The Flying Birdcage

My week 2 contribution to Dungeon23 is done.

Again, I'm focusing on producing something instead of perfecting something.

>>>HERE<<<

It's technically only 3 rooms but it's also 12 pages, so I'm going to count it as 7 rooms and be done for the week.

Anyway the flying birdcage is a magical elevator that flies around the dungeon after the party finds the correct birds (keys) to take you there.  Quicksilver Hall is a bit of a funnel, but I expect most players to bump into the birdcage around session 15-20.

The Therapeutist by Rene Magritte, 1937
entirely unrelated to anything else on this page

There's a lot of words, but most of it is for the DM.  The three rooms aren't that complex, on the player-facing side, and the bird=destination thing is dirt simple.

Vestiges

There's a cursed item in here that houses a semi-friendly ghost (a vestige).  You get bonuses when you wear the item, but you also invite a ghost into your head.  If you drop to 0 and roll sorta-bad on the Death and Dismemberment Table, you die (even though you might normally have lived) and the ghost takes over your body.

This is a mixed blessing--if you were about to die, you survive with an interesting new PC to play (still in your old PC's body).  If you would have lived, you lose your PC.

Either way, the player should be warned (so they don't take this risk unknowingly).

I like the vestige rules on a macro level, since they encourage the kind of lateral-growth // character sheet chaos // random mutation type of game that I like.  Your barbarian got hit on the head so hard that he died, and now he's a wizard who is back from the dead and wants to join your party.  Fun!

The Mushroom Garden

Thank you everyone who invited me to participate in #dungeon23.  I've decided to try to complete it.

Also thank you for everyone who checked in on me during my hiatus.  I appreciate y'all.

Anyway, here's my first entry in the #dungeon23 thing.

I tried the cute little notebook thing but I hated it, so I'm doing to do my own thing.

• Produce an average of 1 room a day for all of 2023.
• Focus on production, not polish.

Anyway the first one is. . .

>>>HERE<<<

I strongly believe that dungeons work best when they are designed holistically, not just as a bunch of non-linked rooms that can be shuffled into any configuration.  That's why I'm hoping to develop them in little batches of ~7 rooms, instead of writing them one-by-one.

Things I like about the thing I just wrote:

1. 

The second floor is sort of a secret area.  The party will probably discover either the balcony in the first room, or the chimney-hole in the hallway.  Even finding one alerts them to the existence of the other, incentivizing their search and giving them an idea where the secret space is.  

(This is the same principle as when video games show you a secret area with no obvious way to reach it--it tells you to start searching.)

2. 

The big room isn't dangerous the first time you pass through it.  It is probably dangerous on the second visit, though.  The danger has a pretty obvious cue (the smell of rotten pickles).

3.

I think chokers can be cool and scary if they bungee down off the ceiling, grab a hireling, and then bungee back up into the darkness, where they strangle the dude 20' above  your head.  Which is weird because normally chokers are pretty lame.

4. 

The two small social encounters here (the mushrooms and the hag) are not super-deep but they seem like they'd be fun to run.

5.

The wriggling finger is a good sort of puzzle.  (Why is this severed finger wriggling in a repetitive pattern?  Oh, put it up to a flat surface and it writes things.)

It also tells a piece of the dungeon's story (the hag was bisected by the wizard) and pushes the players toward faction play.  Do they really want to help the hag against the wizard?

6. 

The mushroom covered pillars are also a good puzzle.

You entered the room through a entrance flanked by a pair of pillars.

On the other side of the room there is another pair of pillars, but no obvious exit.  

Of course there's a secret door back there buried under the mushrooms.  It's obvious to us as we read it, but it's the sort of thing that slips past players so often in play.  (They'll probably forget about the boring pillars after meeting the hag anyway.  Then maybe on the way out, the DM will mention that you pass between a pair of pillars as you exit the room, and it will click in one of the players' heads.)

Kind of like those matching puzzles in Breath of the Wild that you didn't even realize were puzzles the first time you encountered them.

d6 Dungeon Merchants

I've been playing Crypt of the Necrodancer and I've realized that I like the idea of bumping into merchants in the middle of a dungeon.

Among other things, it makes the dungeon able to replace one of the functions of the city, without making it any safer.

from Crypt of the Necrodancer

1 - Dungeon Bugs

Something like long-legged roaches, each as tall as a child.  They scamper like children, and laugh like goats with a mouth full of dice.  They're friendly, but callous.  You'll find them on the ceilings of rooms,

They taste terrible, and so are largely ignored by predators.  They have little interest in any task requiring their attention for more than a few moments, and are all competing with each other to collect enough shiny crap to attract a mate.

No one has ever seen a female dungeon bug, or knows what happens when a dungeon bug gets hitched.  The dungeon bugs themselves might not even know.  They rarely talk about their secret nests, except to boast of them.

A voice from the ceiling, "By the seven fucks, no, you don't want to go that way.  Two silver and I'll tell you which way is most goodwise!  And a refund if you don't thank me when you go to bed tonight!"

"That's my corpse!  Look, I marked by it by biting off the earlobe--I have it right here.  I was saving it for later, times like these.  You can have the pockets, though, for 20 silver.  Eat my eyes if I can go any lower.  Just eat em!"

"Just climb down this shaft and head towards the smell of seaweed. That's my cousin's store!  You can buy a pickled piercer for a penny!"  (The Pickled Piercer costs 30s.  You can buy a barrel of pickled goblins for 200s, though, which counts as 100 rations.)

2 - The King of Hens

A ponderous thing with pale skin like a drowned man.  A full head taller than a tall man.  Thin limbs, stretched and slightly bent, like ghastly taffy.  The hands are huge flippers, like hands that have been run over by a cartoon car.  They open and close slowly.

The feet are chicken feet, and they are strong.

The chest is huge, and the belly is stretched to bursting.  It is wearing the remains of a red robe, fallen off the shoulders and only held on by a belt around the waist.  It is filthy and matted, but it was once silk.  It's back, chest, and arms are all covered with lashes, both old and new.

The face is shambles, perhaps from unlucky birth, perhaps from a creative torturer.  The face has little to do with a chicken's, and even less to do with a human's.  It is, at least, a bit beaked, where the cleft palate climbs into the sinuses.  The dark, watery eyes are entirely unlike poultry, however.

The King of Hens is accompanied a quartet of small, loud women.  They are the king's court.  They will announce what is for sale today, and what the prices are.  If you agree to buy something, one of the hags will stay with you while the other three lead the creature around a corner.  After listening to a few minutes of cracking whips and ragged sobs, they will return with a bloody egg.  Inside the egg is your purchase.

Suggested Items (Roll a 1d6 twice)

1 - A nutritious egg.  (Counts as a ration.  DO NOT INCUBATE IT.)
2 - A random curse. Latches onto the nearest person when the egg is broken.
3 - Black sugar.
4 - Midnight wind.

3 - The Hive Dead

A cyclopean door.  On it, someone has written "Put the sword on the ground and step out of the room.  Wait until they offer the right payment.  Stay away from their holes."

Inside is a cavernous room.  The center of the ceiling is dominated by a huge crack, going upwards.  You seem to be at the bottom of a very deep abysm.

The walls are studded with holes, each one about two feet wide.  The holes are roughly circular, and are arranged roughly as honeycombs are.  (This is the most efficient way to stack circles.)  There are several hundred of these holes on the back wall of the room, and several hundred more up inside the ceiling crack.

Each hole is home to an undead.  They are not visible in the gloom, but they are watching the center of the room with an unblinking intensity.  When an item (or items) is placed in the center of the room, an undead will approach it after 1d6*1d6 minutes, and place a roughly equivalent item across from it.

If you enter the room and take the offered item, you have just sold your original item.  If you wait another 1 hour, the undead will return and reclaim the item it offered as a trade--there is a 50% chance that another undead will appear after 1d6*1d6 minutes and make a similar offer.  If you reclaim your original item, the deal will be cancelled, the dead will be offended, and all future responses will take twice as long.  If you take both items, all 660 corpses will attack you.  (Stats as zombies, Int 10, movement as human.)

Some items that might be offered:

• The bones of a horse.
• A suit of plate mail in perfect condition.
• The lost crown of a local principality.
• A spellbook (contains 3 pyromancer spells).
• A large package of ancient tea.  (Worth 1000s).

If anyone dies in the room, the undead will command the dead to rise.  The fallen character will arise as a new undead, painfully gag down all of their coins and gems, and dig a new hole in the wall.

4 - Charlie Pox

He looks more like a flock of freckles than anything else.  He appears on your belly, using your bellybutton as a mouth.  He's cheeky and talks fast.  He'll crack jokes to put you at ease.

Buy something why don't ya!  I've traveled all this way!

This is Charlie.  You probably caught him from a rat bite or something.

• Mustard! 3s
• Lockpicks! 20s
• Picture of a Duck! 30s
• Magic Ring! 500s (Alternate Self Ring)

The purchase will be produced from your own body.  If Charlie likes you (and Charlie likes most people), this will be orally.

If you try to hold Charlie hostage, you'll get sick.  Real sick.  Best just to buy something and let him pass one.  The prices aren't even that bad, don't ya know!  He's doing you a favor!

Once he's gone, all he leaves behind is a patch of freckles in the shape of a winking smile and a mild cold.

5 - Sir Gavin Ghastlecrumb

A brute in a suit.

Picture a man shaped like a gorilla.  Wrap him in the most expensive clothes that money can buy.  Give him a fierce beard and a brilliant top hat.  Make him love violence the way that scared soldiers love their mothers.  Make him loud and brusque and ambiguously British.

When you find him, he's spooling intestines from a naga, draping them over a fire, and eating them, all in a single continuous assembly line.  He has a little silver fork.  (It's a regular fork.  It just looks small in his hands.)

He hopes you will give him a reason to kill you, and will tell you as much.  He is a devout Hesayan, and if you are also a member of the flock, he cannot attack you unprovoked.  He has his afterlife to consider.

Why is he selling things?  He has too much loot to carry.

• 16 swords.  Must by all of them.  50s
• A magic bird that can learn any song, and will invent new ones besides.  100s.
• A duke's son from a nearby city, worth 1000s in random.  300s.

The other stuff in his bag is equivalent to a dragon's hoard, but he's not selling it.

Stats as a giant.  If you miss him with a melee attack, make a Str check.  If you fail, Gastlecrumb breaks it.  If he fails a Save, he can choose to lose 10 HP and reduce the effect of whatever he just saved against.

6 - Machinduma

A coiled machine sits alone in a dark room.  It looks like the polished extrusion of some massive crustacean, with gently fluted crests and warped gullies.  The front is the tallest part, and you must slip between some flying buttresses to reach the "front" of the machine.

You can only see the seams if you look close.  (Those who have seen both will recognize similarities to the Egg of Drume.)

There are two alcoves here, set into the machine like eye sockets.  Above them, you can read the words "One is taken, the other is improved."

If you put two objects into the alcoves, the chambers will slowly recess and then close off.  Out of the two objects, the more valuable one will be taken by the machine.  The less valuable object will be returned in an improved form.

Shitty swords will be made excellent.  A magical sword will be made amazing.  A non-magical item may be made into a magical one, but the enchantment will be a trifling one.

A living creature that is improved will be given a random beneficial mutation.

If you do a lot of exchanges with the Machinduma, and if you show a certain ambivalence for human life, it will start offering you fetch quests.  It will extrude soft white disks with writing on them, which dessicate and crumble away from the warm, bloody interior of the machine.

People that are taken by the Machinduma are not lost.  You will see them again, in a different city, at a different time, on some different business.  They will have a different name, and they will not recognize you.  They will have a different history and speak accurately of a different home town (very far from where they are now).  They are always fetching an item.

The Machinduma has stats as four ogres in full plate, fighting in tight square formation.

See Also

d6 More Dungeon Merchants

Dream Merchants

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Stuff to Buy

The Metal Earth has finally birthed a book.  Check it out here.

Patrick has translated Gawain and the Green Knight, which seems like an immensely Patrick thing to do.  You should buy it in order to one-up that one guy who won't stop talking about how much Appendix N he's read.

The Castle at the End of the World, Part 2

How Windows Work

There are a lot of windows in this dungeon, even in places where it wouldn't make sense to put a window (between two dungeon room, for example).  Look out a window and you might see a sunny field, despite being five levels down in this architectural orgy.

The windows are all glass.  Break one, and cold water rushes in, filling the room from floor to ceiling.  The water will not leave the room, although a trickle will puddle on the floors of the adjacent rooms.  Roll for a random encounter, as well, as a sharkman may come inside, investigating.

Like most things in the castle, the window will reset on the full moon.

Comfort

Functions as morale for all of the NPCs back at your home base.  You can raise comfort by giving your NPCs amenities: bonfires, beds, tables, celebrations, marriages.  Things that lower comfort are deaths, overcrowding, and hunger.

You can alleviate overcrowding by raising the Castle out of the ocean, causing the home base to gain new levels.

Weather

Roll a d12 every day.

1-2 Heavy Rain.  Roll a d6 for weather tomorrow.  If you roll heavy rain two days in a row, a Storm occurs instead.

3-4 Light Rain.  Roll a d6 for weather tomorrow.

5-6 Windy.

7-8 Windy.

9-10 Clear.

11-12 Clear.

After you break the Weather Lock on Level 4, roll a d20 for weather instead.

13-14 Heavy Rain.  Roll a d6 for weather tomorrow.  If you roll heavy rain two days in a row, a Storm occurs instead.

15-16 Ice.  The sea freezes over.  Icebergs gather, and moon-eyed creatures watch from the crags above.  Roll on the Ice Encounter table.

17-18 Weird Rain.  D6: 1 stones, 2 dead versions of everyone (free meat, but don’t eat yourself), 3 blood, 4 oil, 5 the Edgeless Sharp, 6 random cooking spice (cinnamon).

19-20 Predatory Cloud.  Anyone outside can be subjected to a blast of wind which lifts them bodily away, carrying them into the cloud above.  The cloud then turns pink as it begins to feed.  Eventually, the desiccated corpse will be dropped back down, usually in an open spot where the cloud hopes to bait someone into a second feeding.

Tower of the Second Favorite Princess

She has discovered that when she is absent from court, her father will dream a new Princess.  And so the princesses have been conspiring together, striving to stay away from court, covertly gaining in numbers.  They intend to wait until there are enough of them to conquer the entire dungeon. 

Like everything else in here, however, they have a poor memory, and do not realize that they reached the population cap a while ago, having run out of food.  Now they are quietly cannibalizing each other, and constantly conducting a meaningless census.

This section of the dungeon is decorated like a princess’ bedroom.

King Zorbachi the Torturer

A master of torture, his people elevated it to an artform.  In the twisted halls of his pain palace, he constantly tortures dream-clones of himself.  He is paranoid, and suspects that these imposters are some subtle machination of the sorcerer-king.

So yeah, mad torture maze full of a bearded, blood-speckled king endlessly torturing himself.

Clanhold of King Gorgu

Hill giants.  They are in the middle of a coup, and so two factions are trying to assassinate each other.  In the middle of the great hall, they have built an ark.  It is filled with nothing but pigs.

Flower Palace

The elves are throwing a dinner party.  They expect that the tidal wave will be quite beautiful when it arrives.  Marine couture is visible everywhere.  No one is worried.  They have devised clever magics that will protect them from the ravening sea.  They are utterly unconcerned about whatever counterstroke the sorcerer-king is enacting.  No significant magic has ever been performed by anyone less than a century old.

I'm gonna write sex rules for D&D.  I swear I'm gonna do it.  No more pussyfooting.  No more beating around the bush.  There's gonna be rules for an elf orgy.  I'm gonna do it.

Floating Fort of the Sea Prince

Similarly unconcerned about the coming flood.  Why should he be concerned?  He has the largest fleet of ships on the known ocean.

Full of pirates, opium, sirens, kidnapped princes, pagan weddings, excecutions, magic tattoos, and traps.

The nice thing about this dungeon level is that it has an internal ocean.  The different rooms of this dungeon floor are actually islands. 

If you have the corundum compass, you can sail from this false ocean out to the real ocean outside, effectively making this a shortcut back to this level of the dungeon.

The Castle at the End of the World

Based on a dream I had last night.  Apparently, it is a megadungeon.

by Rich007

Overview

The world has drowned.  It seems to have drowned long ago.

There only thing left is a castle.  It is a broken thing, worn smooth by the tender ministrations of the ocean.  It sits atop a jumbled pile, composed of more castle.  Perhaps it is castle all the way down?

It is a dungeon of course, and every level is larger than the level before it.

There are three towers.  One straight, one crooked, and one fallen.

The princess lives in the crooked tower.  On some fundamental level, she knows that this castle is for her.  It was built to protect her, or preserve her.  They worked hard to insulate her from the apocalypse.

She has vague memories of a court, a king, a wizard, a tree, a chain, and eight women in a circle, grunting as they gave birth in perfect synchronicity.

She does not know what these things mean.  She knows that a great many people died so that she may live.  This used to make her very sad, and she used to cry a great deal.  (The barnacles heard her many laments.)  But now she is not so certain.  The ocean is certainly large and beautiful, and all those dead people: were they good or wicked?  Nothing is certain.

She does not need food.  For a while, she ate fish because it seemed like something that she should do, but defecation became more and more odious, and so she stopped eating altogether.  She no longer gets hungry, although sometimes she worries that she might be.

She has no heartbeart, either.  There is something small and musical in her chest.  Once she tried to dig it out, but it hurt so much (and there was so much blood) that she stopped.

Sometimes she dreams about her old days in the castle.  The time the cook gave her shortbread cookies by rolling them across the floor.  The maid with the blue blotch on her chin.  (She was ashamed of it, but the princess thought it was beautiful.)  The stableboy who once drowned a sack of kittens in front of her, and was shocked when she was horrified by the act.

And after those dreams, she finds those people.  They come out of the ocean.  

These are the player characters.

Are they dreams?  They might be.  She has certainly seen them die, and then they returned later, after she dreamed of them.

They come from the ocean naked, full of half-memories and an undying love for the princess.  They love her and would do anything for her.

She sends them into the castle below, to see what can be saved.

DM's Notes

This is all the result of an attempt to survive an apocalypse.  Cities and castles were all scooped up and heaped into a mountain, then something like a last-minute arcology was attempted.  Success was. . . very incomplete.  Sabotage, or something like it.

This can be run as a stand-along campaign, an actual world where only a single castle survived.

Or you can run it as a megadungeon location out in the middle of the ocean, with a princess who merely thinks that the world ended, and that she dreamed you and your ship out of nothing.  

Let's keep it open-ended, shall we?

Goals

In the beginning, just finding food and equipment will be challenging.  Expect the first couple of forays into the castle to involve scrabbling to obtain a knife.  A sword is a real treasure.  It becomes easier to re-equip in the future.  You can store surplus gear in a chest, near the princess.

Does that mean that money is worthless?  Nah, I'm sure there are people who will still sell you things, down the dungeon.

There are NPCs in the castle, and you must find them and recruit them.  Getting them to fish is enormously useful, since they can restock your food supplies when you visit them.

You can also explore the other two towers.  The best way to do this is to get over there and then run a rope bridge over there.  (You don't want to get in the water.  There are shark-men-things in there.  The princess hears them talking on moonless nights.)  The other two towers lead to shortcuts down to deeper levels.

You'll also want to make friends with the dungeon.  The dungeon likes to be clean, to be repaired, and for its rooms to be used for their original purposes.  The dungeon hates to be broken or ignored.  Things the dungeon can do if it likes you: unlock a locked door, create lights, shunt you up/down a level, give you previews and maps.

Areas

The crowning castle will not be hard to find.  It's near the top of the heap, where all of this madness was first enacted.  You can find the sorcerer king who orchestrated all of this.  He knows that he is a memory, an endlessly looping tape.  He will always ask about his daughter, then fall silent.  His halls are magnificent: vaults of filigreed stone and laughing fountains.  His court is in disarray.  They want to know when his spell will take effect.  When will they be saved?  There are a great many assassins in the adjacent room.  They are waiting for the signal from their leader before they attack.  The sorcerer-king brought this upon them.  The sorcerer-king is a liar.  The sorcerer-king must be killed.

The surrounding city.  A great many people.  Too many people!  They are fleeing the coming waves.  They are elbowing you, shoving you aside.  It is difficult to go anywhere.  There are gallows and there are shops and there are lovely painted ladies.  Everything is wrong.  There are tiny hats inside the pies.  Every shoe that the cobbler offers is a well-disguised prostitute in a clever disguise, hiding from the town watch.  The guards are empty armors, shaking with fear.  They wanted to run, but where would they run to?  People engage in the business of apocalypse: fleeing, fucking, laughing, weeping, desperately holding loved ones.

The surrounding countryside.  All wrapped up inside itself.  Fields of corn that grow on the floor, walls, and ceiling.  The sounds of cows, but no cows.  Shepherd-things who have become one with their flock.  Eggs upon eggs--it is unwise to break a single one.  Priests of the old countryside, blind eyes witnessing vistas that you cannot, speaking of the coming apocalypse.  The burnt granary, tessellated endlessly, always with the same dying child in the middle of every room.

There is a place that was once a plague ship.  They are locked behind a gate, grasping and gasping, but if you would explore that wing of the dungeon, you must open that gate.

There is a place that was once a battleground.  They are fighting off an enemy army, come to kill the sorcerer-king before he can kill the world.  The walls are spears.  The ceiling is banners.  A plain has been distilled into hallways.

Everyone is dreams, but some are more permanent and adaptable than others.  These are the ones you must recruit.

The Prince

He is the opposite of the Princess.  He wants to end it all.  Look at these unhappy dreams, these trapped ghosts.  Is this a world worth preserving?  Wipe the slate clean, let it go.  Only when it is all plowed under can something new be planted.

His dreams are dark and thick and very, very sharp.

You will meet him, and when he talks he will seem very reasonable and very wise.  Perhaps he is.

Visitors

Perhaps the castle is not the only thing left.  Perhaps there are still ships out there, endlessly circling the globe.  

The ships are looking for the castle.  Some of them will find it.

The ships will be full of madmen, or saints, or seers.  They will come to the castle seeking salvation, and they will not find it.  They may pillage or they may trade.  They may even join you, if you have the comforts they seek.

The Moon Castle Part 3: Slime Castle and Queen's Castle

Part 1
Part 2

4. The Slime Castle

The Moon King needed to kill the merfolk.  They were threatening his shipping lanes.

He tricked the king of the merfolk into accepting a gift (or perhaps he snuck it in).  It looked like a pearl, but in fact it was a miniature moon.  And just like the actual moon, it was capable of influencing the tides.

The Miniature Moon pushed all the water away from the merfolk's castle, and it ensorcelled their king, turning him into a horrible monster that immediately devoured most of his own subjects.

The merfolk tried to preserve themselves with their own magic, but they only succeeded in creating a bunch of mutants that led a failed attempt to reclaim the castle.

The dry seafloor is still inhabited by a few merfolk (who are capable of slithering across flat ground and breathing air) trying to reclaim what's left of their kingdom.

Breadcrumbs

You can buy a merfolk princess egg in a shop.  She'll explain all of this stuff, and get the ball rolling.  None of the princesses can hatch until their father is killed.  Most of them are understandably pissed off about this.

There are also lots of people who would like to get their hands on a pearl capable of repelling water.  They'll send you in to reclaim it.

There is also a side dungeon called the Cloud Factory, where you can gain the ability to breath water.  (This is a useful ability for the Slime Dungeon, but not a necessary one.)

<digression>The high elves originally used the cloud factory for irrigation.  Instead of building ditches to water your crops, why not just build programmable clouds to drop water exactly where it is needed? The Cloud Factory is broken now, and is the reason why the desert exists.  The merfolk wizard that runs the place will give you the full breakdown.  It is also possible to bring water back to the desert by fixing the Cloud Factory.</digression>

Obstacle

The hardest part is reaching the dry seafloor.

It's possible to "park" a boat alongside the vertical cliff of water and swim down to the bottom.  Just swim in the water while sticking your head out into the air when you need to breathe.  It's easy in theory, but in practice, it's difficult to avoid falling out of the wall of water and plummeting to your death.

Descending an anchor rope abstracts the problem one step, but doesn't remove it.  Ships have a hard time holding perfectly steady.  If the ship drifts away from the wall, you can no longer reach the air while holding on to the rope.  If the ship drift towards the wall, it can fall off the water-cliff and plummet to its destruction below.

So really all you need is a crew that is both (a) talented, and (b) willing to risk everything for you.

Alternatively, you could just steal the baron's airship.

Alternatively, if you can already breathe water, you can just anchor a safe distance away and then swim down to ground level.

The Slime Castle

Sea shells and all that cliche shit.  I hate water level puzzles but maybe I can make one that doesn't suck.  Lots of slime, the acidic kind.

Enemies are mostly mutant fish that the merfolk sent to kill the now-monstrous king.  Also slimes.  Slimes in pipes!  Hydraulic slime pistons!  Peristaltic slime pumps!  Some hilarious version of sushi boats! Think of the versatility.

Bosses

The Miniboss is a slime, obviously.  Potentially a puzzle boss: you have to strike its heart in order to kill it.  Even if you don't have a hookshot, you can still trick it into going through a narrow opening, and then just stab the heart when it passes through.  Or a desperate player could slather themselves down in vasoline and dive in.

The Slime King is probably just some big, gross, distorted merfolk.  There are a lot of directions this could take (coral reef, water wizard, fish sampler platter) but right now I'm thinking about what a grotesquely muscular merfolk would look like.

The clever way to defeat him is just to remove the pearl from his forehead, thereby returning him to normal.

Anyway, when you defeat the Slime King, you're not done yet.  You still need to get the pearl out of the dungeon in order to return the water to it's previous level.  The catch is that the pearl fights back: it grows larger and larger.  It casts certain spells to make your task more difficult.  It taunts you.  Hopefully it ends up chasing the party and crushing them like an Indiana Jones boulder.

Once you get the pearl outside, all of the unhatched princesses sing to it and it shatters with a rude noise.  Something cheesy like that.

Local Allies

The displaced merfolk are the obvious one.

A more interesting one might be a pair of scientists, intent on studying merfolk eggs as well as the biology of all the fucked up mutants.  I picture them kissing each other sweetly, romantically dissecting the twitching carcass of a mantis shrimp-manta that you brought back.

You can probably figure out which one I like better.

by Lloyd Allen

5. The Queen's Castle

Before the Moon King turned evil, he fell in love, got married, and had romantic weekends with his wife.  All of these romantic interludes were conducted in the Queen's Castle, a small castle that was built for this exclusive purpose.

The Queen was a sorceress herself, and of no small talent.  When the Moon King died and the whole kingdom went mad, the Queen was smart enough to flee the vicinity.

Not only did the Queen leave, but she seems to have absconded with the royal family and the entire Queen's Castle.  No one is quite sure about how she managed to steal the castle.

In reality, the Queen merely filled the castle with her family, shrank the castle, and then swallowed it.  A dozen sundry spirit-bargains ensured that the castle would be subject to Magic Schoolbus logic rather than the harsh light of empirical biology.

In fact, the Queen's innards became something quite unnatural.  She traded away most of her humanity for the ability to cultivate a miniature town inside her stomach.

Breadcrumbs

The Queen is believed to be dead.  Her tomb (built after her disappearance, at her instructions) reads, "A queen, a life, a guide, a light.  She will be missed."  This is a clue to where she is located: in the lighthouse.

There's also a monstrous bird thing that has been stealing food.  If the party kills it, they can steal the key it wears, which bears the queen's seal.  If the party talks to it, they learn that his name is Rosicalum, a knight who failed the queen and now serves her in this fucked up form.

OR

It turns out the Puldra Pudok (an enormous, friendly, talking, burrowing dog-thing that dispenses advice) was a friend of the departed queen.  She entrusted it with her key.  The dog will give you the key in exchange for killing a certain, aggravating member of the Moon King's lieutenants.  The dog knows that the queen's key opens the queen, but does not know where the queen is.

OR

You can get the key from Scavverglum, a very old man who is rumored to be the eldest grandson of the queen (this is true).  He is so paranoid about assassins, that he lives in the walls of his mansion and fills his house with imitations of himself.  You can get the truth (or the key) from him.

I'll pick one later, I'm just brainstorming here.

The key is made from a rib.

Obstacle

You have to find the Queen, put the key in her bellybutton, and turn it.

She's hidden at the lighthouse (where the epitaph clue led).  The lighthouse keeper pretends that she is his insane sister.

The queen has retreated inside herself, literally.  Her mind (her four souls) are currently invested in a tiny homunculus living in her own stomach.  Her body (three souls) is a mumbling thing that sits in a rocking chair, watching the Moon Castle from beside a window.  The quilt on her lap is covered with depictions of the sun (a crime).

Her body isn't mindless.  The mineral, vegetable, and animal souls know a lot themselves.

Inserting and turning the key could open up a portal in her belly.  OR--depending on where we want the adventure's comfort level--could cause her face to go slack, her jaw to unhinge, and her skin to distend.  The players then stretch open her mouth (like hot cheese, each incisor six inches away from its neighbor) and slither on down.

This would be a good dungeon for the "you can bring no equipment with you" clause that some dungeons pull.  That always 'feels' very Zelda, since they are limited to the (known) tools that they'll be able to find in the dungeon.  It doesn't feel very OSR, though.  (Something that associate with players have a deep backpack full of tricky shit.)

The Queen's Castle

She's had to separate the princes and the princesses.  They kept breeding, and her guts are cramped enough as it is.

People always write flesh dungeons with an eye for disgust.  That's how I've always run them.  This time, though, I think I want to focus on how a dungeon made of flesh could be elegant, accommodating, and (dare I say) romantic.  Pleasant scents and diaphanous curtains of capillaries.  Loveseats upholstered with the softest skin imaginable.  Softer than your intimate bits.

The queen's castle was a romantic getaway, remember?  It was architecture for lovers.  Some of that must be preserved, surely.

Sure, this could include loveseats and scenic views over the lake, but it could also include a door that can only be bypassed if a married couple presents themselves.  (Remember, all you need to get married is a cleric and a witness.)

And yes, we'll have peristaltic hallways and leukocyte blobs and toothy doorways.  That's basically mandatory.  Cytokine storm sounds like a special attack anyway.

We'll also have a bunch of naive princelings who have literally never been outside of their grandmother's belly.

She had to keep them safe from their grandfather, you see.  You have to trust your granny.  Now go back to your bed of collagen.

Boss

I mean, it could be the Queen being insane.  Or distrustful.  And then you kick her ass and she become your ally.  That's what WoW would do, and those are sort of lame.

A disease or parasite is also a little predictable.  Maybe that could be a sidequest?

The miniboss is a trio of mindless Marrow Knights that were built to prevent all access to the inner sanctum (where the roleplaying happens).  They all have to die on the same turn or else they'll resurrect each other.

The boss is this:

When the Queen fled the castle, she was already pregnant with another son.  She did not know this at the time, and only discovered it some days after she had already imported her castle into her viscera.

The Little Prince is that unhappy creature: almost 100 years old now, still waiting his turn to be born.  A overdeveloped fetus, arrested in the earliest stages of pregnancy, still bearing gills and kidney antecedents.  A monstrous unbirth.

You can probably bargain with him.  If you kill his mother, he'll be born, and you'll have a powerful ally in a sorcerous child with a legitimate claim to the throne.  If you kill him, you'll gain the loyalty of his mother, who knows a hell of a lot about the Moon King and biomancy, but is unwilling to leave the sanctum of her own body.

Alternate name: the Prince Deferred.

Local Allies

I don't know.  I need to focus on refining the area outside of the dungeon.  The lighthouse, the Puldra Pudok, those are a good start.  Whalers who stock the lighthouse with oil.  The shepherds of the area who are actually just former knights of the castle, each with a flesh-flower tucked into one of their buttonholes.

Probably the most Zelda approach would be to have an "outdoors" area inside the queen that contained the castle, with another step required to open it.  That seems like a lot of shit to write, though.

Moon Castle Part 2: Skeleton Castle and Counterfeit Castle

See part 1 here.

3. The Skeleton Castle

The city of Gafferdy had a huge necropolis.  Within its crypts, generations of dead were revered, respected, and consulted.  When Gafferdy was destroyed by the Siege Castle, the city's honored dead strove to protect it.

The dead roused too slowly to save the living.  However, the necropolis succeeded in driving off the invaders and building the Skeleton Fence.  The powerful undead raised new ranks from the fallen and then fortified the city against further invasion.  They walled themselves off from the outside world, creating a city where the dead were the only citizens.

Now, the innermost parts of the ruined city are walled off, with the bone-white walls of the Skeleton Castle clearly visible from afar.

The Obstacle of the Skeleton Castle is getting past the Skeleton Fence.  Any living thing that passes over the Skeleton Fence dies.  Only the dead may pass freely.  The Skeleton Fence is very difficult to destroy.

The Breadcrumbs of the Skeleton Castle are:
 - Near the Cemetery Fence, there are several things (graffiti, undead parrot) that mention how Modest Madroff the Smuggler can smuggle you into the Skeleton Castle.
 - It's easy to track down Modest Madroff.  He died five years ago, and was buried in the cemetery back at the City of the Moon.
 - You'll probably need to beat up the Cemetery Kids to get access to the cemetery in the City of the Moon.  They have a large bell that they stole from Madroff's grave.
 - The grave is a small dungeon.  If you bring any light source into it, zombies will attack you.  If you make a wrong turn, zombies will attack you.  If you ring Madroff's bell, you'll hear Madroff ringing his corresponding bell to guide you through the dungeon.  (Any bell will work, not just the bell you recovered from the Cemetery Kids.)  Inscriptions at the beginning of the grave will inform you to (a) bring no light, and (b) ring a bell.
 - Meet up with the now-undead Modest Madroff, now captaining his sunken ship, the Modest Maiden through the rivers of the underworld.  Pay him the fee (1000g or his other bell) and he'll transport you.  It'll be exciting and spooky and eventually you'll arrive at the Skeleton Castle.

Alternatively, just find someone who will turn you into undead.  Then you can cross the Skeleton Fence without dying.

Alternatively, just find a way to get invited into the Skeleton Castle.  There's a skeleton princess somewhere that is looking for a suitor.  Do I hear wedding bells?

The Skeleton Castle is a massively overbuilt mausoleum, fortified against armies.  Lots of intelligent skeletons, honorable skeletaur knights, necrophidiuses, etc.  They'll probably assume that the characters are simply unrotted ghouls, since there are never any living creatures in the Skeleton Castle.  "Hey new guy!" they shout.  "Come eat some of this dead fisherman that someone threw over the fence!  He's nice and bloaty!"

Other fun skeletons: elephant skeletons, giant skeletons, self-assembling skeletons, skeletons who liberate their brothers from the flesh prisons of their enemies, hungry coffins, a graveyard nymph.  Didn't Scrap write a list of fun skeletons?

If the dungeon has a gimmick its going to be converting half the party to undead to solve certain puzzles, but honestly undead dungeons are so much fun they don't really need a gimmick.

The Skeleton King is basically a meta-lich, formed by all the heads of former ruling families fused into one big skeletal lump.  He probably looks like Gravelord Nito.  Powerful spellcaster, but prone to bickering and infighting.  Obsessed with spies.  Terrified of the Siege Castle.

The Local Allies are probably some hilariously somber pilgrims, struggling to pay a visit to their departed loved ones.  A little old lady, a tearful lumberjack, etc, all straight from a funeral.  Expect quests that involve treating the undead respectfully.

Also expect some horrific shit, because the undead are good at being both Halloween-spooky and inhumanly cruel.

by manbearpagan

I've decided not to write up the castles in order.  Partially because it's a loose order (the player's can mostly do them in any order they want, with the following exception).

7. The Counterfeit Castle

So the Moon King is basically withdrawn from his day-to-day ruling.  It's up to his lieutenants to run his evil kingdom.

One of his lieutenants is the Puppetmaster, who takes notice of the party and conspires to eliminate them.  His plan is to invite all enemies of the castle to a party where they will all be killed.  This nefarious plot unfolds as castles are cleared.

The party cannot access the Counterfeit Castle until at least four castles have been defeated and four of the swords reclaimed.

There aren't really any Breadcrumbs or Obstacles for the Counterfeit Castle.  It just shows up.

One very important thing about the Counterfeit Castle: it's a shoddy imitation of the actual Moon Castle.  The map is almost identical, which will greatly assist clever players.  For example, a obvious treasure in the Counterfeit Castle might correspond to a well-hidden treasure in the same place within the Moon Castle.  You'd never find it unless you knew which part of the wall to smash.

After 1 Castle Cleared

The evil city announces plans for the Festival of Dreams.  Fireworks, candy, a dance contest, etc.  Most notably: the doors of the Moon Castle will be opened on that night, and everyone will be allowed to enter and petition the Moon King.

The Puppetmaster hopes that this will draw out enemies of the Moon King, and he hopes to assassinate them all in one fell swoop.

After 2 Castles Cleared

The Festival preparations begin.  Lots of construction.  Wood, sawdust, plaster.  Huge armies of cotters are brought up from dusty basements.

After 3 Castles Cleared

The Festival preparations are in full swing.  Lots of errands (quests) that need to be performed.  Lots of happy people, for once.  Optimism.  The party is encouraged to build a float, to be entered into the parade.  The prize is a mask.

After 4 Castles Cleared

The real Moon Castle is removed to the Shuddering Mountain, far away.  This happens in the dead of the night.

A fake Moon Castle is built in its place, and a brilliant rainbow bridge constructed over the chasm.  Banners are hung.  This is what the cotters have been building these last few weeks, but it looks cheap and hasty (because it is).  This is the Counterfeit Castle.

If the party decides to enter the Counterfeit Castle, they will be surprised at how shitty the castle looks from up close (gaping plaster, sagging woodwork).  Once inside, they will be subject to a brutal assassination attempt.  Probably puppet ninjas, portcullis traps, and cloudkill.

If the party burns it down, it will be rebuilt by the next day.

After 5 Castles Cleared

The Counterfeit King becomes impatient and arrogant.  Mooncalves begin to venture out from the Counterfeit Castle's towers at night.  The evil city becomes a more horrible place until the party clears the Counterfeit Castle.

If the party continues to avoid the Counterfeit Castle, eventually it becomes an open secret with the Puppetmaster sending murder puppets after them, screaming "COME TO MY BIRTHDAY PARTY WE MADE A CAKE FOR YOU!" in increasingly deadly + deranged combinations.

The Miniboss is the Counterfeit Dragon, of course.

The Boss is the Youthful Moon King, a knight.  He is actually a puppet controlled by. . .

The Real Boss is the Counterfeit King, a wizened wizard atop the throne.  He is actually a puppet controlled by. . .

The Actual Boss is the Puppetmaster, hiding the rafters.  He is actually a puppet controlled by. . .

The For-Real Actual Boss is the Real Puppetmaster, hiding in a flying theater above the castle, poorly disguised as a cloud.

Your Local Allies are the unfortunate cotters.  Most of them just lie down in the gutters and watch the clouds pass overhead, but a few still have ambition and drive.  Expect some proletariat quests, as well as some heartbreaking ones "please take care of my family--they think that I am dead".

The Moon Castle: a Zelda-Inspired Dungeon Campaign

I've been trying to play through all of the Zelda games.  It's been a journey.

Anyway, there's something about the simplicity of it all that resonates.  Go to all of the dungeons, collect all of the items, defeat the evil boss in the center of the map.

Of course, I still want it to be OSR, so it has to be a sandbox.  And nothing should be a mandatory gate--players should be allowed to wander, exploit, and invent.  Bread crumbs will be placed (extensively, since I want all roads to lead to Rome) but fences will not.

The only things that I write seem to be the things that I'm actually running.  I just through some fresh level 1s onto the map last Wednesday (starting a new IRL campaign) so I'm undeservedly optimistic that this little zygote will come to term.

by zikwaga

The Moon Castle

Once a meteor fell onto the land of Gafferdy, and killed a great many people.

It wasn't a meteor, it was a piece of the moon, and no one was killed.  At least, the people that were killed weren't really killed; they got back up and were alive again.  They were different, though.

It wasn't a piece of the moon, it was a castle, and inside of it was a throne as white and as luminous as the moon.  The castle seemed to flow out from it like frozen milk.  Whoever sat on the throne inherited countless realms, all dreams, all imaginary.

The Moon Castle was claimed, eventually, and consolidated.  A city grew around it.  Rivals were destroyed; neighboring cities were razed.  Eventually the castle was the power center on the whole peninsula.  Even the dragon Beyoc was tamed.

And one king refused to yield his throne, as his predecessors had.  He was old and bitter and cruel, and he died seated in it.  And then something crept in his skull that had lingered in the throne, or perhaps some hidden corruption was finally revealed when the curtain of life was pulled back.  But then everything changed.

That was a generation ago.

Now the city is an evil place.  People starve, and the most desperate sell their bodies to the castle.  Their souls are moved into shells called cotters, the cheapest form of animate soul-vessel.  It's nothing more than a clay shell filled with dirt and ashes.  They no longer hunger or tire, but no longer do they feel the joys of the flesh.  Eventually the body crumbles, and the soul moves on to whatever afterlife it is due.  Or, more commonly, the soul despairs and loosens its hold on the clay construct, and the body is then reclaimed and rented to another.

Cotters are charged rent on their bodies, due on the first of each month.  Rent is usually required to be paid in a day of service, rather than coin.

They cannot speak.  They barely have faces.  They are almost blind.

The vacated bodies are then leased to lesser demons called poes.  Poes have skin and warmth, but their interiors are mostly filled with a strange mixture of smoke, blood, and light.  Young poes (incorporeal demons who have only just arrived from the underworld) usually behave like madmen for the first couple of weeks.  Having a body is a heady experience.

It is dangerous to kill a poe.  Unless you capture the escaping spirit, it will certainly report you to the authorities for the destruction of its skin.

Demons have been invited into the city.  Moneylender demons with golden skin and enormous horns.  Landowner demons who house dozens of servitor birds in their wooden bodies.  Guard demons that crawl over the roofs, enforcing strange laws that change almost daily.

The final castle is the Moon Castle.  It squats in the middle of the map, and its spires are rarely out of sight.

The players can choose to challenge the Moon Castle at any time.  Who knows how far a clever, lucky level 1 character can get?  

The Moon Castle has no gate and no key, but there are two large obstacles.  First, there is a chasm that surrounds the castle.  Second, the dragon Beyoc roosts amid its spires, watching for uninvited guests, and there are never any invited guests anymore.

Beyoc doesn't sleep because Beyoc is always sleeping.  His eyes are closed and his breathing is slow.  The Moon King steers him through dreams.  Who knows what he would do if he were woken?  Or what it would take to wake him?

The interior of the castle is unknown.  It is believed to be full of lunar organisms, demons, and dreams.  

The Moon King's power waxes and wanes with the moon.  The poes are only active during the night, and behave like extremely sleepy/drunk people during the day.

The Moon King rules through dreams, and all citizens must report their dreams to him.  (Dream audits are conducted to apprehend those that shirk this vital duty.)  People must sleep for 10 hours every day.

It is unknown why he does with all this collected information.  (But you can bet its something nefarious.)

The Eight Dungeons

Each dungeon is going to have multiple trails of breadcrumbs that converge on its door.  Some will be hard-locked and will require certain conditions to access.  Others will be soft-locked, and can be accessed as soon as you find out where it is.

Each one has a boss. Each boss has a connection to the Moon Castle, and a piece of the story that it tells.

Will there be a magical sword that you need to power up?  Maybe.  

Will there be a magical weapon in each dungeon?  I like that idea more.

The first two dungeons are common knowledge.

1. The Forest Castle

When the Moon Castle began attacking the forests (for lumber, but also to kill everyone who wouldn't immigrate to his new city), the druids fought back.

The druids lost, and all their people perished, but their counterstroke was deadly.  All of the survivors were turned into carnivorous plants--both defenders and attackers both.  None of the invading army survived (except for the Siege Castle, which limped away).  Now the place is full of carnivorous flora, preying on intruders but also on each other.

The Obstacle of the Forest Castle is simply fighting through the hungry forest, or finding a way to convince the plants not to attack you.  (Remember that they used to be soldiers.)

The Forest Castle is the remains of a natural cave system that the druids once dwelt in.

The Boss of the Forest Castle is King Golma, an earth spirit that the druids once served.

Your Local Ally is the Plague House, which is inhabited by four friendly plague demons.  Each demon wears a mask to keep the disease in--they've decided that they like humans too much to want to kill them.  They try to invite guests, and to be gracious hosts, but guests invariably succumb to the diseases eventually, so they try to survive on afternoon visitors and written correspondence.  Their names are Cholera, Typhoid, Cancer, and Plague.  

2. The Siege Castle

A thousand siege engines, heaped together, held together by a spine of twisted spears.  It plods along on armored feet, each made from a thousand iron boots.  It's head is a nest of ballistas and trebuchets.  

It was the Moon King's greatest weapon.  Now that the peninsula is pacified (and his attentions have turned elsewhere), the Siege Castle is retiring on the battlefield where it legs were first broken.

The Siege Castle wants war.  It wants to feel spears clash against its skin.  It wants to burn battalions under its lava spigots.  It wants to scoop up knights in its jaws and crush them inside their armor until the pulp runs down its chin.

But it can't move.  It's rusting apart, dying a slow death.  Rain has accomplished what armies could not.  It dies like a wolf; Fenris after Ragnarok.

It is still hungry.  It is still capable of assimilating metal and weapons into itself.  It is still capable of growing.  (That's how it got so big--it returned from the war bigger than when it set out.)

It has servants, too, but they are clumsy things, meant to kill, not to repair.  The knowledge and the tools needed to mend it are in the city.

At night, you can hear it groaning out on the battlefield.  You can see the forge-fires still smoldering behind its ribs.  Every once in a while, it makes an attempt to move.  You can hear the anguished metal tearing from a mile away. 

And yet it does move, slowly and painfully.  Every month it drags itself a few feet closer to the Moon Castle.  Does it still wish to curl up at the feet like a loyal dog?  Or does it wish revenge for its abandonment?

The Obstacle of the Siege Castle is just approaching it.  It fires at anyone that it sees approaching.  Expect trebuchets.  There's a whole battlefield surrounding it, probably with some trenches still intact.  It has also fortified itself against entry, but the metal is rotting apart.

The Siege Castle is the inner workings, the parts that were meant for human occupation.  The barracks, the command center.

The Boss is the Siege King, who is basically the rancor handler (Malakili) in Return of the Jedi, except he shepherds the Siege Castle instead of a rancor.

Your Local Allies are the Red Ring Army, a bunch of punks and pit-fighters that have befriended the Siege Castle by hosting gladitorial combats where the Siege Castle can watch.  They treat the Siege Castle like a Roman emperor when deciding when to kill an surrendering opponent.  

If the Siege Castle nods, they live.  If it roars, they die.  It doesn't nod very often.

Expect lots of gladitorial matches.

Other Castles

3. The Origami Castle - the same small dungeon repeated again and again and again with different themes, navigation is accomplished by non-Euclidean fuckery.

4. The Queen's Castle - the queen shrank her castle and her family, keeping them safe inside her own body.  This is the flesh dungeon.

5. The Skeleton Castle - a city that became a graveyard, EVERYTHING IS SKELETONS, SKELETON KING

6. The Slime Castle - the water dungeon, creating when the Moon King destroyed a merfolk city, degenerate merfolk

7. The Mirage Castle - they tried to escape the Moon King by hiding their utopia inside a desert mirage.  It didn't work; the Moon King found them in their dreams, where they are now imprisoned.

8. The Counterfeit Castle - a cheap mockery of the city and the actual castle, useful as a preview of what the actual castle holds.  Expect puppets and paper mache.

Factions of the Obsidian City

A few years ago I read John Arendt's Black City stuff.  (You should go read it; it's very good.)

This is basically my take on the same tropes: megadungeon, At the Mountain's of Madness, sorcerer-king flavored superscience, expeditionary play, and a dollop of psychological horror.

And while the Obsidian City has been on the map, for a long time, it's only ever existed as a pile of ideas.  None of my players have ever wanted to go there. (Despite the fact that this is where the crystal sword from the Meal of Oshregaal actually leads, and I've run that thing a few times.

I thought I would start by talking about the different factions of the Obsidian City.

by IvanLaliashvili

The Frozen Dead

They sealed their houses against the apocalypse, but it crept in just the same.  Not the violence they feared, but slow starvation and creeping cold.  Nearly all of them died in their houses.

And so the city is a massive maze of sealed houses.  (I'll have to write a random generator.)

Most are sealed tightly.  A few have been cracked open by looters.

Most are trapped.

Some contain edible foodstuffs: families of corpses, mummified by the cold.

Some contain undead: those same families of ice mummies.

Very few contain anything valuable, unless you are searching for shelter and a frozen corpse to chew on.


The Giant Penguins

They cluster around the harbor.  They're huge, sluggish, and subtly deformed.

They aren't really a faction, but they're here because I read At the Mountains of Madness.  They won't bother the party unless they enter the shipyard, because that's where they build their nests.

A smart party will rapidly learn that wherever there are giant penguins, there are giant sea lions.  (HD 8, surprise 5-in-6).  A party venturing onto the (half-collapsed) docks will likely have to deal with at least one of them.


The Explorers

This is you.  You're part of an expedition financed by the imperial ambitions of Noth.  You are a company of explorers.  You are camped about a mile outside the city walls, in a makeshift harbor.  It is fairly safe here.

There are other companies of explorers.  These are your friends and rivals.

Korbith Mantukkar.  Eight brothers.  One sister.  At least two dozen sled dogs.  They spend half of their time fishing and eating.  The other half, they spend being exceptionally competent.

Yesiderata the Mouse.  Not a wizard, although many think that she is.  Financed by Grimagangus, an actual wizard back in Noth, of immense power and wealth.  Leads a company of mercenaries; one of which is rumored to be an orc.  Interested in magic and nothing else.

Steerpike and Yattis.  Historians, nerds, and miners.  They don't belong here.  This is their second expedition.  Their first expedition ended with half of the party dead and/or missing.  They're fools.  They're cursed.  They pay double and it's not enough--no one wants to touch them.

The Black Hats.  Actually members of an Imperial prison cult, they chose to be assigned to the Obsidian city rather than the work gangs of more temperate climates.  This is their prison sentence, and they have been sentenced to explore the Obsidian City until they die (or until the Emperor finds a better use for them).  Murderers, rapists, atheists.

But let's talk about you.

You will probably be required to take an Imperial functionary with you at all times.  The functionary's job is to make sure that you are acting in the best interests of the empire, that you don't damage anything too priceless (either artistic or scientific), and that you report back in a timely manner.  The functionary also has a secret job as well: grab anything that might be a magical weapon, and keep it out of the hands of anyone who might abuse it.  (A category which definitely includes the PCs.)

The functionary knows a lot more than she is allowed to tell you, in the vein of Weyland-Yutani.

It is Very Bad Form if your functionary dies or goes missing.  It may even be grounds for exile or execution.

A word about exile: the storms only clear for about 4 months out of the year.  And so the Nothic ships all sail up at the start of the season, map out as much of the city as they can within the time allowed, and then sail back at the end.  For safety reasons, the ships all sail as a fleet.

Therefore, if you allow your functionary to die, you may be thrown in the brig until the end of the season, when you will sail back to Noth for trial.

by IvanLaliashvili

The Mist

When Noth first began exploring the Obsidian City, they noticed that on some days, a thick fog would creep in and a number of unusual things would happen among the crews and parties.

Fear, paranoia.  Mutiny was muttered.  A few stabbings occurred.  And there were hallucinations, too, because how else do you explain the man who got lost following his own mother into the mist?  Or the enormous serpent, a mile long and twenty feet thick, that multiple people saw slithering among the domes?

The players don't know it yet, but yes, those things are hallucinations.

Fifty years ago, Noth waged a war against the frost/storm giants (same thing) and eventually won.  They razed their towns, sank their ice-berg ships, and occupied their (surprisingly humble) capitol city.  They were called the Stormlords, and they are mostly all dead.

Digression: The Stormlords are not a subspecies of giant.  They're just a bunch of normal giants who lived in a snowy place.  They are not immune to cold or lightning.  They wore big bundles of fur like normal people, and just happened to be good at controlling the weather, because you have to be to live that far north.

And yet a few Stormlords yet remain.  Some were enslaved by Noth (and in fact, there is one here in camp, in charge of building walls and moving heavy cargo).  Others dispersed to other icy little islands, where they are mostly starving.  And one iceberg ship survived, and its crew yearns for retribution against the Empire.

This one remaining iceberg ship is here, moored a mere half-mile offshore from the Obsidian city.  The explorers have sailed past it a dozen times, but have never noticed it, because it's always been hidden by the mist.

The giants have two goals here.  First, they want to cause as much damage to the explorers as they can without being noticed.  Second, they are searching the ruins for anything that might help them reclaim their homeland, or forge a new one.

And so the maddening mists are the first step in their plan.  They use it to cause trouble, like when Josafek was torn apart by his own sled dogs, who mistook him for a bear.  They use the mists to obscure their own expeditions into the city.  And they use the mists to pluck information from the minds of the explorers (such as their greatest fear).

They have one last tool: an enormous whale named Akkanoa that they have been bargaining with.  They have given Akkanoa food and magical protections.  In return, Akkanoa has attacked the expedition, sank one of the ships, and eaten a dozen men.  (Another reason why the ships don't sail alone.)  But he is a slothful and capricious ally.

There are not many giants left.  They are dying, and the ones who are not dying are succumbing to despair.  More than one of them has jumped into Akkanoa's mouth.

Vatborn

These were the servitors of the city's old inhabitants. They were born from the flesh-engines beneath the city.

They have worked to reclaim the broken areas and make them habitable again.  There are a number of subterranean agricultural zones that were once destroyed, but the Vatborn have returned them to working order.

This hasn't been an easy process.  They've gone through several eras of high populations followed by die-offs, but each time, the surviving flesh-engines resurrect their race.

Each strain was created for a specific niche, and each one now forced to fill all the niches of their society.

The Swodinnar are muscle-freaks.  Anabolic warmachines worshipping a cult of strength.  Massively overdeveloped hands and forearms.  Only seven feet tall but as strong as an ogre.  They are searching for their ancestral armors and weapons.  They occupy Green Eden, and are the most peaceful of the vatborn.

Their previous leader was Warlord Shudrok, who lead them into military success and societal failure.  He's currently imprisoned.  The current leader, Speyjin, is Shudrok's polar opposite. (At least, by the standards of Swoddinar society.  By our standards, he's still an aggressive muscle-freak).

Like most of the clone races, they cut the faces of their babies in order to give them distinguishable scars.

The Blue Eyes are a clone race of small, bearded men.  They have an enhanced pain response, and flinch from loud noises.

They were created as an act of revenge.  Once, a small bearded man inflicted some great humiliation on some great fleshcrafter, and thereafter the fleshcrafter wanted the joy of torturing and killing that man again and again.

The Blue Eyes are thieves and assassins.  They live in the Blue Eden, where they torture on stages and investigate the secrets of the flesh-engines.

The Red Eyes were the sex clones.  Their skin is a lurid pink, and their hair is a pinkish white.  They live beneath the dome of the Red Eden where they sometimes trade with the members of Black Eden.

The Red Eyes are the most advanced botanists beneath the Obsidian City.  Without their innovations, all four of the surviving edens would almost certainly decay.  They create a number of exotic plants.

The Golgurrians are clones of a powerful sorceress of the same name.  They are arrogant and combative with everyone except the Red Eyes, with whom they trade.  They have blue skin and all wear an eyepatch.  They know the secret to creating moculi, and each Golgurrian usually has one of the little things flying behind their head at all times.  They look like yellow-orange flying eyeballs dragging a few loose tendrils, each the size of a baseball.

Moculus
HD 0  HP 1  AC plate  Atk none
Fly 12  Int 5  Mor 2

Stare - 1 damage per turn, no save.  If enough moculi stare at an object long enough, it will break or fall over.  For large things, this might take a very long time, and a great many moculi.

Some of the Golgurrians are trying to ressurect their predecessor.  They have been tampring with their flesh-engine, and some of the youngest generation are now being born with partial memories of the city above, which is exactly what they want.

If their peers discovered this experimentation, these Golgurrians would certainly be killed.  Tampering with the flesh-engine is the deepest taboo.  If it breaks, it means the end of their species.  Or worse, they could share the fate of White Eden.

White Eden is a maze of darkened halls and frozen, subterranean forests.  Its flesh-engine is cold and grey, and only spawns abominations.  Ghoul things, born dead, each pregnant with generations of toothy monstrosities.  The vatborn have been very careful to seal off the area around White Eden, but the players will almost certainly open it up.

by IvanLaliashvili

The Ool

As the players begin exploring the city, they can't help but notice the gleaming tower at the city's heart.  It's forty stories tall and holds what looks to be an enormous sphere at the top.

They won't make it to the spire.  That's late in the campaign.  The spire is where the Ool live, and they will not allow anyone to approach.  The door is guarded by a quartet of flab men.

The Ool are flying mechanical octopi.  Each with four rubbery tentacles and a brain encased in a hemisphere of crystal.  They are mind-flayer analogues.

They consider themselves the masters of the city.  Above ground, this claim is rarely challenged.

They have a pair of flesh-engines (or more) in the tower, and they create their own vatborn slaves.  These are the flab men and the thin women.

They are never encountered without some of their mind slaves, which may include any of the other factions in the Obsidian city (except the Labyrinthine).

Ool
HD 8  AC chain  4xTentacles 1d6 or grab
Fly 9  Int 16  Mor 7

At-Will Spells - telepathy, read mind

Daily Spells - dominate, mind blast

Tentacles - Each tentacle has 1/4 of the Ool's total HP.  When an ool loses 1/4 of its total HP, it loses a tentacle.  Grabbed opponents can be thrown (on a hit, both take 2d6 damage) or squeezed (automatic 1d6 damage).

Braincase - The crystal hemisphere covering their brain can be attacked directly.  It has AC plate+2 and HP 6.  Damage to the braincase doesn't affect the Ool's normal HP total.  If the braincase is shattered, the Ool dies instantly and dramatically.  Ools never let their braincase get within melee range (their tentacles are long enough).

Mindslaves - Each Ool is accompanied by 2d10 mindslaved minions.  If the Ool dies, the minions are instantly freed from its domination.

---

Flab Man
HD 4  AC leather  Punch 1d8
Move 12  Int 6  Mor 12

Regenerate - Full HP at the start of each of each turn.  It cannot recover if brought to 0 HP, but the corpse will grow interesting tissues and fans of blood vessels while it lies on the floor.

At-Will Spells - levitate (self only)

---

Thin Woman
HD 4  AC leather  Claw 1d8
Move 12  Int 6  Mor 12

Regenerate 2 HP per Round.

Frenzy - Attack twice per round if they are at full HP.

At-Will Spells - levitate (self only)

*Both flab men and thin women use their levitate ability to navigate the many vertical access tunnels beneath the Obsidian City.  It also helps them ascend the Spire of the Ool.


The Labyrinthine

Centuries of constructive instincts, layered together in a multinucleate matrix.  Ooze retrained to be an architect.

The fastest way to explain it is to imagine an enormous black pudding, impregnated with the urge to construct, repair, and correct.  They filled it with the minds of millions of hermit crabs (the closest they could find to an architectural instinct in an animal brain) and hundreds of brains of actual architects.  Then they spent another century training it.

Now it maintains the city.

It struggles on the surface, where the cold freezes it and it becomes the "obsidian" of the Obsidian City.  But in the warmer tunnels, it has full mobility and awareness.

It doesn't mind the vatborn as long as they don't damage the architecture.

It uses secret hydraulics to pump itself around, moving from secret reservoir to reservoir.  Vast cisterns of the stuff.  Don't break the pipes.

It just wants to maintain the city.  The immobile parts--it doesn't care about the people or the objects.  You might be able to talk to it.  Some people already do (but they probably aren't people you want to talk to).  In terms of raw power, it's the elephant in the room.  Six thousand tons of subterranean hydraulics can throw a cow across ten city blocks.

It's limited by the cold, but there's a way to turn the Black City into a bubble of tropical climate.  (See also: the Goals of the Red Eyes.)  (See also: the Climate Control Center.)

It's an ooze, but it's also a mindset, but it's also a disease.

Sometimes explorers catch it.  You might find one of the members of Steerpike's party, rebuilding a crumbling wall with frostbitten fingers and glassy eyes.

Deeper down, you might find a man trying to build himself into the wall.  Wedged into a gouge, stacking bricks up in front of his shins.  Using blood and shit for mortar.  Cutting out pieces of his legs so that they'll fit better.  (The cold has made his legs numb.  He doesn't feel any pain.  Otherwise why would he be smiling?)

And even deeper down, you might find the same thing, except this time, the wall is helping.

Stats as a black pudding with Int 10 and infinite HP.  Dealing 50 damage to it will usually drive it back, unless it is protecting something specific.

The Dragon Hole

Hook

A dragon is carrying off our cattle.  Go kill it.

"But we're level 1!"

Just stab it when its sleeping.  Or poison it.  Here, take this huge bottle of strychnine.

Alternate Hook

There's a dragon living to the north, and not that far away.  We know this because we've been watching it steal cattle.  Let's go rob it.

"But we're level 1!"

Then it's a good thing we aren't going to be fighting it, huh?  Here, let's take these camouflage capes.

The Twist

There's not just one dragon down there.  There's six.  Siblings.

Your Travelling Companions For This Caper

Melenna, Thief 2, she is constantly smokes cigarettes, constantly putting things in her mouth to learn more about them, friendly, sarcastic, wants money, wants other people to take risks for her, wants to find her ex-husband Bonce and cut his nose off.

Melenna's interesting inventory: dogskin cloak, dagger rubbed in charcoal to make it less reflective, cigarettes, poisonous fingernail polish.

Madrigal, Fighter 2, the younger sister of Melenna, she is constantly hunting small animals and crushing them underfoot, unfriendly, paranoid, honorable, wants fame, wants to keep her sister safe, wants to graffiti her name ("Madrigal the Unmerciful") on available surfaces.

Madrigal's interesting inventory: intimidating helmet, shitty bronze cuirass vandalized with insults against someone named Pulgaro (a bear-fighter that she stole it from), tower shield with an eye motif, spear, chalk, tea, teapot, teacup, horse that is mostly used to carry her armor.

Approaching the Dragon Hole

The only features are vast stretches of yellow grass and a tall white stone that the locals call the Lonely Whore.  It's a good place to spend the night because you can climb up inside it onto a small ledge large enough for a half-dozen people.  Not ideal, since you can't see out, but it keeps you safe from the orns.

Random Encounters [d6] on the Way to the Dragon Hole

1. Dragon flies overhead, carrying a screaming cow.  (This is Garnos, whose scales are various shades of dark brown to dark red.)  If he spots the party (and he probably will), he'll circle once and then fly on.  He can't really do much with a cow in his claws.

If the party pisses him off somehow, he'll drop the cow on the nearest person (4d6 damage on a hit), do a couple flame breath strafing runs, and then perhaps try to fly off with Madrigal's horse.

2. Pack of 1d6+2 orns.  These are basically asshole chocobos.  They're a lot smarter than they pretend to be (sort of like that bird in Up).  They can be captured and domesticated quickly as long as they are fed a lot of food (they're carnivores), since they'll quickly realize that good behavior leads to steady meals, but they're also smart to pretend to be injured when they're feeling lazy.  They lack the strength and endurance of a horse, but they can easily out-sprint one and are much smarter.  They enjoy long baths and shiny things (which they swallow compulsively).

Of course, when they hunt you, they're basically just adorable raptors.

Orn:  HD 2  AC none  Talons 1d10  Move 15 (Sprint 21)  Int 6  Morale 7

3. Wagon being pulled by a pair of aimless, exhausted-looking horses.  A corpse or unconscious man is slumped over in the driver's seat.  The side of the wagon is painted with candles and suns.

The driver is Okren, a candlemaker.  He has a crossbow clutched in his arms and a whistle in his lap.  He is dead, and anyone who handles him without proper caution must also save vs. disease (ebola, 1d6 Str and 1 Con).

The horses are tired and thirsty, and will approach anyone who attempts to calm them down.

Okren was not a wizard, but he did learn how to make mandrogi (grass golems) from his parents.  Although the church condemns the practice as deviltry, it is not uncommon for merchants to use grass golems as helpers (and when the golems deteriorate, kindling).  There are currently 15 mandrogi aboard the wagon, and they have been given the command "protect the wagon from anything that I do not personally greet".  If the players touch anything other than the horses, the mandrogi will rustle around inside the wagon for a round before spilling out the back and attacking.  Each one carries a small grass-cutting knife, awl, or pair of scissors.

They look like five-pointed bundles of dried grass, tied with red string and with a 2x2 grid of the holy alphabet written on their chests.

Inside the cart is Orringale, who also caught the disease but is now mostly dying from dehydration.  She is too weak to rise from her bed.  As with Okren, anyone who handles her or her linens without the proper precautions risks contracting ebola as well.

She loves her (now dead) husband and will mourn, but she is also a very practical woman.  She can be convinced to accompany the party to their destination, but has no intention of becoming an adventurer.  She has an 8-year-old son in the nearest major city, currently visiting with her sister.  She eats her hair when she is upset or nervous, and has a remarkably sharp sense of smell.  (Like, she can tell when her husband takes his jacket off, even though he's outside the wagon driving it.)

The wagon contains 120 normal candles, 40 scented candles

Mandrogi: HD 0 (HP 1), AC none, Tiny Weapon 1d6, Move 9, Int 0, Morale 12, highly flammable.

4. 1d20 friendly pilgrims.  They believe that they are on their way to the Pillar of Fire, but it is obvious from their path that they are going in the wrong direction.  In reality, they are being controlled by brain worms, who are subtly manipulating their hosts into searching for a hidden reservoir so that they can drown the pilgrims in it, and then spread their eggs into the water supply for the entire region.

(All of the water in Asria comes from water towers, which are big buildings that look a bit like parking garages.  The sides of them are honeycombed with waterfalls, and water flows out from them.  Each one is part of the prehistoric superstructure of the region--no one knows how they work or where the water comes from, but each is controlled by a different Water Baron.)

The pilgrims are helpful, friendly, and infectious.  Don't let them prepare your food.  If you watch them closely, you can sometimes see a worm squiggle across an eyeball.  They are in control of themselves 99% of the time, but if the worms ever feel truly threatened, the pilgrims will suddenly start shouting stuff like "Wolves!  Wolves among us!"  and try to defend themselves from what they honestly believe to be wolves (the PCs).

It might even be possible to collaborate with the worms directly.  Worms are pragmatic people.

5. Four villagers bringing a deserter from the paladin order back to the city of Asria, where the ex-paladin will probably be executed.  The villagers don't want to be here, and the ex-paladin definitely doesn't want to be here.

The paladin will promise to lead the PCs to a dungeon filled with loot if they free him.  (He is referring to the Long Halls of Luroc.)  His name is Pabu, and he deserted rather than burn down a building with chaos mutants inside it, badly injuring his commander in the process.

6. Halfling bandits armed with military-grade bee species.  They wear bee hives on their backs and communicate with their swarms telephathically.  They ride a wind-wagon (basically a big wagon blown around by sails--this works great for some reason).  There are 12 of them, but only two of them are bee-masters.

In the belly of the wagon is the daughter of an extremely unpopular water baron, whom they intend to ransom.  Her name is Belsey and she now has a bee insignia tattooed on her belly.  She's not a bad sort--brave, level-headed, practical, but also proud and a bit vengeful.

Down the Dragon Hole

The dragons live at the bottom of a 210' shaft.  It's actually not as undefensible as it sounds--the ground actually gets steeper the closer you get to the Dragon Hole, so it becomes impassably steep even before you get to the vertical part.

It's covered with vines and flowers.  Hummingbirds nest and feed among these vines.  Except that they're not really hummingbirds--they're surgeonbirds that feed on the dragons the same way that mosquitoes feed on humans.  (They're worth a lot to barber-surgeons, because of the anesthetizing properties of their saliva and how efficiently they can bleed people, not to mention that they're much more fashionable than leeches.)  They'll probably be the first threat that the party faces during their climb down.

The Reservoir

If someone falls into the Dragon Hole, they'll land in deep water.  This is the reservoir that connects to the aquifers in the surrounding countryside.  If the pumps stop turning, the whole region goes dry.

It's full of fish, as well as some of the tiny psychic whales common to the Underdark (which it connects to).

There are other ways out from down here.  If anyone ever lays siege to the Dragon Hole, the dragons will use these tunnels to escape and then sneak up on their attackers.


Ways to Kill Dragons

So, this is an adventure about killing dragons written for level 1 characters.  Obviously, if a bunch of level one characters roll initiative against a dragon, they've already lost, so I need to make sure that there are lots of ways to kill dragons in this dungeon.  Give the kids a chance.

And of course, you don't have to kill a dragon to rob them.

The general model is--small things can be stolen without the dragon noticing, but taking the really valuable pieces will absolutely result in one (or more) pissed-off dragons looking for you.

Not to mention, pissing off some dragons so much that they leave the Dragon Hole to go look for you is a great way to get them to leave their hoard unguarded.

Anyway, here are some ways to kill dragons, all of which will be present in the dungeon is some form or another.

Another Dragon
The six siblings don't get along, and have many pre-existing rivalries and hatreds that smart PCs can exploit.  Alternatively, it is possible to frame a dragon.  If the party can clandestinely move an item from one dragon's hoard to another dragon's hoard, that will probably be sufficient for a deadly duel (unless Vulpernia or Green Diama can break it up in time).  This is probably the best way to go about it.

Cave-In
There is a large section of cavern supported by three unsteady pillars of rock.  The dragons call it "The Arcade" and use it as a meeting place.  A hit from a dragon or a small explosion would be enough to bring down the ceiling.

Dragon Hunters
Many would-be dragon slayers have tried to kill Garnos over the years.  He admires their bravery, and sometimes keeps them around, usually with a broken leg and on top of a tall (60') ledge.  They know many ways to kill a dragon, and in fact, Garnos' lair is littered with nets, harpoons, anchors, hooks, ballistae, and small explosives that dragon hunters know how to use effectively.  But more to the point, they're huge, brutal, psychotic-by-default people who have a beef with big reptiles.

Poison
Aside from the Strychnine that the party might have been given before going into the Dragon Hole, there is also a poisonous mushroom in the lair: the elephant's foot.  Dragons have a low chance of dying from poison (20%), but even on a successful save, strychnine causes 24 hours of weakness and convulsions, and elephant's foot causes hallucinations.

Green Slime
It's in there somewhere, too.  Bear in mind that dragons can scrape off green slime patches just as adventurers can, and they're never without a fire source if they want to burn it off.  Feeding them green slime is a guaranteed way to kill a dragon, but it usually involves the dragon vomiting green slime for a few rounds.  (60' cone of green slime spray. . . Jesus Fucking Christ).  And don't forget the possibility of a runaway green slime chain reaction.

Petrification
One of the eggs that the Emerald Egg keeps is a rotten (but still hatchable) cockatrice egg.  It will hatch into a baby cockatrice if a non-virginal woman urinates on it.  (This method of hatching a cockatrice egg is common knowledge, but it has the feel of a useless folk tale.)

Drowning
Ashrendar keeps his greatest treasure underwater, behind a heavy iron grate.  If someone closed the grate behind him and locked it, he would certainly drown.

Circle of Death
The Emerald Egg has a circle that she uses to kill creatures and raise them as undead.  It wouldn't be hard to trick another dragon into entering the circle.



Dragon Psychology

1. Dragons hoard things.  It's compulsive.  They can't not hoard things.  If prevented from hoarding things, they'll go crazy and start hoarding shadows, or they'll pry off their scales and starting sorting those into piles.

This six dragons are siblings who share a mother, and their mother has banned them from collecting any precious metals or gems, since those are the things that she collects.

Dragons are incapable of sharing their hoards.  The trick to different dragons living together in harmony is to simply collect different things.  A mated pair of dragons might decide that one of them collects gold, while the other one collects everything else.

All dragons are insanely possessive of their hoard.  Many dragons name themselves after their hoards, or certain items in their hoard.  There have been dozens of dragons that called themselves "The Golden Hoard", or variations thereof.

2. Dragons are insanely proud of being a dragon.  You would be hard-pressed to convince one that a human is better than a dragon in any respect.  They also have no compunction about killing and eating anyone.  In the mind of a dragon, everything belongs to them, and so they approach negotiations with the sullen stubbornness of a child who has to negotiate with a bully for the return of a stolen toy.

But friendly, subservient humans are happily tolerated, as long as the human isn't carrying anything that looks valuable, and the dragon isn't hungry.  (And the dragons are rarely hungry--Garnos is a great hunter.)

3. Dragons are also intensely delusional.  Each dragon suffers from a different delusion.  If you want to have a positive social interaction with a dragon, you must play along with their delusion.

For example, say you are talking to Garnos, who believes that everyone is trying to kill him.  He will probably tell you that everyone is trying to kill him, then ask you if you are here to kill him.  Any claim that you don't want to kill him will be met with skepticism and hostility, since you are challenging his personal narrative.  Not only are you a (would-be) murderer, but you are a lair as well.  Once you play into his delusion, however, you have a lot more

The Dragons [d6]

Here they are: the six siblings, presented in approximately the order that they would be encountered if the party explored the Dragon Hole in order, from the bird-infested top to the flooded bottom.

You can also roll a d12, to see if the random encounter is for the dragon or for members of their drakencult.

It's not a mega-dungeon.  I honestly want something more modest, close to 50-60 rooms, but we'll see how that goes.  Ideally, each dragon's lair would also be modular, so that a DM could pop it off and use it in isolation, as a one-shot.  So, not only would it be a dungeon full of dragons, but it would be d6 Random Dragon Lairs as well.

1. Garnos the Bestial
Hoard: Alcohol, Bones, Weapons
Drakencult: Berserkers who have drank of his blood.
Distinctive Marks: Darker scales, scarred eye.
Delusion: Everyone is trying to kill him.

Garnos doesn't talk much.  He's a draconic primitivist--he thinks that dragons shouldn't be talking in the first time.  He does all the hunting for the family, and he gets to keep all the bones.  His chambers are filled with bones: cows and horses, but a few human as well.

Garnos is the dragon who does all the hunting for his siblings.  When a dragon is sighted flying around the surrounding neighborhood, that dragon is Garnos 90% of the time.  (But people have a hard time telling the siblings apart, which is why they only think a single dragon lives in the Dragon Hole.)

He collects the dragonslayers that come after him, and usually keeps them prisoner.  He sometimes gives them false chances to escape or attack him--he is just watching them to see what tactics they use.  He is familiar with the harpoons, poisons, and hooks of dragonslayers.  Prisoners are given several opportunities to drink his blood.  Those that refuse will be killed.  Those that drink it will go mad and become his loyal berserkers.

Garnos also likes to get drunk, and keeps a few barrels of whiskey in the back.  He gets blackout drunk on about 5% of days, but doesn't otherwise drink.  The other dragons don't know about his occasional alcoholism.

He'll only bother talking to you if you can succeed in making him really, really curious.  Otherwise he'll just eat everyone he comes across.

His berserkers are a motley bunch, mostly ex-knights and other dragonslaying types.  Some wear rusty armor, others wear patches of dragonscale, and a few other berserkers have begun to sprout patches of scales themselves.  Their leader is a woman named The Third Fang of Garnos; she has cut off one of her breasts (to shoot arrows better) and tattooed a dragon's face over the scar.

The berserkers tend to the Armory, which is sort of like a museum of weapons and torture devices.  It's metal as fuck.  Like, floors made of swords, axes made from smaller axes.

If Garnos really wants to fuck you up, he'll put on his armored helmet.  The frills help protect his neck (a dragon's weakest spot), the horns help him impale other dragons, and when he clenches his mouth closed, the nozzle on the front helps him focus his fire breath (180' line instead of a 60' cone).

Garnos is secretly training his drakencult to kill all of his siblings.  However, he is worried about his mother, and doesn't have the will or the power (he believes) to kill her.  So, he hesitates.

2. Volectra the Painted Dragon
Hoard: Plays and Playwrights
Drakencult: Actors, who struggle to remember their real names and are a very distinct caste from the caged playwrights.
Distinctive Marks: Covered in jewelry, gauzy tapestries, or painted murals.
Delusion: Everyone is jealous of her beauty.

Volectra is the smartest and the most vain of the dragons.  She could be a mastermind, but her vast intellect is turned inwards, toward herself.  And she is a beautiful dragon.  Perfumed, too.  She is planning to one day travel to meet the elves, since she has heard about their many beautiful things (and the two would probably get along famously.)

Her lair is covered in mirrors.  She has the largest drakencult, actors, tailors, and jewelers.  They wear blinders and hoods when they leave her quarters so that they will not look at the other dragons (-2 to hit).

If she ever enters combat, she would probably just flee to get her siblings.  Not out of cowardice, but she just doesn't like getting blood on her.  It stinks.  All of this is forgotten, of course, if you actually piss her off.  Pissed off dragons are remarkably similar in attitude.

She keeps a clear distinction between her "uncreative" drakencult and the artists that actually write the plays and design the jewelry.  Painters and playwrights are kept in cages, while her cadre of painted and perfumed humans wander around, pursuing beauty, and responding to whatever name Volectra decides to call them.  (Most of them struggle to remember their real name.)  Sometimes they wear costumes, but more commonly they are naked with their clothing painted on: bakers, soldiers, prisoners, kings.

If the party befriends her (and she is probably the easiest dragon to befriend), she will want them to stay and produce beautiful things for her.  Unless the party has a better idea, she will want them to perform a play that one of her playwrights has written about her.  (I intend to type up a 5 page play in 3 acts, yes.)  The characters (and players) would just read their lines and try to survive the plot of the play, which involves a lovers' duel to the "death", a flurry of arrows, and escape from a burning city (which ends with Volectra burning down her own wooden set--she loves this shit).

In this play, the PCs will play the parts of competing lovers, a beloved princess, a flatulent dwarf, and her brother Garnos, who is depicted as an oaf.  (He will be pissed if he hears of you mocking him.)

If she thinks that your beauty threatens to eclipse her own, she will try to mar your beauty.  Preferably by eating you, but if that is not possible (e.g. because you have joined another dragon's drakencult, or claimed the same), she will simply deface you.

3. Vulpernia the Shepherdess
Collects: Cute Animals, Cute Birds, Nice Smells
Drakencult: Dusty women dressed like lambs, who refer to Vesperna as "The Shepherdess".
Distinctive Marks: Larger than her siblings, white scale on her neck.
Delusion: Everyone is a spy for someone else, except for cute things, which are trustworthy.

It would be a mistake to categorize Vulpernia as "the maternal dragon".  She looks after her siblings in her own way, yes, and she is largely in control of the lair.

The cave swallows are her spies. Although she doesn't command them directly, they nest in her chambers, and she has learned their language in order to interpret their chatter.  (Cave swallows can echolocate and build nests on the wall using only their spit.)

She has a petting zoo.  Her favorite is currently a baby camel.  The party may sometimes find it wandering the cave--it's pretty fearless.  The petting zoo fence made from the ribs of Samathorn.

She as Volectra are twins, hatched from the same egg, and they are thick as thieves.

Her siblings respect her because she killed Samathorn, their seventh clutch-mate, who defied their mother by hoarding gold.

4. Ashrendar the Architect
Collects: Architecture and Portraiture
Drakencult: Muscular librarians.  One has an ioun flail in a phylactery on his head.
Distinctive Marks: Thinner, missing tail-tip.
Delusion: Believes that the world is going to end, and he may be some great prophet or saint who can see patterns in history that no one else can.

Ashrendar collects architecture--pieces of buildings that he likes.  Just grabs a cupola and flies off with it, that sort of thing.  No gargoyle is too ugly, no weathervane too tacky, for his collection.

And what he cannot carry off, he reconstructs.  A long time ago, he began abducting architects and masons.  Their children and grandchildren now build reconstructions of famous buildings in his section of the lair.

The Amphitheater of Balangua, the Hundred-body Crucifix of Habellion, the Bastion of Medurak. . . all of these things are recreated in Ashrendar's chambers (although not always to 1:1 scale).  There is even a model map of the countryside, depicted with the accuracy that only flight can provide.  (An accurate map of the country is a treasure, by the way).

Her Drakencult are librarians, who have memorized large amounts of books.  Ashrendar cannot read the tiny text in books (and dragons are far-sighted anyway) and has his drakencult read to him instead.

Each member of the Drakencult lives in a miniature building, with which they share their name.  Like, one of them might live in a 1:40 scale model of the Castle Iagatro, which is only a 10x15x stone cabin in real life, and that muscular librarian's name will also be Castle Iagatro.

He is moderately interested in current events, but his true passion lies in history, and anyone who can fill in his (modest) gaps of knowledge will be a treasured mealtime companion, of course.  The experience will be a bit like a tea party, except with charred beef and stale cave-water as the only dishes.

Aside from that, Ashrendar is a bit of a shut-in.  He's the nerd of the dragons, and his conversations with other dragons leaves them feeling awkward and unsure of how to respond.

5. Scabbermoth the Phlegmatic
Collects: Cats and Broken Things
Drakencult: 15 naked old men, led by Amado the massage-goblin.
Distinctive Marks: He's a fucking droggin, so he's a scaleless albino dragon with pink skin and bad dandruff.
Delusion: That nobody likes him, and everyone says mean things about him.  (This one is actually true, though.)

Scabbermoth lives in the lowest levels, nearest The Emerald Egg.  He lives beside a pool of water, since long soaks are the only thing that soothe his many rashes.  He spends most of his time with just his eyes showing above the surface of the water, wandering in and out of dreams.

His halls are filled with collections of lost and broken things: one room full of broken chairs, another filled with unpaired shoes.  One room is entirely devoted to books that have become unreadable through mold.  Another room is filled with lengths of string that are too short to be useful, each arranged on top of tables, each broken in a different way.  Another is filled with Scabbermoth's scales, which he carefully collected when they started falling out in his youth.

His hallways are also filled with cats.  He prefers white cats, because they remind him of himself.  Quite a few of them are three-legged, because Scabbermoth saw them leaping and realized that they were not broken, and all of his possessions must be broken in some way.

And yes, there is a room that is full of severed cat paws.  Unlike human eccentricities, dragons have the time and power to follow their manias to dreadful heights.

His servants are wretched old men, cast-offs from his siblings, who cheerfully tell Scabbermoth about how much more magnificent his siblings are compared to him, even as they scrub the lice off his back and rub liniment into his aching joints.

He breathes fire rather than phlegm, and the stress of combat has a chance to make him suffer a seizure after a couple of rounds.

He is pathetic, and he knows that he is pathetic, but even a pathetic half-dragon has his pride.  If you are dealing with him, you must be careful not to insult him, but telling him about all the other insults that other people and dragons have heaped upon him will soothe him.  That matches how his model of the world lives; that matches his delusion.

Despite his low station, he is intensely loyal to his siblings, and lives vicariously through them.  He knows all of their secrets (because horrible old men love to gossip).  He knows about Garnos and Vulpernia's incestual couplings and what they produced.  He knows about The Emerald Egg's necromancy.  He even knows what happened to Mother.

6. The Emerald Egg
Collects: Eggs, Tombstones, Clocks
Drakencult: Ghouls wearing porcelain masks, heavily perfumed.
Distinctive Marks: Green eyes.
Delusion: That Mother is still alive, knows everything that transpires in the Dragon Hole, and disapproves enormously.

The Emerald Egg will tell you that she doesn't collect anything, but that's a lie.  And if you look at the things you collect (eggs, tombstones, clocks) you can sort of see a theme.  Her most precious treasure is the Emerald Egg, from which she derives her name.  It sits in a silver cup atop a feathered throne.

(Normally the siblings would be prevented from accumulating any gems or precious metals because those belong in their mother's hoard, but the Emerald Egg was allowed to keep this single emerald because it is obviously an egg in addition to being an emerald.  It is a sign that she carries Mother's favor.)

She has a lot of eggs.  I've already mentioned the cockatrice egg, which is still hatchable.  There's also one of Vulpernia's incest eggs here, with the deformed embryo inside still giving proof.  And there's also an "angel egg", really the shrunken corpse of a angel whose god has died, which is basically a black-hole grenade.  And there's also a wooden egg with a keyhole in the front and a wooden key beside it; it contains a demon who will try to trick/bargain into its release.  (The Emerald Egg uses it for consultation, but even she isn't foolish enough to open it.)

The Emerald Egg believes that she is collecting Time.  She believes that she is eating it up.  She swallows it with every breath.  And as she has grown larger, she has begun swallowing more and more Time.  How else can you explain how quickly time seems to go now, compared to her childhood.  If you confront her with this, she will destroy you.

She is completely insane, but at first interaction, she will seem to be the most rational and composed of her siblings.

She functions as the voice for her Mother, and has convinced all of her siblings to never come to the lowest level, because Mother is very sick, and very disappointed in all of them.  Only she is allowed to talk to Mother, and only she can deliver Mother's messages.

Once Garnos guessed the secret.  He declared that Mother was dead, and that the Emerald Egg was manipulating them.  But then the Emerald Egg went to fetch Mother, and their Mother did indeed appear at the bottom of the reservoir and chastise the siblings.

This was possible because the Emerald Egg is also a wizard.  She is capable of polymorphing into her siblings, and even into her mother.  She can even polymorph into humans.

Apart from her hoard of mostly rotten eggs, she keeps her necromantic chambers separate.  She has her bonepile, and a few other necromantic dabblings.  Her ghoul servants all wear masks, and are heavily perfumed.  They dress like nobles, and if her siblings have ever noticed her servants climbing on ceilings or gnawing bones, they've never brought it up.

There's a weird sort of tension among the dragons.  The Emerald Egg speaks for her mother and herself, while Vulpernia speaks for the other siblings.  (Except for Scabbermoth, who is like the kid that no one wants to have on their team.)

Mother

There's a secret here, but you can probably guess it.

A secret tunnel leads to huge cavern.  At the back of the cavern, another hole in the ground, 50' across and surrounded by gouges of missing rock.  Scattered around this room is enough gold to buy a small barony.

If the PCs just take this gold and leave with it, they'll probably get away.  Green Diama doesn't come here often, so it's an easy haul.

But shine your light over the hole, and you'll see the glimmer of more gold, deeper down.  Much more gold.  This is Mother's hoard, and it contains enough gold to buy a small kingdom (i.e. unbalance your campaign entirely).

And I do mean ludicrous, cartoonish amounts of money.  When you get down there, the biggest risk is that you'll be crushed under one of the stacks of coins when your companions decide to sled down the hill of gold riding a golden plate.  A Smaug-level hoard.

But there are dragonbones there, too, under the gold.  The PCs will find them after they start looting the place.  This is what is left of Mother, who has nearly finished being turned into a dracolich by her daughter.  So this lowest level of the dungeon is really just a gold-coated TPK.