. It attacks with claws and a breath attack (hot sand). If anyone rolls a natural 1 to save against the breath attack they are sent back in time. You may find them again in room 51, but they'll be 1d20 years older.
    3. The clock tower has a metal framework. At the top, the clock hands can be salvaged (4' and 3' long, black iron and gold, heavy but very valuable). The doorway leads to room 17.
  17. Melted Sand Dunes. The top half of this room is clearly the top half of a giant hourglass with obsidian walls (20' across, hole is 3' wide). The hole in the sloping floor leads to a huge room filled with melted sand dunes. The sand-dune room is entirely located in a steeply sloping cave. The top-most part of the room connects to the half-hourglass room. Walking through the melted sand dunes, players may disturb pebbles, which will slide down the steep glass slope.
    1. It takes 4 hours to walk down the glassy, smooth room, or 5 hours to walk up it. If you slide down (on your cloak or something), the bottom can be reached in 15 minutes. 6 carnivorous desert penguins nest in a smooth-walled burrow halfway down the slope. They are hungry and faster than greased lightning when they slide down on their bellies.
  18. Misshapen faces. A stone cherub spits water into a fountain in the center of this room. The walls of this room are covered with 57 waxy, lumpy faces. The faces are warm to the touch. If the faces are removed and placed atop your own face, it will be absorbed and your face will permanently assume the likeness of the mask. Roll 2d6 to determine your new Charisma. 5% of the faces are sentient and hungry, and if touched, they will attempt to bite (+5 to hit, 1d6 damage) and then swallow on the next round (automatic unless allies make opposed strength checks).
  19. Owls. Two cloaked strangers (Striga and Tyaton) shuffle around this room, bulky and tall. They wear silver owl masks over their faces (they are actually giant owls). All around the room are dozens of pictures of owls drawn in black pen, and dozens of live owls roost quietly in cages. They are carefully measuring owls, believing (correctly) that new spells may be researched by analyzing the different ratios of owl physiognomy. They are level 5 magic-users and care for nothing except owls and magic. They wield spells of hungry precision and silent knives. Their jeweler's monocle is actually the eye of Belkernap in room 37, although it looks mineral in composition.
  20. Lists. In this room there are 12 wooden plugs set into the floor, like wooden manhole covers 3' wide. Beneath each plug is a small chamber containing a small, muddy modron who is endlessly repeating a random list. (Go here and click twice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists). One of the modrons is actually reciting a list of all of the rooms in this dungeon (“. . . 20. Lists. 21. Whispering Poison. . .”). You can hear them muttering if you put your ear against the wood. One of the modrons wears a gold-and-titanium circlet (completely square). One of the modrons is actually berserk, chaotic, and will explode 1d6 rounds after being removed from his muddy prison. If the modrons are somehow restored to their full mental capacities (this is what modrons do when they are traumatized), they will aid the party. Otherwise, all the modrons will do is sit there and mutter.
  21. Whispering poison. A withered mummy hangs from a crucifix in this room. The mummy is not undead, it's just a normal mummy. The rest of the room is filled with implements of torture and a small coal furnace with a stack of fuel beside it. Vials and glassware are arranged in front of the furnace, filled with cloudy water. Inside the mummy's veins is a deadly sentient poison. Anyone approaching the mummy will hear the poison whispering to them. The poison wants to be extracted from the mummy's veins and then used to kill more creatures. The poison's name is Cyrano. The poison can give you directions for extracting him (it involves a dagger and an empty vial). He's only a few milliliters, but he is deadly. He can crawl around (1' /min) but prefers to sit on a knife where he can be delivered to veins easier. In exchange for your help killing things, he can cast Detect Poison at will. He may even be able to teach a wizard a unique poison spell or two.
  22. Implausible pits. This room is filled with 6 visible pits. The pits are actually 3' to the left of where they appear to be (90% chance of falling in one while walking through the room unless gimmick is figured out). The pits are 5' deep, but falling in one causes damage as if you had fallen from a much greater height. In the bottom of one is the SWORD OF THE NORTH. In another pit is a voracious undead unicorn head. In another pit is a treasure chest filled with bees. The lock is awesome, but the door itself if only wax—you can scratch it with your fingernail.
  23. Firetraps. This long room appears to be a bazaar, with rugs laid out, canvas overhangs, and empty fruit stalls. The walls are painted with flowers. All open flames in this room will spawn hostile imps that last for 1d6 rounds after their original torch is extinguished. A single bee-drone (see room 24) keeps guard here. If panicked, he will light the bonfire and retreat to the main door of the Honeycomb, guarded by a pair of drones.
  24. Bee people. Here is the secret hive of the bee people, built vertically and dripping with honey. Art Noveau chimneys connect levels and gilded lilies proffer nauseatingly sweet nectar. The men are hulking brutes (use umber hulks) while the females are graceful things with wasp-like waists who are experts in alchemy, poisons, and explosives. They also have a bunch of interesting insect-themed treasure, tribute from some confused cultists, one time. http://rachelghoulgamestuff.blogspot.com/2013/12/osr-christmas-list-item-1-treasures-of.html. They are misandriists, and only trust females. Men will be asked to sit on the floor outside the room while the females discuss business. (beesness)
    1. There are 4 males, 7 females, and 22 sexless drones (as orcs). Friendly larva (with children's faces) will crawl over and ask for candy (in children's voices. The bee people are unfriendly but not hostile. They may allow you to pass through for a tribute and a vow of peace. What they desire more than anything are the lilies from room #89 and the destruction of the ghouls (see room 69). If the party seems intent on achieving these goals, they bee people will send Buzz Buzz (a jolly, stupid male) with you. They *might* also be persuaded to part with some poisons, acids, or explosives.
    2. Caligula is queen of the bee people, but her vizier Merlane speaks for her. Her favorite daughter is Lophia, an assassin. Her jealous daughter is Yanivel, a jeweler.
  25. Hungry Streets. This section appears to be a 4-way crossroads in a country town, complete with lamp posts and cobblestones. A frightened horse darts back and forth through these streets, searching for a way out but too scared to leave the light cast by the lamps. Unless the party runs straight through, they will be swallowed by the giant mouths that form in the cobblestone. Being swallowed does a little damage, but then it ejects you into the sewers beneath, which lead to rooms XX and YY. Poisoning the water in the sewers will cause the streets to vomit you up. Digging through the cobblestones isn't an option unless you have explosives or manage to kill the street first (60 HP, 10 HD).
  26. Wind machine. At the far end of this hallway, four giant dragonfly engines flap their wings and create a powerful wind that prevents passage. Passing up this hallway is only possible with climbing gear (treat it like a 100' climb with equivalent fall damage, except sideways).
  27. Dark engine. In this room is a strange device. It's about 10' long and looks like a cross between a piccolo and a Harley-Davidson. It's all flanges and oiled black leather. It's a vehicle, and can be ridden by up to 3 people. It flies at double the speed of a human, but it requires large quantities of blood to operate. Every full moon it will come alive and hunger for flesh. It creeps around on eight legs of leather and steel, gliding through halls like an angel of death, and rapidly dissecting victims with it's lovingly articulated mouthparts, trapping their soul in the small chamber above its carburator.
  28. Very old people. 7 very old people sit in 7 rocking chairs, watching a storm that only they can see. They are sitting on a porch overlooking nothing but fog. A starry sky is visible far beyond the fog. They claim to the descendants of the king, waiting for his return. Their brains are full of little worms, but they can be persuaded to peer into the storm for you (treat as a Commune spell). Talking to any of them also ages you 1d6 years, however. If you kill one, you must save or take their place in a rocking chair. Destroying a rocking chair will cause the other rocking chairs to grow spider legs and horrible crushing jaws, and attack you. If the frog in room 38 is killed, the fog will dissipate and the path to the stars will be lost.
  29. Ill stars. Passing through the fog you will find yourself among the stars. Up this high, you can see an aerial view of a couple of nearby areas of the dungeon, including the manta's lake and island. While among the stars, your body appears to be a constellation. There is a 1-in-6 chance while you are up here of being attacked by disgruntled astronomers, yelling at you to cease your pointless wandering. From here, you can see the storm that the old people are looking at (and it is TERRIFYING), return to the rocking chairs, or fly to the moon (Room 39). Anyone leaving the room must save or contract space sickness (1 chills, 2 vertigo, 3 bleeding from the ears, 4 periods of weightlessless, 5 hair loss, 6 gamma ray vomit).
  30. Slime Princess. This room is locked, but has a large door knocker. A mailbox outside the room reads “30”. In this room, Orange Princess and Slime Princess take turns peering through the telescope at the moon (Room 39). Scattered around the room are a bunch of books (mostly geography and engineering subjects, but a few adventure and romance novels, 1d4 level 1d4 spells). Here is where Slime Princess (1 HD ooze) and Orange Princess (4 HD elf) hang out all the time. Slime Princess is a semi-anthropomorphic slime who totally wants to go on adventures. Orange Princess is a large-nosed young woman with orange clothes and hair. She just wants Slime Princess to be safe, and only wants to practice fencing (she carries a foil). Slime Princess will want to join the party. Whenever she kills something with more HD than her, she grows 1 HD and has an X-in-20 chance of turning into a mindless ooze, where X is equal to her new HD. This oozy rampage lasts until she eats someone or until something else calms her.
    1. Other things in this room: orrery, orange bed, cauldron with pillows (Slime Princess' bed), 30' tall bookcase, hollow globe (containing 300 gp), nice hardwood floor, magic teapot (never runs out of tea), 4 bonsai trees.
    2. Anyone falling asleep here will f
  31. Child gangs. These corridors are the home of 9 unruly children who form a rough gang. Their leader is Redbeard (he's 9 and has no beard). He has LIFTING GLOVES, which give him a strength of 18, but only when used to pick things up. These nose-picking urchins will attempt to sell you newspapers at exorbitant prices and pick your pockets. They all carry concealed shivs and adore the princesses in room 30. They live in a tree-house.
  32. Vomiting statues. This room has 8 statues in it, each on a pedestal. All of them can be rotated except the blacksmith statue. All of the statues are wearing clothes which indicates their profession. (1) The blacksmith statue is continually vomiting fire and cannot be turned, blocking easy passage through the center of the room. (2) The mermaid statue can be rotated, and vomits water when her tail is lifted (can be used to temporarily extinguish the fire-vomiting statue. (3) The king statue will vomit 234 gold coins if one gold coin is thrown down his throat. (4) The assassin statue will vomit a poisonous gas if he is touched. (5) The locksmith will vomit 85 keys if touched (all useless, the key to the door is in his pocket.) (6) The engineer statue will vomit lightning if touched, which can be extra deadly if the floor is covered with water. (7) The cook statue will vomit perfectly edible spaghetti when touched (only works 6 times). (8) The mother-with-baby statue will vomit milk if touched and the baby will vomit a healing potion if fed milk (only works once). The door on the far wall is locked (key in locksmith's pocket).
  33. Bored angels. A church. Rows of pews. Hymnals in the back of every seat. A collection box near the entrance. Entering the church you will be able to hear, faintly, a pair of angels talking idly about the happenings within the dungeon, and especially within this room. They are impossible to communicate with, although they can watch your actions and will speculate loudly on your performance and motivations. Stealing from the poorbox will get you slapped with a plague or attacked by locusts. Donations earn you nothing, but they will take notice of burnt offering on the ash-covered altar.
  34. Boiling water. Room full of boiling water. A small metal boat with metal paddel offers transport through the blistering steam, but you risk being burned on the hot metal.
  35. Boar. Big, pissed off, razor tusks. Fucking harpoons stick out of its side. Takes half damage from slashing and piercing weapons. Keeps fighting 1 round even after it's dead. Stomach full of human bones and jewelry (2 armbands, 9 belt buckles, 1 circlet, 1 medallion of an upside-down tree). It has built itself a veritable nest out of crumpled armor.
  36. Tiny wings. Yammerhein the Wizard, beloved of Ysera, meditates here inside the Crystal Egg of Zola. He wears a cloak of poisonous hummingbirds and his prehensile beard is actually a fragment of a living air elemental. He will respond to disturbances with compulsion spells. Fetch him [1 - a candle (room 6), 2 - the wine (room 13), 3 - baby larva of the bee people (room 24), 4 - bezoar from the creature in room 54, 5 – hat from one the ghouls (room 69), 6 – pig's tail (room 82).]
  37. Bag of soot. Belkernap the Thinjohn broods here, audibly lamenting the loss of his eye (stolen by an owl) while he squats over a low, greasy fire. He scissors his long hands in the smoke. His haversack appears to contain a pile of soot, but is actually 7 soot imps. Talking tot he party, he will lament the loss of his eye, lick his crocodile lips, and offer healing for a steep fee. Instead of healing, he will cast a shrinking spell and dump his sack on the floor. The soot imps will rouse themselves and attack, causing confusion and disease with their tiny mouse teeth. Belkernap hopes to kill them and take their treasure, and maybe see if he can use one of their eyes. Unless, of course, the party has his eye.
  38. Shallow pools. A broad, flat room with 6 shallow (2”) pools. A vast croaking is heard, as an injured fog frog lies here, dying from the CRAWLING DAGGER in its guts. If the frog is healed, it will cough up the dagger, 3847 silver coins, a mithril helmet in the shape of a frog, and four young lads in togas who are eager to help, despite their sharp teeth and inability to comprehend language. If the frog is attacked, it is a terrifying opponent (being the size of a barn). Killing it removes the fog from this room and room 28 (making travel to the moon and stars impossible). If presented with a dried frog from room 50, the fog frog will recoil as if turned. On its back, 45 eggs contain fog frog tadpoles. They can be harvested and sold for a nice sum, but the tadpoles will watch you the entire time with sad, accusing eyes. If not healed, the frog will die by tomorrow, and ghouls from room 69 will soon arrive to harvest its corpse.
    1. Drinking from the pools has the following effects. [1 – As remove curse, 2 – Exhalations of fog, becoming tremendous if you stay in one place for more than 15 minutes, 3 – speak the language of frogs, 4 – shrink to 90% of your height, 5 – reverse gender (once only), 6 – save or paralysis for 2d6 hours as you hallucinate mollusks with voices of loved ones.]
    2. There is also a ladder here. If it is climbed up while there is fog, it will lead to the moon (room 39). If it is climbed while there is no fog, it will lead to a red, wet trapdoor (room 40).
  39. The moon. A small grove on the surface of the moon, the only part of the surface with an atmosphere (although PCs will immediately be struck by how thin the atmosphere is here, it's like a mountaintop). A trapdoor in the moon opens down into the fog frog's room (38). Giant, crystalline ferns grow one inch every millennium. They shatter into razor-shards unless handled with the utmost care. Red, pulpy polyps grow here in straight lines. Strange moonfolk lurk among the crystalline growths, resembling giant cow skulls with four legs on the bottom and two arms on the sides. They attack with two punches (minor damage) and a tongue whip (vorpal on crit, be sure to tell players this somehow).
    1. The moonfolk resent the PCs for the vast amounts of oxygen they consume (an absolutely shocking amount, from their perspective. The normal respiration from 6 humans could absolutely destroy their tiny ecosystem in a matter of minutes, dooming them and their fragile ecosystem.) They will communicate this telepathically (“Cease your gaseous conversion immediately! You bring doom to our children!”) If the party insists on breathing, the moonfolk will attack.
    2. In the center of this clearing is their “farmhouse”, sort of like three increasingly-smaller domes stacked on top of each other. The bottom dome contains a 300'-long moongoat, which lies placidly coiled like a serpent. It's 760 teats provide the moonfolk with nutrition. It is harmless, and very difficult to rouse aside from mealtimes. Up the ladder, the second floor contains bizarre versions of farm equipment, including sawblades plows and double-ended scythes. On the top floor is a book detailing their flight from a distant and unknown oppressor, a diary of their day-to-day life, the phosphorescent paint they use to celebrate birthdays, and their entire wealth: 6 huge bolts of moonsilk, spun from the moonfolks' own glassy marrows.
  40. Very new blood. In this small attic, an immortal man throws himself against the ragged nails that stud the wall. He is covered in cobwebs and his own blood. In fact, all parts of the walls are covered with sharp blades. His name is Blofeld, and he has been trying to kill himself for over four hundred years (his estimate). He built this room to end his life, and is afraid to leave it, since he is terrified of becoming trapped somewhere or worse—being buried alive. He offers the party his scimitar (currently stabbed through his heart) if they can kill him, but he will attack them out of frustration if they seem like they are going to refuse his very honest plea for death. He fights as a level 6 fighter with 20 HP, who regenerates fully each round. The scimitar is the SWORD OF THE NORTH, and will always point north is balanced on its side. He once owned the machine in #37, and will warn people of it's moon-hunger if he thinks it will help convince people to kill him.
  41. Hollow trees. Grove of 9 dead trees. In the center of the grove is a scarcrow. The branches hold stick men and creepy bird skull figures. Each tree has different things inside of them, and can be bashed open easily. [1 – three dead crows, pile of acorn meal, 2 – porcelain torso with an opal-studded, red vest, 3 – dead crow and a spellbook containing sleep, alarm, and paralyze undead), 4 – empty, 5 – glass gargoyle head with garnet eyes, 6 – six crows and a dreamcatcher that grants restful sleep, 7 – three crows and silk flag with hydra motif summons breezes when affixed to a ship's mast, 8 – two dead crows each wearing a beaded necklace, 9 – one crow, two knitting needles, and a voodoo doll for Lord Ebola (in #69). If the scarecrow is destroyed or his medallion taken, the dead crows will become undead crows and attack. The crows take an eyeball on a critical. At the end of the combat, whoever killed the most crows suffers their curse: -2 to hit and save.
    1. The scarecrow's medallion is filthy, but if the mud is scraped off, it is revealed to be metal corn cob with kernals made from yellow jasper, tourmaline, citrine, tastefully mismatched. If worn, it grants the wearer +2 vs fear, and all birds (even undead ones) will not attack the wearer (although they will attack her companions).
  42. Barking men. Four Broad-shouldered, bow-legged bulldog men are hunting on the moors. Their three “dogs” are fierce-eyed men who run on all fours, and whose fingers have grown thick and horned from twisting the necks of deers. The bulldog men are hunting ducks (extinct) and cats (who have all fled to #54) but they will be overjoyed to hunt the PCs instead. They will unleash the hounds (stats as wolves) and bite their pipes as their take aim with their longbows. Treasure: longbows, canary-feather arrows, calf socks, garters, shooting breeks (waterproof pants), tweed waistcoats, supple hunting boots.
  43. Needles. At the bottom of this well is a small chamber, flooded up to 3' deep. Several bone needle men lurk just beneath the murky water. They will rattle their heads and attack with the edgeless sharp that they carry within each of their claws. Their skulls contain an eldritch gas (if inhaled, makes your next exhalation deep-voiced, as command spell) and several needles that are prized by necromancers. A crawlspace set into the wall leads to #44.
  44. Crone's eyes. A single, harried old woman sits on the floor of this small room. The wet carpet around her is sprouting dozens of brown-shouldered mushrooms. Jars behind her contain embalmed fetuses and the vital dusts of three ancient scholars (can be used to resurrect or confer with ancient people: a necromancer, a tax collector, and a surveyor). Shelves dug into the dirt walls contain 21 glass eyes.
    1. Tabitha, the crone, grew greedy in her gathering and has now become possessed by her collection of enchanted glass eyes. The glass eyes now control her, body and soul, and fight for occupation of her eye sockets. She spends her days obeying the eyes, constantly switching them in and out of her eyeless sockets, while each eye reads books, looks at pictures in bestiaries, or leers and lurid drawings. She has a crystal ball in front of her but rarely uses it. Tabitha herself is blind, and hasn't seen anything in years. Her glass eyes whirl independently in each socket, wet and wild.
    2. If approached by the party, she will try to gather the party in her tiny room by promising to tell their fortune. In the tiny, low-ceilinged room they cannot fight effectively, and she hopes that if the eyes posses more subjects they'll leave her alone. Treat the eyes as a 3 HD creature with 23 HP that takes ½ damage from slashing sources and never more than 1 damage from piercing. Each HP lost = one eye destroyed. Creatures that they drop to 0 HP are not killed, but rather have both of their eyes replaced and their consciousness overwhelmed. They fight as a swarm, and can attack everyone in an area. If defeated, 1d3 eyes will survive with mere cracks, and if worn in an eye socket, will function as well as normal eyes. They also allow you to see invisible creatures, but if used to do boring things (studying, standing watch) the eye will fall asleep, going black.
    3. Tabitha will cower throughout the fight, and if freed will be extremely grateful and extremely eager to be rid of them. She can tell fortunes and divinations in her crystal ball, and will happily give the party the gold coins she keeps beneath her rug if the party will leave and never return.
  45. Bronze Tortoise. The bulldog men live in this ramshackle house. They've trapped an enormous bronze tortoise in a pit nearby, and spend their days trying to open the top of its shell (which is locked with the key from #4. Hammers and crowbars lean up against the wall. Inside the tortoise's pillowy interior is the PESTLE OF GORE.
  46. A great drill. A peach tree. An elephant's foot umbrella stand with 3 steel umbrellas. 50 empty barrels. Dozen's of yellow flags in the area mark out the outline of a giant body. Gas tank with a straight razor laid on top. 10' of this vast machine are above the ground, and another 10' extend below ground. The machine is flawed. If it is turned on (requires adding at least 1 HP worth of blood) the whole thing will become violently energetic and tunnel into the ground, ripping free of it's bracing, stabilizing cables, and collapsing the dog-men's giant barn-shack. The drill will burrow through the stomach of a buried giant, who will raise his head and arm above ground even as he dies. He will make a swing at a single person before he dies, and hot tar will rain down, damaging everyone in the area who doesn't have cover (such as with a steel umbrella. It will burrow straight through the giant's stomach (#47), but the tar in that room will be dangerously hot until the giant has been dead for 6 hours.
  47. Tar. If the giant has been dead for at least 6 hours, the tar is cool and relatively safe. Otherwise, it is dangerously hot. Two sphincter-doors lead to #77 and #78. They open when tickled.
  48. Half a mouse. Tiny people have died fighting mice, all chewed in half. The tiny people aren't more than 2” tall and look to have suffered all sorts of injuries and deprivations. Dead mice are scattered all around them, some of them chopped in half. If their gear is ever restored to full, it will include (See #95) a set of scale mail made from extremely light ceramic and covered in blue cloth, a wand of dispel polymorph (12 charges), a potion of lightning resistance, and a potion of hide from undead.
  49. Gut strung harp. A bunch of monsters are playing instruments here. A fishman is playing a tuba. A goblin is playing on drums. A rakshasa is playing a piano and also singing. A satyr is playing a violin. A carrion crawler plays on a gut-strung harp. The players are sweaty and disheveled. If the players do anything that disrupts their playing, they'll all begin shouting, “You've ruined it! You've ruined everything!” while weeping angry tears. Then they'll attack. The tuba can launch attack squids (contains 1 in the chamber, 6 in the clip). The piano has extendable hammers when pressed (88 hammers). The violin lacerates the fuck out of people when it breaks a string (4 strings). And the drums just straight up explode (3 drums). The harp has no powers but the carrion crawler will still totally try to eat you. The instruments retain their abilities afterwards.
    1. If you go through their pockets while they are playing, they'll give you stink-eye, but will not attack. The pockets contain twine, a spare violin string, a tiny jar of rosin, and a few platinum coins.
  50. Dried frogs. In this room, there is a display of a 60' anaconda skeleton in the center of the room, as well as a impression-fossil of a coelocanth, an impression-fossil of an archeopteryx, and a row of six oryx heads. One of the walls has a display case full of dried frogs (no glass). Also a display case of butterflies. 1D6 rounds after the party enters the room, the dried frogs will peel themselves off the wall and whirl themselves at you like nunchucks. There are 10 frogs, 1 HP each. If they damage you, they soak up the spilled blood and swell up into giant killer frogs.
    1. Types of frogs (d6): 1 – poison arrow frog (poison), 2 – surinam toad (1d6 babies in his back), 3 – flying frog, 4 – ugly frog (gives warts), 5 – supertonguefrog, 6 – actually just a crocodile.
    2. As soon as the frogs attack, the archaeopteryx fossil will start laughing. If it take it off the wall, it will squawk angrily, but what can it do? It's just negative space. It can be trained to say words like a parrot.
    3. As soon as the frogs draw blood and turn into giant frogs, the anaconda skeleton will come to life and help you by eating the frogs. If it swallows a frog, it will re-dehydrate it and all of the anaconda's bones will sweat a bunch of blood onto the floor. Re-dehydrated frogs are loot, and you can put them in your inventory, throw them like ninja stars, and have them turn into giant asshole frogs if blood ever touches them. The anaconda skeleton is on your side, but if you fuck with it, it will not hesitate to chomp on your faces. It's also the only thing in this room that's undead (everything else is alive).
    4. The oryx heads on the wall will offer commentary on the fight. They are stupid and insulting. You can bribe them with vegetable food, but they will just choke on it and gag hilariously (since their throat dead-ends in a wooden plaque) and probably die (because that makes sense). The oryx don't know anything useful anyway. They'll try to bite you if you fuck with them, but they are semi-harmless.
    5. After combat is over, the butterflies will clap their wings together and it sounds just like thunderous applause. Roll for a random encounter.
    6. The ceolocanth is too old for this shit will do nothing but roll his eyes.
  51. Angry mob. They're standing around a mud-filled town square, preparing to burn a stray cat (from #54) at the stake for being a witch. They are surly lumpenproles with bad teeth and hunchbacks and you should probably just kill them all. They also have a few cages beside them containing a sad owl (a witch!) and a ghoul servitor from #69 (another witch!) If anyone was sent back in time by the gargoyle in room 16, you'll find them here, 1d20 years older, bearded and weird by their long years of imprisonment.
  52. Strange Lights. This room appears to have lights and sound coming from it, as if it were a cheerful dinner party, but when you open the door you will only see a dust covered table and a bunch of skeletons sitting at it. Like a reverse refrigerator. There's a nice silver candelabra here, though, with an owl theme. If the party messes with the room, and then closes the door behind them, they voices will resume where they left off, but with the changes incorporated.
    1. If the party steals the candelabra: “Hey, where did the candelabra go? That was a wedding present!”
    2. If the party steals a skull off one of the skeletons: “AAAAAGH OMIGOD OMIGOD WHERE DID FRANCIS' HEAD GO! OMIGOD SHE'S GETTING BLOOD ALL OVER THE CARPET! SOMEONE HELP HER! BRING A TOWEL!”
  53. Tradition. If this door is pushed open, spears will thrust down through the 9' in front of the door. Inside this small room is a 20' pit trap with a single skeleton at the bottom (disguised as a corpse) and a Mimic. Inside the mimic is a collapsible 10' pole (compresses down to 2') and a bucket of neverending lard.
  54. Strays. A bunch of stray cats gather here, including a small jaguar. They are fed milk and fish by the widows in #55, who also utilize their bodies when they die. However, the real protector is a flying ooze that will rush over if it ever hears the cats hissing or yowling in fear. The cats are feral and will not allow themselves to be petted or picked up.
  55. Widows. Old ladies with billygoat beards and black fingernails, spinning cats into cat-skin cloaks. Put them on and you turn into a cat. The only catch is that you need someone with thumbs to get you out of it (there are buttons). Stay in it for more than a day and you lose your mind. Three cats = one cloak. The old ladies will trade but they can't fight back, since they are just old ladies. They will warn you not to mess with the cats because the jaguar will kill you (they know something is protecting the cats, but they don't know about the flying ooze).
  56. Razor Webs. Invisible webs criss-cross this hallway, each made of an infinitely sharp filament. Walking into them is heavy damage. Running into them is save or die. You can navigate them by swinging a probe to determine where the filaments are, but you will fuck up a 10' pole into unusability. Adamantine weapons can cut the invisible webs, and smoke/fog can make them visible. These webs were made by tiny spiders, each the size of the head of a pin. The spiders are crawling around everywhere, but are so tiny it's hard to notice them.
  57. Directions. On a dias in this room, a pair of bee men are half-asleep, sitting on a T-shaped metal perch (like parrots). They will wake when the door is opened and speak in unison, “Greetings, Traveller! Behind us are two doors. This door leads to great treasures, but this one leads to terrible ruin.” They gesture at opposite doors. This appears to be another version of the “one always tells the truth and the other always lies”.
    1. In truth, they are both liars. Both doors lead to small rooms with a door in the back. When the door is messed with, the floor will collapse into a spiked pit that also contains the remains of two shattered gargoyles, one black and one white. Then a metal portcullis will slam shut, trapping the party. The two bee men will demand treasure in order to release the party (their T-shaped perch is actually the portcullis winch). Whether or not they are given treasure, they will eventually walk away laughing, and then release the monsters from their hole in the wall. One monster is a rust monster and the other is a rot monster.
    2. The black gargoyle is actually still alive, although it is missing a leg and most of its face. It will beg for help, although it can only tell lies, and so may be a bit confusing.
    3. If the party can't figure out a way to get out of the pit, someone will wander past and offer to release them in exchange for a favor. d4 [1 – Yammerhein from #36, 2 – Lophia from #24, 3 – a random ghoul from #69, 4 – the slothocephalus from #85.]
  58. The Tanner. In this room, a ogrish tanner is scraping the osteoderms off an ankylosaur hide. They litter the ground like peanut shells. He will make and sell leather armor, and will buy hides and leather armor for generous prices. He will tell you the story of the barbed leather in #25, but believes it to be lost forever. The barrels on the wall are filled with caustic lye, and if he is threatened, he will call his hides to his aid. The most dangerous hides by far are the four bull hides, which have goring horns and crushing grip.
  59. Snakes. Just a pit full of snakes, writhing and partying. Many of them are venomous.
  60. Snail shell. In this room is an invisible flail snail, with only the shell visible. In its stomach are hundreds of huge flowers. If the snail is killed, flowers will once again grow to cover the Moor.
  61. Obsidian mirror. In the center of this room is a circular, convex mirror of obsidian (6' across) with 15 small (3”) obsidian pyramids arranged around it. This is a portal room (see Note #3) and links to rooms #6 and #89 if a candle or a lily is placed in the center of it (taken from those rooms). Every obsidian pyramid removed from around the periphery makes the mirror more opaque (with mishap chances beginning if there are less than 12 pyramids here) and also causes more of a stink-rot smell to fill the room. The obsidian pyramids have electrum filigree and intricate carvings, and are worth 20g each. A crocodile savant lurks in this room, cloaking it in darkness.
  62. Bitter seeds. Three naked, bestial children (2 HD) squat on the ground here, scrounging for the bitter seeds that fall from the tree. They will tell you that the seeds are “bitter, bitter but sweet in memory” and barter for them (gold coins are worthless to them) if you want them. Only they can find the bitter seeds among the tangled roots of the tree, and if you kill them you will get no seeds.
    1. If you eat one of the seeds it will be bitter, bitter but you will fucking like the taste of it. One of the children will say, “that's because it's your heart” and you look down and holy shit you actually are eating your heart and it's all bloody and raw in your chest. It's just a copy of your heart, though, so you still have a perfectly good one in your chest (probably). After you take a bite, your Wisdom permanently goes up to 1 point and your Charisma permanently goes down by one, as you become both wiser and more cynical. You can eat up to 3 of these things with the same effect each time, but if you eat all 3 bitter seeds your alignment shifts one step away from Good.
  63. Bone chair. All the furniture in this room is made of bones. Bone couch, bone chandelier, bone scroll racks (3 scrolls are actually just femurs with spells carved on them), bone chalices filled with holy water. The real treasure in this room, though is the Bone Chair that sits at the head of the table, which is carved and covered with wrought silver and a few tasteful black tassels. You can look this room without any immediate consequence BUT if you do some angry skeletons will be added to the random encounters table. The skeletons will be genteel noble skeletons with sabers who will twizzle mustaches that they no longer have. The angry genteel skeletons will demand that you return their property or they will order their slaves (2d12 other skeletons with sabers that look identical to their masters) to kill you.
  64. Scraps of a dress. Down this hallway, you will pass a torn dress (blue cotton, white bow at the collar), then a pair of women's riding boots, then undergarments (at this point the players will have a minor, ignorable urge to take off their clothes and go further down the hallway), then what looks like a wig, then a torn skin, then a long streak of blood (at this point, players must save or charge down the hallway towards their inevitable conclusion), then long strips of flesh, then bones scattered across 50' of hallway, and then finally a glorious wall of light and speed and rushing sound. A subway river into golden eternity. Anyone reaching this point will be automatically overcome and will rush forward. Falling under the spell of the hallway causes you to run forward, while all your clothes and gear fall off. If you are not stopped, you will shed your flesh and bones and your soul will rush triumphantly into that grand consensus.
  65. Titan Arch. A gigantic archway, 70' wide and 100' tall. A titanic three-toed sloth hangs from it, wearing a giant collar made from gold and red enamel. Her nametag says “My name is Flossy. Please don't wake me up.” Luckily, it is just about damn near impossible to wake the sleeping sloth. You'd have to stick a lance through her eyelid or something. The real danger comes from the lichen-men that live in Flossy's fur (as vegepygmies). The clasp is by the nametag, so you'll probably have to stand on Flossy's belly to undo it.
  66. White Coral. Huge, ghostly, as if dredged up from the bottom of the sea. Looming eight feet high. It is full of jeweled crabs, valuable but very shy.
  67. Mud. Lots of it. A sail-less mast sticks out of this mud, but there is not ship beneath it. Four ropes are tied across the beam, as if for a noose, but they are are torn and half-missing. If the flag (41) is tied to the mast, a breeze will blow through the room.
  68. Mockery Jungle. This is a mock jungle of mockery. Trees sprout up from all directions, made from wire and poorly-painted paste. A sign reads, “This is a jungle.” Paper leaves are nailed to splintery wood, and badly taxidermied animals are arranged haphazardly among the corrugated ferns. Painted rocks are tied to some of the branches, standing in for fruit. The only living creatures here are the monkeys, who leap overhead while throwing insults at anyone else. If captured, the monkeys will only offer more verbal abuse (“Bugger off”, “Get lost”, and “Suck an egg” seem to be favorites). The only random encounter you with find here is the dreaded MOCKTOPUS (which takes 2x damage from the wooden sword).
    1. Paths and intersections sprout up, sometimes with footprints leading one way or another, but these are meaningless. Wandering is useless and will only get you lost forever. Mapping is better, and will return you to the door you entered from. But only getting lost—intentionally--will get you through this conceptual maze and to the far side of the “room”. Alternatively, the wooden sword from Room 8 can clear the jungle—each swing will cause huge swaths of fake jungle to crumple into garbage and dozens of monkeys to die screaming.
  69. Plague House. In this mansion live a number of gentlemen ghouls, each one working on perfecting a specific disease. The ghouls collect the corpses of everything that dies in this dungeon, fight for the biggest parts, and eat the parts that they don't use for research. Their skeletal servitors (undead spiders that occupy skulls like hermit crabs) keep the house tidy and also scuttle around the dungeon looking for fresh meat. They also scour the dungeon for corpses. The ghouls all believe (correctly) that killing all the living things in the dungeon will cause the whole thing to slide into the afterlife and stop all this silly “dreamland” nonsense. Aside from the normal ghoul powers, each one can breathe a cone of their favorite disease.
    1. Lady Anthrax loiters in the boudoir, lounging on a couch, chatting with the (non-verbal but animate) remains of her past lovers. She is a bit worried about Malaria, who used to be so much fun. Her plague cauldron simmers in the fireplace. She wears a bishop's mitre.
    2. Lady Malaria is busy replanting orchids in the hothouse amid a cloud of mosquitos. Zombie ducks swim across her plague pond. She is furious at Lord Cholera's sabotage of her work. She wears a wimple.
    3. Lord Cholera sits in the dining room, gnawing bones and writing terrible poetry. He is looking for someone to read it to, now that Ebola has begun acting so strangely. With a talon-like toenail, stirs the frothy mixture in his plague tureen. He wears a top hat.
    4. Lord Ebola paces across his bedroom. The other ghouls are plotting against him, waiting for him to leave his plague chamberpot unattended. Thousands of pages of paper document the imagined treachery of the other ghouls, and describe his plan to eat Lady Anthax. He wears a tricorn hat.
    5. The ghouls are most likely to see the party as a source of meet. If the party kills several groups of servitors, the ghouls will likely venture out to take care of it themselves. Unless the party can prove their usefulness (shouldn't be hard) the ghouls will be very hostile. They're quite deadly, and most of them have some spell-casting ability.
    6. What the ghouls want: (1) Meat. They'll pay 100g per HD of corpse brought in. (2) the destruction of the bee people in room 24.
    7. What the ghouls can offer: Cures from diseases. Lady Malaria is actually a cleric, and can remove curses. They're also willing to send servitors to aid the party (they can always make more). They also know more about the history of this place than anyone else, and can tell you about the Dreaming Prince. They're also refreshingly honest about their intentions, “Keep bringing us meat and we won't eat you.”
  70. The End. In this room, there's a bunch of sarcophagi, with one more elaborate sarcophagus on a dais in the center of the room. And inside the sarcophagus is a lich. And when they open the sarcophagus, just start storytelling (as the DM) about how they fought the lich and got his treasure and then left the dungeon and spent the treasure and and then moved into a pastoral community and all lived there happily as friends. One is a blacksmith and adopts an orphan, one marries an elf, one starts a small school of magic for precocious youngsters, and they all grow old and happy together. Everyone gets a happy ending.
    1. Just keep blathering your story until someone expresses their doubts. Then, that person is back in the dungeon, covered in blood and injuries and aches while the rest of the party stands there drooling and smiling. If the players let you blather on so long that you start running out of happy endings for everyone, roll for a random encounter and give it surprise on everyone.
    2. But when they wake up, they really are in a real room with a bunch of sarcophagi. The central sarcophagus really does contain a lich. The lich will probably attack the party and TPK them (because, hey, liches don't need much provocation) but he will also offer to return people to their happy endings, put them in stasis, and then store them inside the smaller sarcophagi. (“Why do you adventure for? Everything life can offer, I can already give you here, in sleep.”) The smaller sarcophagi contain really, really old people, smiling peacefully and breathing so slowly you can barely tell. They crumble into dust when touched, but the lich can turn them all into ghasts with a crook of his finger.
    3. The lich's name is Tanaraeva. The irony of dreaming inside a dream has not escaped him.
  71. Withered plains. The ground is wrinkled like an old woman's face. In the center of this place is Tortagon, a false clay golem. He looks like a normal clay golem but on the inside he is full of blood and guts and stuff. He is resting a distance away from the Krakentree, his eternal foe. He wields the WOODEN AXE (wooden haft, wooden blade, can heal itself if planted, though you will need to prune it afterwards)
  72. Silver Road. This road is covered with silver-coated bricks, with many sections missing. In the middle of the road are two fools with no names, awaiting the return of their master and fighting over who gets to sit on the rock (which is only big enough for one of them). They want more comfortable shoes, since theirs are almost all worn down. Creatures wandering off the roads will walk into the mist, which will gradually make them more and more transparent while the mist grows denser and more vital.
  73. Red Sign. A tavern for vampires, called the Red Sign. Empty 90% of the time. 10% of the time it is filled with neurasthenic vampires who will assume that everyone there is also a vampire. Pub games: darts, lawn bowling, Devil-among-the-Tailors, Toad-in-the-Hole. They are languid but will drop all pretense of civility if they see fresh blood. Most of the bottles behind the counter are poisonous, and they all bear strange names (“clarion wasp”, “midnight agony”, “screwtape liquor”, “teratoheme”, etc). Beneath the bartender's floor mat is a trapdoor leading to the basement, where several headless creatures are chained to the wall, providing fresh blood on tap. They were labels that display their vintage (“Iron Dwarf, Male, 1861”, “Cimmerian, Male, 1994”, “Atlantian, Female, 1287”, “Brynthic, Female, 2002”).
  74. Black Rainbow. A black hole sun unshines down on this bleak vista, creating a rainbow in negative space. If you follow it to its very end you will encounter a golden pot containing cursed lead coins (each one counts as a lodestone), but you will be attacked by undead leprechauns on the way there.
  75. Stormclouds. This is the storm that all elderly people in the dungeon can see. Lighting strikes foretell tragedy (and random encounters, see Note 1). Flying through the storm are huge ravens with the heads of old men. They have fierce eyes and terrible claws, and will attack young PCs while ignoring the older ones. In the center of this storm is a small tower made of mirror-polished metal that is struck by lightning every 1d6 rounds, which electrocutes the whole exterior (and interior walls), but not the floors. The front door is locked (most lock picks are conductive) with the key from #76. The bottom floor contains four rusty suits of armor all lying in poster beds. One of the suits of armor has STORM GAUNTLETS, which, in addition to having sweet spiked knuckles, also allow you to redirect lightning. The upper story is the roost of the horrible old raven-men, and resembles a cross between a bird cage and a reading room, with the floor carpeted with pages from some obscure text. (Excerpt: “. . . but business is business, and to a robber whose soul is in his profession, there is a lure and a challenge about a very old and very feeble man who has no account at the bank, and who pays for his few necessities at the village store with Spanish gold and silver minted two centuries ago. Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva selected the night of April 11th for their call. . .”) Under a pile of seed husks is a small lockbox containing a bunch of gold and a few illegible deeds which entitle the bearer to quite a bit of farmland in some distant part of the world.
  76. Chain. In this room, you can see the giant's ass and legs, emerging out of the wall. He's actually on his knees, so the sphincter is about about 15' off the ground. The room is strung with chains and hooks, hanging from the rafters and coiled in the corners. The room contains the alchemical equipment for turning shit into gold, as well as numerous texts on the alchemy of transmuting bodily substances into metals (black bile into cold iron, cerebrospinal fluid into adamantine, etc). In the center of the room are a young man and woman, discussing the ideal amount of aqua regia to add to the dephlogistication reaction. They don't appear to have any arms nor legs, but the stools that they sit on have four brass lion legs, like a bathtub. (The stools are magical, and can commanded to move by sitting on them and giving them commands. They walk slow.)
    1. In truth, the two young people are both chain devils, and can control any chain within 100' as a simple extension of their will. If threatened, they will use the hooked chains to lift their bodies (chains can never cause them damage) 20' in the air while attacking with the other chains along the walls. Their names are Chessen and Moira.
    2. The chain devils use a small oven to reduce imps, crocodiles, and street children to their elemental essences. The small oven is made from mirror-polished metal (exactly like the tower in #75) as is the key to the oven's door. The small oven door only locks/unlocks from the inside, and the key cannot be removed unless the door is locked. The only (obvious) way to get the key out of the oven is for someone to climb inside, lock themselves inside, and then pass the key up the chimney. The door is currently ajar.
  77. Heart. Here is beats the vast and bloody heart of the giant. A feral orphan girls squats atop it, gnawing on stolen bread. She is fierce and toothsome, but also 4' 11” and a level 1 thief. The giant calls her “Threnody, my daughter” but he is wrong. She is just a parasite.
    1. If the heart here is stabbed a bunch, the giant will die. It'll probably take several turns while the giant bellows, “Aaagh! You pain me! Caution, I urge you!” which then turn to cries of horrible agony.
  78. Flies. You are in the giant's ass. Flesh walls and fecal floors. If the giant is alive, there will be a giant tapeworm here (reaction roll). If the giant is dead, there will be clouds of flies here. If the giant has been dead for at least 6 hours, heaps of maggots will be devouring the villi walls of this place, growing fat and tumbling onto the ground as they gorge themselves. If the giant has been dead for at least 24 hours, there will be 1d6 giant, saw-mouthed, carnivorous razorflies, plus another 1d6 for every 24 hours beyond that (up to 3d6).
  79. Bakers. In this bakery lives the Baker, a thinly veiled metaphor for a benevolent Judeo-Christian god. He is known by no other name. He has adopted all sorts of outcasts from different parts of the dungeon, and his three apprentices are (1) a bee princess who knows of the royal rivalry in room #24, (2) a talking pig who once heard a story about a lucky whistle (untrue, see #92), (3) and a ghost who somehow escaped from room #9 and went looking for the missing game piece before getting lost. The bakery has a front room that is a store, and a bigger back room that is a bakery floor.
    1. The Baker is wise, benevolent, and sort of a dick. He's also a lich, although he is warm and cheerful and smells like delicious bread. His phylactery is buried beneath the big, central oven. He will sell you potion-bread (a.k.a. bunny-bread, looks and hops like a bunny and heals 1d6+1 hp if eaten) and knows recipes for all sorts of other types of magic bread. If you steal from him you will never be able to find his bakery again. He can make the following things out of bread: (1) shoes, (2) doors, (3) loyal hounds, (4) books, (5) sling stones, (6) hats, (7) spouse lures, (8) armor. At any give time he will have 1d3 of these bread-items displayed in his windowsill, along with other novelty bread that look like giraffes and fish and stuff. (Some of this animal bread is actually animate and totally wants you to eat it.)
    2. The entire back wall of the bakery floor is occupied by the face of the giant, whose huge arms also protrude into the room. The giant's name is Randy and he wears a giant chef's hat. He is sort of a benevolent simpleton who is terribly afraid of offending someone. He uses his big strong arms to help out the bakers in return for some bread. There is currently an aromatic cherry pie set out in front of him—the bakers hope that the smell will coax Randy's runaway “daughter” Threnody back into the bakery (see #77). Randy has had a terrible tummy-ache recently, and fears that Threnody is angry at him for offending her, and has been abusing his guts in retaliation (actually a tapeworm, see #78).
    3. If the giant is killed, the Baker will know exactly who did it, and his shop will be a place of gloom and thinly veiled hostility.
  80. King's Grave. Here is a graveyard with two mausoleums, a big one and a smaller one. The most interesting thing is the huge, baroque mausoleum in the center of it covered in sneering gargoyle faces. The lintel names the occupant: “Mutarion, King of the People, who almost loved his son enough”. Written on the door is a riddle: “Alive without breath; as cold as death; never thirsty, always starved; clad in mail never carved.” If the right answer is given ('Numahk'), the door will slide open to reveal King Mutarion's crypt. If the wrong answer is given, the gargoyle faces will burst into laughter, the door to the smaller mausoleum will explode open, and Sir Numahk will attack. The inside of the King's Mausoleum is just an empty square of dirt. If the dirt is dug up, you will find the rotted coffin of King Mutarion. The king is just dry bones covered in mold (poisonous spore clouds if disturbed) but the rotted coffin has golden paneling and the king still carries a jeweled scepter (Mace +1, treat your charisma as +2 if wielded, worth a fortune) and a pseudo-Faberge egg that can be commanded to turn into a clockwork chick (fragile, obedient, worth a fortune). If his skull is examined, it will whisper, “Please help my son” a single time, but is otherwise a completely mundane skull.
    1. The smaller mausoleum is covered in fish heads, and the lintel reads, “Sir Numakh, the King's Champion, who buried one king and imprisoned another”. If Numakh's mausoleum is opened or if the wrong answer is given to the riddle on the big mausoleum, Numakh (now a ghoul) will explode out of his tomb and attack. He rides a flying barracuda golem, made from brass, pearl, and shark teeth. He wears an set of armor made from leviathan leather (scale armor +1, grants water-breathing) and wields a glaive (+1, cursed, cannot discard, wielder can never sleep unless 90% submerged in water). In his mausoleum is a bathtub where he rests his moldy body (fine porcelain and golden feet), small gold-plated table filled with empty wine bottles, and a chandalier overhead (decent quality brass, 88 crystal pendants worth a good sum.)
    2. 16 graves with random graves. All filled with dry bones and ragged remnants of servants (butler vests, maid dresses) except for: 1,4,5,11,13,15 contain ghouls, if one is disturbed, they all will rise. 3 copper icon of a sword, 6 three-hundred gold coins, 10 wedding ring, 14 amber-paneled drinking stein showing scenes of hunting, 16 cursed boots of dancing with silver buckles.
  81. Golem's script. The walls of this room are covered with cuniform script carefully pressed into 4 clay panels. They are written in an ancient script, but if translated, stuff will happen. After each panel is translated (comprehended) an random item in a random player's inventory will disappear and be reincorporated in the lump that is growing in the center of the room. After each panel has been read, the object self-assembling in the center of the room will be completely assembled, incorporating pieces of whatever items were used to construct it. Once all four panels are read, the golem in the center of the room will be fully assembled. It's final size and abilities depend on the items sacrificed to construct it. Regardless, the golem will be sentient and can cast passwall and invisible servant once per day each. The golem contains the mind of Malik, the former vizier and artificer. He will be all in favor of seeking out the sleeping Prince and killing him.
    1. The panels are a letter addressed to the reader. It asks that it not be read until the environment has stabilized. It tells about the illness that befell the Prince, and the weird extrusions into the world around the castle. When things got really weird (bull-dog men), Malik wrote himself into these panels and waited for this whole mess to blow over.
  82. Pig's tail. A farmhouse with an absurdly tall silo. Intelligent, talking pigs crowd around the farmhouse, eating slop and discussing social methods of government. They are kept by the Pot-bellied Wizard, who lives in the silo-tower. These are magical pigs, and the Pot-bellied Wizard has been keeping them, breeding them, and harvesting their tails, which normally allow the pigs to fly. The Pot-bellied Wizard has been harvesting pigs' tails and using them to build his own super-tail, which is long and huge and made of fractal pig tails (it's pig tails all the way down). This super-tail gives him super powers, including flight, the power to make people's guts attack them (requires punching yourself in the stomach to stop them from trying to throttle your heart), and the power to make people instantly obese (only lasts a few hours, though).
    1. The Pot-bellied wizard is huge (7' tall) and has a tremendous belly within which different colors swirl. A small spigot allows him to tap his belly for 1d8 random potions (different colors = switch to a new vial). Despite his fat-baby face, he is utterly evil and seeks to bring wrack and ruin to all living things, and someday become a lich himself. He will attempt to destroy the party indirectly (by sending them down a certain hallway #64) or directly (by blasting them with acidic lightning bolts or his other weird wizard powers (see above).
    2. His tower also contains some spell books, a cauldron containing a baby alligator blowing bubbles (actually a baby Godzilla/Tarrasque), a chest of gold coins that will all flee in different directions if someone other than the wizard opens it while yelling for help and potentially disappearing over the horizon, and a saddle that will turn ANYTHING into a horse that it is strapped on to.
    3. His intelligent pigs have been duped into cooperating with his mad schemes after the Pot-bellied wizard dazzled them with discussion about political systems and then baffled them with bullshit. The pigs believe that they are a Parliament, and the wizard is the Vice-President of the Republic. While “impeaching” the wizard is impossible (it requires a unanimous vote from the parliament), the pigs might be amenable to other ideas (communism, anarchy) and the PCs could perhaps foment a religion that ends with a bunch of pigs eating a wizard.
  83. Tin Crown. In this room, there is a hole in the ground that is basically a well with a winch and a pulley and a rope and a bucket. Except the rope is actually a chain and the bucket is actually a steel box. The steel box is about 3' x 3' x 4' and looks sort of like a tiny coffin. Cries for help can be heard inside. If the (locked) coffin is opened, a desperate skeleton pops out, holding a Tin Crown. The skeleton will attempt to place the crown on the head of whichever PC looks dumbest (“You saved me! Let me thank you with my only treasure! It will protect you against poison!”) but if the person resists, the skeleton will try to forcibly smash it on their brow.
    1. Once the crown is placed, the skeleton will regrow her flesh (she is a level 4 thief named Olma) and the person wearing the crown will instantly shed everything except their skeleton, be sucked into the metal coffin (it relocks), and hurled down the well. Olma will then explain that there is no point in killing her now, and explain how the tin crown works.
    2. The skeleton wearing the crown will be sucked back into the coffin as soon as they try to leave the room. The only way to get rid of the cursed crown is to put it on someone else's head, and pass the curse on to them. Once you have gotten rid of the curse, you can never again be recursed by it (no tag-backs).
    3. If the tin crown is ever transmuted into lead (the bee people in #24 and the chain devils in #76 are both accomplished alchemists and can make an oil that will do exactly this) the curse will be lifted and the crown will become a magic item that will allow you turn into a skeleton at will, or for a skeleton to regrow their flesh, but only as long as they wear the lead crown.
  84. Echo. In this cavernous room you will hear echoes of all the encounters they've had since entering the dungeon. See Note #2.
  85. Knapped Flint. A tribe of pygmies lives in the branches of a huge tree. They dart among the branches, hunting birds with flint spears and worshiping their guardian Slothocephalus (sort of a brontosaurus with a symbiotic sloth on its head—stompy feet and scythe claws). The pygmies are (relatively) friendly, but eating their fruit will cause the eater to shrink until they are the size of the pygmies themselves. The bird meat is delicious, but they are especially eager to taste owl. They through nightly ceremonies where they dance around a fire, dancing, drinking, banging on drums, while the slothocephalus nods along to the bead, clapping its hands.
  86. Spices. In this quaint (locked) house lives a grandmotherly mindflayer. That's an exaggeration, but she is old and no longer wants to fight. In her SPOTLESS kitchen a pygmy from #85 stands perfectly rigid, like a zombie. He is alive, but has been partially lobotomized. His skull has been neatly sawed around the equator (so neat that it isn't visible from across the room) and can be easily lifted off to reveal his half-eaten brain. The pygmy holds a tray containing a long-handled dessert spoon, a jar of nutmeg, and a crumpled cloth napkin.
    1. The rest of the kitchen contains a sink, a washbasin, a mahogany table with a neat stack of mag-johng tiles, some nice mid-western style chairs with cornflower blue cushions, and a stuffed parrot on a stand. An impressive spice rack above the sink contains an array of spices (saffron, mustard, black pepper, aril, cinnamon, cassia, cloves, turmeric, ginger, galingale, chili, curry, paprika, fenugreek, anise, basil, cilantro, coriander, cardomom, dill, fennel, garlic, hyssop, juniper, lavender, licorice, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, vanilla, and watercress). These are large amounts, and some of these spices are fairly rare, so the whole collection as a whole would be worth 1000g. If any spices are sprinkled atop the pygmy's brain, the pygmy will whisper the name of the spice, except for cinnamon which makes him scream uncontrollably and throw shit on the floor. If more than 3 spices are added to his brain, he will start frothing at the mouth.
    2. There's also a living room with a small library (all of the books are about domestic bullshit). If you look closely, the pillows on the couch are softly breathing. These are living pillows, and they are harmless (and made of fluffy meat, very light). Upstairs, you can hear the lady of the house walking around.
  87. Squid Beak. The house's owner is named Iolan, and she is a narrow-hipped old bird of a mind flayer. She is senile, and thinks that the PCs are there to bring her some more delicious pygmies and will call them all by the names of her friends, now long dead (“Maliquesh”, “Ithaquar”, “Elder Brain”). She keeps a bunch of gold coins under her mattress, and has a pearl-covered wedding dress in the closet, but those are her only treasures (except for the spice rack downstairs in #86). If the players ever do something completely aggressive, she will have a moment of clarity and attack them, but otherwise is quite harmless. If she is ever killed a mind flayer tadpole will pop out of her head and start shrieking and tearing around the room (same stats as a vorpal rabbit, except higher AC due to quickness) while it bites out PCs throats.
  88. Cage Door. A bunch of cages in this room, filled with signs of violence. A cage door lies by itself in the middle of this room, surrounded by a pool of blood. A dead man in a white gown lies here with a golden key (loot) jammed into each of his eyes. Another dead man, lies crumpled in a corner, missing his clothing and his shoes. His face has been torn off as if by a great claw. Bloody notebooks pile on the desk, many have been torn in half. They all say the same thing: “Well, there is one thing we could try. It's a new procedure. Well, there is one thing we could try. It's a new procedure. . . . ad infinitum”.
  89. Lilies. Portal from 61. In this grass-covered room, a ring of 16 lilies grow in a circle around a convex mirror 6' across. Fireflies flit through the air. This is a portal room (see Note #3), and if a candle (from #6 or #90) or obsidian pyramid (from #61) is ever placed in the center of the mirror, a portal will be opened to room #6 or #61, respectively. If there are less than 16 lilies here, the mirror will begin to grow cloudy and and the fireflies will begin to die. If there are less than 12 lilies, there is a chance for a mishap (again, see Note #3). Room #61 has a crocodile savant in it that may enter this room and attack if the portal is ever opened.
  90. Coal. These narrow tunnels appear to be the remains of a coal mine. Visible fire dancing along veins in the rock, where it has been burning for the last century. Soot sprites hide behind drills and shovels and picks, seeking mischief. One of them has a magic candle from room #6, and will use it to extinguish the party's torches. This is bad, since grues will quickly leach out of the coal seams once there is no light.
  91. Spider Milk. An abyss, spanned by huge spiderwebs. A trio of spider-gauchos lounge here, sitting on mushroom stools and drinking tequila containing an undead worm (still wriggling!). They smoke cigars and carry sabers, and of course, the tequila is highly flammable. They are course fellows but not unfriendly. If the party wants passage across the abyss, they'll sell a ride for a modest fee.
    1. Less obvious are their mounts, huge black and brown spiders that cling to the ceiling. If violence breaks out, the spiders will rush to the aid of their riders. The spider-gauchos use their mounts to herd their caterpillars across the spiderweb plain.
    2. If the party takes up the guachos offer to ride across the web, the guachos will offer them some fermented spider milk, which they have been carrying beneath their seats, letting the heat and the pounding from their bouncing saddles keep it from clotting. They will offer some to the most rugged-looking PC, but will not drink any themselves. It is not fully fermented, and tastes foul, but if a PC drinks it, they will first tease, then congratulate them on being a good sport, and then warn the PC against blowing the bog whistle in room #92, since that will summon the castle-giant that holds the sleeping Prince, and the giant likes to smash things.
  92. Bog Whistle. Blowing the whistle is a bad idea. It summons the Bog Giant, which is the climactic fight in this dungeon.
    1. He arrives in an iron carriage, long and tubular, pulled by two sturdy looking horses covered in spiked barding. The Bog Giant steps out (he's 10x larger than the carriage he rode in on), picks up the carriage, and uses it as a flail, with the horses as the spiked heads. The horses don't mind being whipped around, and will actually try to kick and bite as they go whirling past.
    2. The Bog Giant is here to smash things. It has no higher purpose. If defeated, the bog giant will sit down heavily, groan out, “Lord Prince, you haaaaave . . . guests.” and then sink into the bog as he turns into peat. He will leave behind the Inner Asylum, the original building.
    3. Rooms 93-104 take place inside the Inner Asylum, which is a slightly enlarged version of the normal asylum. While you are in the Inner Asylum you will find that they have been reduced in age and stature to that of a child (about 6-10 years old, for humans). Your stats don't change. Instead, all of the adults in the Inner Asylum have been upsized, so treat them as if they have the size of ogres (which they do, from the PC's perspective) and most of the items in the inner asylum as likewise sized up. All of your equipment turns into toy equipment (with the exact same functionalities) except for the wooden sword from #8, which will function like a longsword +3 that can shoot laser beams while in this area.
    4. Rooms 93-104 are effectively in a pocket dimension, with only one way in and out (the front door). Although the rooms has windows looking out into a sunny moor, none of the windows open. Breaking a window will reveal only a wall of black dirt, which will fall into the room, possibly crushing the person near the window, and destroying the rooms only light source. Holes in the wall function the same way.
  93. Finger nails. A colossal room, with wood paneled walls. The first thing you'll see is the receptionist. Nothing of her can be seen except for her two hands, huge (adult-sized) and well-cared for. Her fingernails have been painted red, and she files them down constantly and expertly, touching them up and reapplying the paint.
    1. On the desk she has a paperweight: an obsidian pyramid, 6” tall (although to the receptionist, it would be 3” tall).
    2. Remember that you are child-sized in an adult world, and all you can see of the receptionist is her giant fucking hands.
    3. She'll tell you that if you don't have an appointment, you'll have to sit in the Waiting Room (#94) until the doctor can see you.
    4. If you do sit and wait, the doctor will call for you in 14 months. This isn't that bad of a deal. Time will pass as normal on the outside world, but you will not hunger or thirst. You'll still age, but you'll be safe as long as you don't look under Mrs. Macay's chair. This might be a good time to study a book or grow a beard or something.
    5. If you decide to force your way past her, she will attack while shouting about protocol, and will reveal herself to be nothing more than a pair of giant, manicured hands.  She will slap and crush, and her shiny red nails will tear at you without mercy.
  94. Penny Dreadful. Woman sits here in a blue dress with a white bow at the collar, reading some sort of dreadfully banal novella. A picture on the wall shows a red-painted tavern amid a dusty plain. Another painting on the opposite wall depicts a scenic lightning storm over a red desert. The woman's name is Alena Macay, and she is reading a book.
    1. If you ask her what she is reading, she will want to read you an excerpt from her book, titled “A String of Pearls”. The excerpt is thus, (and tell the players to interrupt you when they've heard enough): “A marvelous creature, the hippopotamus is known to hunt it's prey by stealth, sliding along it's armored underbelly and entangling ambulatory victuals with a pair of prehensile tongues, which are quickly torn to shreds by the revolving planes of its head, and then regrow. The indigenous savages of the monsoon bog have devised a very clever method of hunting the hippo: they remove their skin by degrees and make a kite of it and use this device to scare the hippo into pseudosaccharine backwaters, where it wallows itself to death among the congealed brine of those brackish angles . . . Isn't that fascinating?”
    2. If asked, she will tell the party that her daughter is here, visiting the doctor about a headache. She should be out any minute now.
  1. In her purse are more penny dreadfuls and a an immaculately clean hatchet, 15” long.
  2. If asked about the axe, she will show genuine surprise, and laughingly suggest that it is just a toy, made out of wood. She will mock any attempts to persuade her that it is a real handaxe.
  3. Beneath her chair (and impossible to see, as it is shielded by the Mrs. Macay's dress, the sidewalls of the chair, and the wall behind her) is her daughter, hacked to pieces and killed with a hatchet blow to the forehead. If the party stays here for more than a few days, insects and vermin will begin to capitalize on the corpse.
  4. If her murdered daughter is ever pointed out to her, she will flip out and attack with the hatchet (it just teleports into her hands). She fights as a level 1 Fighter but has 100 hp, and will scream until her face has been hacked to a pulp, will swing the axe until her flesh has been flayed to ribbons (afterwards she attacks with bites and claws), and will fight until she is reduced to splintered bones.
  5. You might be able to get her to come with you into the rest of the hospital (a valuable Adult Escort!) if you kill the receptionist, but she will be sort of a one note cockatoo, always chiming in with how she is sure her daughter is fine. She will give you access to the office (#100) since she counts as an adult.
  1. Urn. A huge white room with curving white walls. 40' tall and bulging in the middle. The urn is the room. If you take the lid off the urn, a giant will take the lid off the room AND THE GIANT IS YOU. If you look into the urn, you can see the group gathered around the urn, and inside that smaller urn, an even smaller group, and so on and so on, all the way down.
    1. If you pick someone else up and place them beside the urn, they will now be about 2” tall.
    2. If you pick yourself up, you will die as you are accelerated up and out of all existence by the chain of ever-larger, ever-stronger yous.
    3. If you put something in the urn, a giant version will be deposited from the ceiling. Putting a coin into the urn will result in (your) giant hand putting a giant coin into the room. You can put lots of stuff into the urn, but putting in a potion will just result in a 1 dose of a potion that is really big and dilute, not 1000 doses of the same potion. Putting in gemstones is fun, but honestly, no one has enough money to buy a diamond the size of a watermelon.
    4. The mouth of the urn is about 3” wide, or 10' wide, depending on whether you are talking about the room-urn or the vase-urn.
    5. Picking up the urn has no effect on the relative gravity (thank god), so you can shake the urn to your heart's content.
    6. You can even carry the urn out of the dungeon with you, and use it to store cigarette butts or candy or something. It's a lot less useful if you aren't standing in the room yourself, but if you ever find a way to shrink yourself down to 2” and jump in, it will serve as a portable entrance to the dungeon.
    7. It's fairly easy to break the universe with this urn. If you can't figure out what it would do after drawing a diagram, assume that it breaks the universe and everyone dies. Things like pouring water into the urn will create an ever-expanding, ever accelerating ocean of water that will quickly explode this part of the dungeon.
    8. If the urn is ever broken, this room will be replaced with a matte black darkness filled with howling wind. It can still be navigated, and the door to room #96 can still be reached, but anyone failing their Str checks to cling to the carpet (the only former element of the room to remain) will be whisked away into the outer darkness.
  2. Talisman. Here is a hippo, floating serenely in a tank containing a bunch of platinum coins on the bottom as well as a mithril diver's suit (treat as plate mail that grants water breathing) that is currently home to a sea snake (poison save or die). Around the hippo's neck is a talisman belt that grants immunity to snake poisons and if eaten, will function as a remove curse. The part that has to be swallowed is a copper and iron talisman of a hippo, about 2” across. It will never come back out your mouth and must be pooped out (but can be reused!)
    1. If you allowed the woman in #94 to read to you, everything that she said will be true. Instead of a fat, placid thing, the hippo will be a horrible devouring thing with a head the vibrates like a nest of helicopter blades and polyarticulated nightmare legs that pierce the anguished skin of reality, allowing it to fly through the air like a goddam razor parade, while flapping, empty-eyed skinkites dart through their air, looking at you with their vacant soulless eyes like great ghastly bedsheets, looking for a way to force their slippery fingers past your teeth so they can fill you up with their emptiness, all while the black syrup produced by refining the freshest native American burial grounds oozes from the walls and dances up to your feet like a liquid puppy seeking its dinner.
    2. Depending on how far you let the woman read, of course.
    3. Honestly, the best idea is probably to just let the hippo chase you back to the urn room and then pick it up out of the urn, where it will then be 5” long instead of 15'.
  3. Game Piece. This is a playroom. There are toy dinosaurs and a toy train and a dollhouse (sized for 2” people) and a bunch of marbles (one of them is actually a nonmagical glass eye). There is also a home-made board game here that has been drawn in crayon, shakily titled “Going Home”. It has a single game piece atop it (the same one that is wanted by the ghosts in #6).
    1. There is a little girl named Miranda laying on the couch. She is wrapped up in heavy cloth like a pappoose (or like a super-straightjacket) so that she is just a bundle wrapped up without arms or legs. She will complain about how all the other children got to go play in the Moor, but she had to say here an account of her condition. She wants someone to take off her wrapping so she can go play, even though the doctors said not to. If a player undoes all the buckles and straps that keep her bundled up, all of her organs will slide onto the floor because she has no skin or skeleton, and she will die.
  4. Forgotten ring. This is a hydrotherapy room, and it has buckets and pallets and hoses and tubs. A small stove heats water in a metal bucket, which can then be added to the baths manually. This room has two private hot tub rooms. One is open and the little slider in the door reads 'available'. The other is locked and the little slider in the door reads 'occupied'.
    1. The empty hot tub room contains a hot tub (always pleasantly hot!), a showercap, and a 2 nice towels with gold thread trim (worth 5g each).
    2. The occupied hot tub room contains another magic hot tub, a stool, a bunch of women's clothing hung on pegs, and a small metal stand with a wedding ring on top (huge diamond, worth 3000g). If anyone enters the room, a pink ooze will burst out of the tub and attack.
    3. Both of the magic tubs have the exact same powers.
      1. If you sit in one for 10 minutes, you will heal 1d6 damage and all the dirt will dissolve off.
      2. If you sit in one for 20 minutes, you'll heal to full and your hair will be shiny.
      3. If you sit in one for 30 minutes, you'll become permanently immune to diseases and all the dead skin will dissolve off, leaving you with a perfect complexion (no acne, either).
      4. If you sit in one for 40 minutes, you'll dissolve into the water and turn into a horrible pink ooze.
  5. Pearls. This hallway has a tiled floor, six doors, a window overlooking the moors, and a small trash can. Someone has spilled a string of pearls here (53 small pearls worth 100g each, 6 large pearls worth 300g each, there's also a black string with a silver cross attached in the trashcan nearby, worth 25g), which are scattered around, but 4 of them have gathered on top of a drain.
    1. There are also 6 identical hospital rooms here. Single bed, white starchy sheets, nightstand, with a bunch of fresh-cut lilies on in a vase. They are all empty except for the last one, which contains a very sick boy named Yorick. He is too sick to rise from bed, but he wishes he could go play on the moor with the other children. They're playing a game called Castle, and today they were going to vote on who gets to be prince. Yorick will apologize, but he can't play now, but please come back tomorrow, since he might be feeling better then and he always appreciates visitors.
  6. Careful remembrance. The doors to this room are flanked by a pair of filing cabinets. When you approach, the fogged glass in the center of the door will form a man's face and say, “I'm sorry, little ones, but this is just an office. It's where grownups do their paperwork. Come on, I'll bring you back to bed.”
    1. If the PCs allow themselves to be led back to bed, a vaporous figure will materialize out of the doorway and drift down the hallway. It has no legs (just mist) but still makes sharp footsteps as it flies, as if wearing hard-soled shoes.
    2. If you fuck with the door or start misbehaving, the foggy doctor will just turn into a belkar and start invading your lungs (he only does non-lethal damage!) and the two file cabinets will come to life, hopping around and banging like holyfuckthatsloud, shooting out papers that will circle you up like shinto magicians in anime that shoot paralysis bolts and also deal non-lethal damage. They do a lot of damage, but at least they can't kill you.
    3. If they knock you all out, you'll wake up strapped to the beds in #99 while an IV restores all of your wounds.
    4. The office contains a bunch of papers, but you can look up the entire history of the hospital, and the history of all its patients.
    5. If you know what you are looking for: “Peter Lazulan, admitted on so-and-so date, leukemia, he got a little sick but never got REALLY sick, which was unexpected; a few months later he fell and hit his head while playing with the other children on the moor and fell into a coma. He has no chance of recovery, and so the discussion of what to do with his life support will be put for discussion with the mother and the doctors “tomorrow”. . .'
  7. Mourning. The walls of this room are made out of black cloth, just like the floors and ceiling. A belt circles the room, held there by belt loops. On the north wall, a priest's head sticks out of the cloth, regarding the room over a white starched collar. From the east wall his left arm emerges, with a black glove and a rosary. From the west wall his right arm emerges, holding a bible. The priest is delivering a eulogy for someone who has not died. A boy, who fell and hit his head while playing a game in the moors, falling off a rock. The boy has slipped into a coma, and soon they will take him off life support and he will die.
    1. While the priest talks, you can see the next room through his open mouth. It looks like a brightly lit church. He will lecture you about the fragility of life and the innocence of children.
    2. The most direct way into the next room is to kill the priest and chop up his face (his cloth-covered body walls actually obscure a full-size doorway), but this is tough because he will fight with holy word, dictum, power word jesus, and a bunch more black-gloved hands that shoot out of the walls.
    3. The more subtle way is to prove to the priest that you are devout catholics like him. Reassembling the broken rosary from room #99 will go a long way to doing this. (What, you've never counted the beads on a rosary? Godless heathens can also look at the rosary in the priest's hand if they want a model.)
  8. Pins. This is where they do the abortions for all the unwed teen mothers that get brought here. You can tell from the big metal chair with the stirrups and the little metal stand with the forceps and the speculum and the little saw. A freezer dominates the back end of the room, and when you enter a bunch of fetuses will pop out, dragging umbilical cords and placentas, and try to bite you. The placentas are delicious and nutrious and heal HP.
  9. Bells. This room appears to be the inside of a church, with long rows of pews and red carpet, wood paneled walls, and all sorts of stone angels looking down into the room. A couple of confessionals are in one back corner, and a priest's room is in the other. It does look like it's set up for a wedding, but there are no guests. Three big bells hang over the altar. The back wall is a stained window depicting a hospital on a moor.
    1. There is a woman here, astride a white unicorn. She is wearing white mithril platemail and a bride's veil. She's beautiful and has a magic sword. She also spouts a lot of boxed text.
    2. Her name is Princess Valeria. She was dreamed into life by a boy she calls Prince Lazlulan, who was betrothed to. She has since wandered around this place, and now believes that it is all a dream concocted by the boy who lies sleeping in the back room.
    3. She believes that the boy has a divine parent.
    4. She loves him with all her heart, even though she knows that she was merely invented this way. Does the intention of her origin somehow invalidate her feelings? Really, is her mind less valid because she is the product of a 9-year-old-boy's dreams?
    5. She is a paladin, and Prince Lazulan invented her to save him from the hospital. Princess Valeria herself has many memories of rescuing the Prince from dragons, liches, giant frogs, bee people, all sorts of things. She knows these memories are “false” but doesn't care, since they are at least as real as the memories in anyone else's heads.
    6. She will beg the party to please leave her in peace to stand her lonely vigil over her beloved Prince. She has resigned herself to this fate. She doesn't want to fight them, and she will give you all the the treasure that she has if the PCs will promise to do what they can to make sure that the outside world never disturbs this place.
    7. Her Treasure: Golden Circlet that shines a lot of light and blasts undead like a generic paladin piece of shit unoriginal treasure. Unicorn whistle has a good chance to summon a unicorn that will probably just run away again when it sees you aren't a virgin. Her engagement band, which gives you crazy powers when you are fighting in the defense of the person you love.
    8. She will NEVER allow you past her into the Prince's room unless she is convinced that you CAN and Will heal her prince. “We have a cleric and he can cast heal” doesn't cut it. The dying boy needs goddamn miracle level healing.
    9. If you end up fighting her, she has super-paladin powers and you unicorn kicks a lot of ass, too. Her words will wither everyone who isn't good-aligned and she can make herself immune to damage for 2 rounds 1/day.
  10. Cord. This is Peter Lazulan. He lies in a hospital bed, with a lot of IVs going into his arm. He wears a tin crown and is frightfully pale. His thin chest goes slowly up and down. If you touch him with hand weapon, radiant light will fly up and threaten to blast you out of existence (so stabbing him doesn't work). He is a nine-year-old demigod, trapped forever in his own unconsciousness, forever dying and and forever unable to die.
    1. If you unplug his IV, his breathing will slow, then stop. He will die. The dungeon will begin melting, and you will have 10 minutes to get out of there before it crushes you into nothingness.
    2. Miracles might be able to heal him. But casting miracle will require a sacrifice. One of the PCs has to die (irrevocably) so that Prince Lazulan may live.
    3. Going and doing a quest for whatever god of healing you have in your campaign will probably also work.
    4. If you do manage to heal him, he will be a nine-year-old demigod who owes you a big favor, so spend it wisely. But know that he has knowledge of everything you did in the House of Hours (since it is all inside his mind). Hopefully you didn't kill his imaginary girlfriend.
Weather in the Moor
1 – Clear night sky, sickly purple/pink stars, pale blue moon
2 – Cloudy night sky, diffuse moon
3 – thick fog
4 – storm is coming, whipping winds, NPCs running for cover
5 – cold rain, torrential
6 – clean snow, even snow drifts, every snowflake identical

Children's hospitals are the saddest things ever :(