The Four-Chambered Mountain

Vaboola spent the first half of her brief career searching for the smallest discrete unit of undeath.

When her labors yielded nothing, she exiled herself, perhaps as a form of repentance, perhaps as a type of new beginning.

For many years, she was forgotten.  When letters finally began to arrive, it was learned that she had settled on the Mondravian plains, to study the hills that grew there.

At its heart, each hill possessed a node of growstone, a type of stone that was known to increase in size over time.  Aside from that property, it was an otherwise unremarkable stone, similar to dolomite.

In her letters, Vaboola theorized that the stones were a meteoric organism.  Growth, after all, was one of the primary indicators of life.  To see growth in a stone was sure evidence that the stone was alive (in a biologic sense), or that the qualities of life were not as unique as scholars had believed.  She had hoped that pursuing such a line of inquiry might grant her some insight into the fundamentals of growth, and therefore life.

Which makes her fate only slightly ironic.

---

The Four-chambered Mountain is a vast and sepulchral thing.  It sits atop the Hill of the Mountain, a gentle swelling of the ground that results in a broad hill.  Approaching the Mountain by land, you will ascend a grassy incline for several miles before you reach the roots of the mountain.  Uniquely, the grassy incline is completely symmetrical all around the Mountain.

The Four-chambered Mountain has a strange shape: a rough cuboid.  While the mountain sides are steep and goat-infested, the crest of the mountain is broad and dotted with deep pools, full of gawping fish and mosquito larvae.

The stone of the Four-chambered Mountain is inert.  Unlike the growstone, it does not change size.

---

Vaboola built a house for herself on the plains.  It was made from mortared granite and plaster.  A stream curled around it, like the tail of a cat.

Her house had a simple kitchen and bedroom.  The southwest room was her alchemical lab (primarily composed of reagents stolen during her brief tenure at the Tower of Academy), and this was the largest of the rooms.  Around the room were different samples of growstone, arranged under different conditions (light, water, temperature, immersion in blood).  She was wondering if any of these conditions would affect the growth of the stones in any way.

Very little affected the growth of the stones, which continued to grow as they always did: imperfectly.  The stones would "puff" and "droop" as they grew, like marshmallows swelling inside a microwave.  

Cut stones would not preserve their shape.  In her letters, Vaboola described the stones as "striving" to return to naturalistic organizations.  Just as all elements of earth would seek to return to the earth (causing the phenomenon of gravity), so would stone strive to return to the shapes of its purpose: lumps, ridges, mounds, layers, cobbling.

She even went so far as to speculate that stones felt pain when they were cut into square shapes, or when they were thrown into the air.  Her later letters are full of speculation.

---

The Four-chambered Mountain is sometimes called the Great Cave, because of the enormous opening on the south side.  It yawns like a cave mouth, five hundred feet tall and roughly square.  At twilight, long caravans of white bats set out into the cloying dusk.

There are four caverns within the Four-chambered Mountain.  They are all linked by similarly large cave openings.  Each is large enough to hide an army (and one does).

---

The northwest room was where Vaboola kept her scrolls and geology samples.  On a table beside a reading chair, a taxidermied crow bore a candle.  The stuffed crow was capable of speech, but only during rainstorms, and only on subjects that were unpleasant to the listener, and only when the querent was alone.

It contained a minor spirit that Vaboola had trapped during her apprenticeship.  She described the trapped thing as petty, bitter, and cruel.

Vials had shattered unexpectedly in that room, and the window latch had once failed catastrophically during a downpour.  Perhaps most dramatically, a mouse had once died in the center of the room and then rotted into the carpet, all in the space of a single night.  

She was careful never to leave any fragile objects near the crow overnight, or any unattended candles in the room.

---

If you enter the Four-chambered Mountain from the primary mouth, you'll find yourself in an stone-littered cavern, well-illuminated by the sunlight entering behind you.  The ceiling of the cavern is lost in the haze, but you can sometimes hear the chittering when the bats crescendo.  They call it the Kitchen.

Plants grow in the darkness here, products of an unknown biology.  Slow-growing grasses push up through the guano like wisps of white hair.  Enormous lice shiver among the boulders, and ponderous roaches wander the roads of the cavern, pressing their broad foreheads to the floor.  Gargantuan demodex arrange stones into shapes that will amplify echoes towards their infundibular lairs.

The most remarkable feature of the cavern is the wooden plateau.  The upper surface can only be reached by climbing one of four wooden pillars that supports the upper plateau.  Each pillar is about 700' tall and made from what appears to be wood, but more porous and irregular, like a distorted sponge.

The "wood" is sick and crumbling.  It pulls away under your touch, like a rotten log.  

The cores of the pillars are stronger.  They must be, or else the plateau would fall.

No accurate account of the plateau's surface is known.  It is rumored to hold enormous structures: glass towers, ceramic domes.  

---

We do not know the exact nature of the disaster that killed Vaboola, or how she discovered such powerful magic.  Many, many academics are interested in these questions.  Vaboola was both well-known and well-liked.

Of all the groups that have explored the remains of her house, they all returned bearing interesting artifacts and bits of information.

The only exception was the first expedition, which made the mistake of eating the meat they found.  They were a group of rangers called the Mountain Guard, affiliated with two border barons that kept them supplied and busy.  They were chosen for their ability to resourcefulness and independence.

---

The second chamber of the mountain is known as the Bedroom.  It is a swamp of strange fibers and sodden mounds.  There are more giant cave lice here, and entire forests of mold.  Soft caverns filled with dripping cloth

Imagine a linen closet, dumped on the floor, soaked with water, and then magnified a thousand times.

At the back of the cavern, amid a landscape of broken "wood", are the bones.  They are enormous things, shattered in hundreds of places, and with strange tessellations of structure.  In some places they appear to be smaller bones fused together, in others, singular bones stretched out like taffy.

And all around, mountains of rotting meat.  So much, in fact, that it rots very slowly.  Bacteria permeate slowly, and even boring worms will remain near the surface.  The deeper anaerobic environments yield only to sluggest metabolisms.  Dig down into the rotting meat more than ten feet and you'll find sections that appear to be perfectly edible.

---

Many words have been spoken about the square-cube law and its implications in Vaboola's death.  Did her arteries collapse before her bones shattered?  She presumably died in her bed, supine.  As the blood drew away from her eyes and pooled at the back of her skull, was there a partial loss of consciousness?

And what thoughts went through her head during the process of her monstrous expansion?  For a while, she must have had the largest mind in existence.  Were any new levels of cognition revealed at that grand stage?  Or was it simply a larger container to hold all the pain of her body collapsing under its own maddening weight?

The details are arcane, but it seems to be sufficient to say that magic does not enlarge all objects at the same rate, at the same time, or through the same method.  There may be several different types of similar phenomena at work here.

---

The third chamber is the Laboratory.  Another "wooden" plateau, another cavern awash in giant insects.

This is where the Mountain Guard live.  They are pale and ragged from their years in the cave.  They regret ever eating any of Vaboola's flesh, because now they can never leave the Four-chambered Mountain.  

One step outside of the mountain, and their begin to dwindle.  Their skulls shrink, their teeth become tightened in their sockets.

Another step and spots swim in front of their eyes.  Their capillaries are beginning to seal up.

Another step and their eyes explode, crushed by their own skull.

Another step and it begins to get truly messy.

Two more steps and they are dead, killed by their own infeasible biology and the implications of magical reduction of size.

The Mountain Guard trade for most of what they need.  They trade in gold nuggets and alchemical reagents, both of which they seem to possess in plenitude.  Of course they do--any alchemist's table will include at least a small flask of gold shavings.

They are led by Captain Sila Oderec.  He is a brooding intellectual, loving nothing except his poetry and the men that he is responsible for.  He is quite different from his soldiers, who are by all accounts a violent and primitive lot.

They are known to execute their prisoners by climbing the scaffolding they've constructed around an enormous test tube and throwing them in.  The may tread the slimy water at the bottom of the test tube for as long as they wish, but they will always drown in the end.  Their killers will watch them through fogged glass.

Rumors abound that the soldiers have been looking to trade alchemical steel for female slaves, in order that they might feed them Vaboola's excavated flesh and thereby imprison them to the Four-chambered Mountain, just as they are.

Other rumors claim that they've already succeeded.

And yet other rumors claim that Mountain Guard are looking for ways to revenge themselves upon their previous employer, who hired them to explore the Four-chambered Mountain without ever giving warning of the places history or alchemical dangers.

---

There are many that would like to see the Mountain Guard killed and the mountain scoured of its secrets.  Some are the friends of Vaboola, who still live.

Others are rivals, or merely power-hungry wizards.  There are secrets to great power locked away in that mountain: as subtle as unexplored vistas of magic, or as blunt as two hundred pounds of gold inside an enormous glass vial.

Or perhaps those who have been sold to the Mountain Guard can be cured, rescued, and reclaimed.

At least one necromancer, Grixilis, claims that she can raise Vaboola from the dead.  Grixilis is well-versed in speaking with the dead, and has for a long time been tempted by the possibility of contacting what is left of that colossal brain-pan, and the powerful lunges its mind must have taken before it died.

If Vaboola were ever raised from the dead, it is unknown what such a creature would look like, or even if it would be functional at all.  Could something move on bones that were never strong enough to support it?  The bones continued growing, even after they broke; could they be reassembled?  Or would it just be a shuddering landscape of flawed flesh?

---

There is one last cavern in the Four-chambered Mountain.  It is called the Library.  Even the Mountain Guard do not venture in there often.

The farthest from the light of the entrance, it is the darkest chamber of the mountain.  No insects scuttle across its basements; no light births pale plants on the silt.

There are enormous bookcases, covered with vermiform tracts of mold, predatory without ever moving.

There is a crystal ball, awash in visions of magnified landscapes.

There is an oil lantern, filled with a fortune of oil.  If it were ever lit, it would light up the fourth chamber like a light house.

And there is an empty roost that once held a stuffed crow.  

If you are trusted, the Mountain Guard will tell you about the crow.  It is a colossal thing, all broken wings and flashing eyes.  It cannot fly.  Instead it crawls, or slithers.  The beak was broken off in an earlier skirmish, yet even with its broken jaw, it manages to devour men whole.  

It has uncanny spells as well, but the Mountain Guard will not speak of them.

And if you believe the optimists among us, somewhere in the Library is Vaboola's notebook.  It would contain all the notes of her research, beyond the scraps her letters contained.  

And perhaps somewhere in all of that text is an explanation.  Perhaps enough to cure, or to recreate.

x

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.

PLANTS: Monsters, Spells, Items

So I'm writing a plant-themed dungeon.

I've never written something so strongly-themed before.  It just seems cheesy.  Lava dungeon with fire monsters.  Snowy mountain with ice monsters and slippery floors.

I'm having more fun with it than I thought I would.  There's plenty of diversity in plants.

What is This Post?

I'm going to try to invent some content for my forest dungeon.  I'm going to do that by identifying plant themes and then expanding them.

Godzilla vs Biollante

Theme: Growth

Okay, this one is a little stupid.  When you see plant magic in video games and fiction, it's always about growth.  Bellsprout used growth, etc.  The fact is that everything grows.  And I'd argue that a baby whale's growth (gaining 200 lbs every day) is way more impressive than any feats of growth that plants do.

It's anthropocentric.  We can think of all sorts of things that whale's do, but when it comes to plants, we're stumped.  What do plants do?  I guess they just. . . grow.

I don't want to discard Growth, because its so universal though.  Maybe we can make it interesting?

Monster: Evil Tree
HD 10  AC chain  Int 10
Drop Seeds -- An evil tree has 2d6 evil seeds growing from it.  As a standard action, it can drop as many or as few as it wants.  Dropped seeds immediately begin gaining HD (see below).  They can grow 1d4 seeds per day.  It is possible to attack seeds on the tree (HD 0, HP 1), but only with a ranged weapon.

Wants: General evil stuff.  Blood.  Sacrifices.  Cults.  The "performance" of evil.

Evil trees have no attacks besides their seeds.  They are reluctant to drop all of them at once, because they would be defenseless once all of the seeds die.  They are smart enough to use this ability intelligently.

They are capable of speech.  Horrible, groaning speech.

Monster: Evil Seed
HD 0/1/2/3/4  AC chain  Claw 0/d4/d6/d8/d10
Move as human  Int 6
Impossible Growth -- At the beginning of each round, an evil seed gains 1 HD (HP increases as well) and increasing their damage by 1 die size (starting with 1d4), up to a max of 4 HD and 1d10 damage.  If an evil seed reaches HD 4, it gains the ability to shoot a laser from its eye (1d10, 50' range).  They die after they've been alive for 1 hour.

The seeds begin growing immediately into horrible little plant creatures, with shriveled bark, mouthless faces, cyclopean eyes, tentacular hair, and bony claws.

Item/Spell: Oak Elixir
If administered to plant, it immediately grows to be a large adult specimen of the appropriate type (as if 50 years had passed).  If consumed by an animal, immediately grows to be a large adult (1d4 inches taller than average, for a human).

Item/Spell: Acorn Elixir
The opposite of an Oak Elixir. It turns plants into seeds and adult animals into adorable juveniles.
\
Item/Spell: Potion of Monstrosity
Pour on a plant or object.  That plant or object is now a monster of HD 1d6 that is ready to rampage.  If someone drinks it, they get all monstrous and rage.

Theme: Immobility

Sure, I guess I can't argue with that one. Plants don't move much.

How do we make it interesting in combat?  Gus mentioned a reskinned roper: that's a good one.  A tree that constantly throws lassos (or nooses) and tries to drag people into its toothy maw.

Or we could give it ranged attacks.  Darts, spines, or perhaps EXPLODING FRUIT.

Seriously, bombfruit tree.  Great idea.  Especially if combined with

Monster: Dendroid

This is just a tree with a skinny version of mind-flayer powers.  Telepathy, mind blast, illusion, dominate person.  When it gets damaged, it pulls itself into the ground.  To fully kill it, you have to dig it out.

All of these things are possible because its actually a sessile species of octopus, not a tree.  (Octopi are capable of other feats of amazing mimicry, so this seems entirely plausible to me.)

Item: Arboreal Helm
At will, you can turn into a tree, quadrupling your height but not allowing you to break through ceilings (your branches grow to the side instead).  As a tree, you heal 1 HP per hour in sunlight.

Item: Oaken Sword
A creature stabbed with this magic sword must make a save vs magic.  If they fail, they are immediately turned into a small oak tree.  (Yes, this effectively makes the sword a single use item.)

Inverted Theme: Hypermobile Plants

Zelda's peahats are a good example.  Let's invert it as hard as we can.

Monster: Astronomer Pines

These are ancient pine trees.  When you piss one off, it blasts off like a rocket ship.  Fire shoots from the tip of each of its roots.  It looks messily efficient, with every root tip twisting independently-but-nearly mindlessly.

It can fire lasers straight down, and only straight down.  The lasers come from the central tap root.

Alternatively, it can cast levitate offensively, in order to pull you up to its roots, where it can grab you and crush you.

Monster: Tumblesnatchers
HD 2  AC leather  Snatch 0+grab
Move 12  Int 4

These are monstrous tumbleweeds.  They appear in groups of 1d4+2.  Each tumbleweed attempts to trap someone inside itself.  Once it has a prisoner, the tumblesnatcher immediately heads off in a random direction, exposing the poor prisoner to whatever perils await in that (potentially unexplored) room.  If allowed, they just keep rolling around.

<Design Note>This is a good example of a monster integrating into the dungeoncrawl.  Party cohesion is a very important thing for surviving a dungeon.  Having a monster that attacks that is rare, but potentially effective.  A more extreme example would be a trap/monster that teleports you to a different part of the dungeon.</Design Note>

Theme: Poison

This is potentially a very broad theme.  You've got the pokemon trio of effects (HP poison, paralysis, sleep) plus hallucinations and a bunch of boring debuffs.

HP poison should be horrible (given that it has more chances to be stopped, compared to regular HP damage).  For very poisonous creatures (save or die), the deadly poison should be telegraphed beforehand.  (Similar to how players should never be surprised when they get level drained.)

Nightshade Boy
HD 1  AC leather  Touch 0+poison (1d6)
Elites -- Nightshade boys with maximum HP carry a fruit, which functions as an antidote to their poison.

Glass cannons.  They can potentially do 3d6 damage  on a hit (if the Con check is also failed).  That alone, should give the players pause.  They're a bit like spiders in that regard (lil guys with horrible poisons).

Nightshade boys are also intelligent enough to spread their attacks around, in order to poison the greatest number of people possible.

Poppy Boy

Like a nightshade boy, except their touch does 1d6+sleep.

Glory Boy

Big blue flowers.  Cause hallucinations even before they walk into the room.

Hemlock Boys

Hemlock causes ascending paralysis before death.  It's pretty cool.  Instead of damaging HP, they just paralyze your legs, then your arms, then your heart.  You have to find the antidote before you die.  Fun!

Could be a part of a puzzle, or a dungeon-specific challenge.

Poison Tree

Everyone in this room of takes 1 HP damage per round until the tree is dead.  A very videogamey mechanic, but still a fun one, I think.  Must be paired with other things in the room that are trying to kill you (in order to give players an interesting choice).

I wouldn't try to disguise the fact that the tree is causing the deadly room effect.  That seems too much like pixel bitching.

Theme: Fire Vulnerability

This is pretty anthropocentric.  We think of things that plants do and we're like "I guess you can use them as firewood, too" even though trees are way less vulnerable to fire than humans are.  I'd like to see a human survive a forest fire.

If you wanted to gameify it, you could just say that all plants take half damage from bludgeoning and double +50% damage from fire.  That seems mechanically satisfying, I guess.

Treants could make morale checks when confronted with large amounts of fire (more than just a few torches).

Inverted Theme: Fire Power

Monster: Dragon Tree

Stats as dragon, except immobile.  Looks cool as fuck.  Arrows combust before they strike it, and slingstones can't hurt it.  More of a puzzle than a monster.  How to get past it is one puzzle.  How to kill it is another.

Theme: Fruit

This one also seems pretty anthropocentric, but alright.

Well, I already mentioned bombfruit, didn't I?

Tumble melons were one of my first blog posts ever.

Item: Dancing Mango

Look sorta like a starfish.  When it falls off the tree (or is plucked) it starts dancing.  If you eat it, you start dancing (and cannot stop until you collapse of exhaustion).  Everyone who you start dancing with is affected by the same thing (as irresistible dance) except you are the only "contagious" one.

Item: Potion Fruit

Fruits make great replacement potions.  That's what you get when the wizard waters a strawberry plant with displacer beast droppings and wizard jism.

Theme: Parasitic Plants

Monster: Slavedriver Orchid

This is an orchid that grows on your head and it drives you like a chariot.  It yells (squeaks?) and pulls on your ears to direct you where to go.

Theme: Sun Power

This one's a little bit silly, because sunlight isn't as energy dense as we depict it in fiction.  Superman would get more energy by eating a hamburger than he would by laying in the sun all day.

But like Growth and Fire Weakness, Sun Power is difficult to shake.

Item: Black Phantom Bushes

So there is a huge arms race among plants for sunlight.  Trees win it by being taller than their neighbors, and by spreading their arms wider.  Vines win it by climbing trees.  Smaller plants win it by requiring less sunlight altogether.

The black phantom bush has solved this problem by making things invisible.  You see, if its neighboring trees are invisible, then sunlight goes right through them, allowing the black phantom bush to bask in all of the sunlight that is wishes.

They are sometimes surrounded by invisible trees, or by invisible logs (from invisible trees that died due to lack of sunlight).

If you kick a black phantom bush, you will piss it off, and it will turn you invisible.  This also causes you to go blind (because how would you see, if light is going straight through your eyeballs

Theme: Mimicry

Item: The Orchid Wife

It's an enormous skin-colored orchid.  It changes colors to match the skin tones of its prey.

From a distance, it looks like a woman, opening her arms invitingly.  Players will feel compelled to embrace her.  This is not like a suggestion spell, just. . . it seems like the thing to do.

Anyone who embraces the orchid will lose 1d6 Con as the lotus drinks their blood through their skin.  During this feeding, the orchid will fill their head with peaceful dreams and botanical wisdom, causing them to gain 10 XP for every point of Con lost.

As they pull away from the orchid, it will seem to carefully dab the blood from their skin, similar to a human grooming another.  This is just the flower collecting the last of the blood.

Once a player has gained 100 XP from the orchid, they will be compelled (magically, forcefully this time) to protect the orchid.  They will consider it to be their orchid, and will not want to share it.  They will probably want to marry it.  At this point, they can choose to feed or not feed the orchid whenever they wish (it can survive without blood).  They can still gain XP from the orchid once per session.

They'll probably put it next to a window, in their house.  If they don't have a house, the orchid will motivate them to settle down and get one.  You want to protect your orchid, right?  You don't want to take your precious orchid dungeoneering with you, right?

Most "spouses" talk to their orchids while feeding them.  Pillow-talk, really.  The strange wisdom imparted by the orchid sometimes allows the feeder to come to useful, common-sense conclusions.  (DM: Feel free to insert any information here that you think the party should have got, but missed.  Example: The shopkeeper is obviously a vampire.)

Honorable Mention: Little Petshop of Horrors

I guess Audrey II would make a good villain, but she's make a much better ally.  Especially if the players find her when she's all small and cute.

Wizard: Botanimancer 

You can make a botanimancer pretty easily by just pulling ideas from the themes above.

Restrictions

You cannot cast spells unless sunlight (or reasonable facsimile) has shone on you in the last 24 hours.

Perks

If you ever lose a limb, you can grow a new botanical one in 2 weeks.  Additionally, if you have speak with plants as one of your memorized spells, you can cast a 1 MP version of it for free.

Spell List

1. Entangle
2. Growth (as enlarge, except only on living things, long duration on plants)
3. Light
4. Tree Form*
5. Speak with Plant
6. Warp Wood
7. Awaken Treant
8. Hallucinate (or Confusion)
9. Heal
10. Poison Touch
11. Dessicate (AoE similar to fireball, efficacy varies by target type)
12. Wall of Wood
13. Legendary Spell: Seed* 
14. Legendary Spell: Treant Form

Seed
R: touch  T: object  D: permanent
An object gets turned into a seed.  It turns back into the original object only when submerged in a body of water sufficiently large enough to reconstitute the item with water mass.  You can use this spell offensively, but it has no effect on targets with HP greater than [sum] * 3.  The size of the object is also limited by the casting dice invested.

1 MP = handheld object
2 MP = human or chair
3 MP = giant or cottage.
4 MP = dragon or ship.  Alternatively, immaterial things such as happiness.

Tree Form
R: touch  T: creature  D: permanent
Primarily used to turn yourself into a tree.  You can still see and hear.  If you are in a suitable climate, you do not need to eat or drink.  You can remain as a tree for as long as you like (until you choose to dispel it).  You can use this spell offensively, but it has no effect on targets with HP greater than [sum] * 3.  They will remain a tree until you choose to dispel it.  You choose the species.

Yes, this allows you to turn the boss into a tree, and then make him into a nice chair.  It would look great in your house, beside your orchid wife.

Note on Save or Die Spells

I'm considering having all of them have the clause "no effect on targets with HP greater than [sum] * 3."  Or perhaps just including a keyword.

P.S.

More plant monsters here.

Forest Castle

Still working on my Zelda-themed octet of dungeons.

I now hate everything I wrote about the Moon City.  I'm going to scrap the whole thing and start over.  I need to make the city more boring, more focused on the Moon King, and work on making the NPCs more interesting (rather than the city's districts).

Certain parts will be frankensteined elsewhere.

What This Is

I'm trying to generate content for the Forest Castle and the surrounding area.  I'm constantly rewriting stuff, so expect things to stay in a state of flux for some time.

Normally, I wouldn't publish such early stuff in a blog post, but maybe it'll be useful to see how I do things.  (Basically, come up with a heap of ideas first, and then postpone stitching them together for as long as possible.)

Names

Still trying to decide on names.  Current favorites:

Moon City = Casmir.  Sounds like a font, which I like.  Other options are cheesy shit like Maluna (but this is Zelda, not Shakespeare, so I might go for cheesy).

Fallen City = Gafferdy.  The location of the Forest Castle.  This place was destroyed by Siege Castle.

at the Gardens of Bomarzo

Getting to Gafferdy

Probably easy.  Overgrown road.  Ivy-covered mile markers tell the distance from Gafferdy (since Gafferdy was once the largest city-state of the region until the Moon King destroyed it).

Forest dungeon is a good first dungeon.  Players are introduced to a little bit of history, shown examples of the Moon King's strange cruelty, and lots of foreshadowing for the Siege Castle.

The Siege Pit

After the Siege Castle walked to Gafferdy, it stopped a short distance away squatted onto the farmland beneath it.  While its limbs were bombarding the city of Gafferdy, its ass was busy shitting out siege tunnels while turning the excavated earth into projectiles.

The city has fallen and the Siege Castle has moved on, but the tunnels still remain.

Their nexus is the Siege Pit.  It looks a lot like a small, shitty strip mine.  A pool of poisonous brown water at the bottom.  Tunnel mouths gape over the pit.  Most of them are collapsed.

This is a microdungeon, I guess.

A scarm is just a flying scimitar, except its a much larger category that includes all tools of war, not just things that are weapons.  (The Siege Castle is full of them.)

Scarm
HD 5  AC chain  Weapon 1d6
Fly as human  Int 2  Mor 18
*Double damage from bludgeoning.
*Cannot fly more than 10' from the ground.  More of a hover, really.

The Fallen City of Gafferdy

After he conquered it, the Moon King decided to punish the filthy tree-worshippers in the most appropriate way possible--he turned them into trees.

So it's a fallen city--a  huge ruined pile.  Roofs have collapsed and roads have split open.  The aquaducts have toppled and now streams run through the streets.  Coyotes slink out of tilted doorframes.  The buildings are covered with thick tufts of grasses and wildflowers growing from between the bricks.

And everywhere: the trees!

Picture the bodies in Pompeii, except trees.  Clustered together indoors, hugging each other.  Sagging against a wall, pierced by a sword.  Cowering in corners.  Lined up in the town square, kneeling in surrender.

They've all be reduced to wood, with the crown of their head forming the bulk of the new growth of the tree.  You have to use a little imagination to see the human shape inside the tree, but not much.

The trees all show emotion.  Some are afraid.  Some are angry.  Most are hopeless.

The Elder Trees

Gafferdy used to have four plazas.  In the center of each plaza is an ancient tree.  These are the things that they worshipped.

The Moon King ordered them all to be chopped down, uprooted, and burnt.  The first of the elder trees was destroyed in this way, but they could never locate the other three.  You'd think that it would be easy, since each was located in a large plaza, but nope.

The three surviving elder trees can only be found if you follow their song through the ruins.  Let the music be your guide.

However, each tree only sings under certain circumstances.

The West Plaza can be found from the start.  This is where the Father Tree was cut down and burnt.  If you are undead, or if you can see invisible, then you can hear the Father Tree singing.  Disembodied but not voiceless.  This will probably tie into the Skeleton castle somehow.

Also located at the West Plaza: Plague House, or possibly the Taffen House.

The East Plaza can be found by following the voice of the Mother Tree.  She only sings during weddings.  If you want to find the East Plaza, someone needs to get married.  (The Plague Spirits would love to do it.  Cholera is an ordained priest, and they have a very beautiful garden out back.)

The North Plaza can be found by following the voice of the Sister Tree.  She only sings during festivals and dances.  Specifically, you need a bonfire and at least 20 people dancing around a maypole.  Your best bet is to conscript the Taffens somehow.

The South Plaza can be found by following the voice of the Brother Tree.  He only sings when the warriors set out to war, or when they return.  He hasn't sang since the fall of Gafferdy.  He'll sing if you kill the Forest King, but only once.

There are important things at their locations.  Exactly what, I'll decide later.  Perhaps Lucky Pig Statues or Professor Vekko or whatever.  Maybe they just give you good advice about the upcoming dungeon along with a useful item.  I'll figure it out later.

Zeldaisms

Lucky Pig Statues

Here, and in other places, you will find big stone pig statues with slots in their backs.  Put enough coins inside the pig statue, and it will vomit out advice.  Or perhaps a little pink, flying pig will appear and if you successfully chase it down, it will lead you to a certain location.

I haven't really figured it out yet, but there's probably going to be 8-16 of these things scattered around the campaign.

Professor Vekko

When people in Casmir hear that you are going adventuring, they'll tell you to keep an eye out for statues of an old man bearing a lantern, riding a crocodile.  That is Othellus, a wisdom spirit who is fond of helping travelers by providing maps.

The statues are always near a body of water.

You summon him by throwing some barbecued meat into the water.  (The barbecuing is mandatory.)  When he arrives, you must give him some liquor and tobacco.  Only then will he be inclined to answer questions and provide a map of the area.

If the players do all of these things near one of Othellus' statues, they'll successfully summon a giant albino crocodile.  The giant crocodile will eat the barbecued meat, eat the barbecue, drink all of the liquor, and then eat all of the tobacco.  Only then will the giant crocodile answer questions and provide a map.

The only question he won't answer is "Where is Othellus?" That question will cause him to leave in a huff.

He functions like Tingle.  Giving the player a map helps them get a handle on a new location quickly, and all of the secret locations aren't marked, so why the hell not?

<DM Note>Yes, crocodile spirit ate Othellus.  The wisdom spirit is in his brain now and its making him crazy.  He's behaving erratically, making him refer to himself by the name Professor Vekko. (All the whiskey and tobacco probably isn't helping, either.)  He's actually more of a hybrid of the two individuals, since both spirits are melding together inside the crocodile's brain.</DM Notes>

The Taffen Family

Most of the people living in the city are members of the same family: the Taffens.

The Taffens serve a huge aspen.  Long ago, the aspen captured the family elders.  It has been holding them hostage ever since.

Basically, there's two old people trapped inside a cage made from a living tree.  The tree is sentient (like all trees) and bosses the Taffens around.  If the family doesn't perform as expected, the old people get the squeeze.

What does it want the Taffens to do?  CRIMES

That, and also plant more of its children around town, in order to increase its spy network of loyal aspen mobsters, but mostly it wants CRIMES.

So the ruins of the city are full of these similar-looking people who flinch whenever they walk past a tree and will constantly be trying to rob/scan/tattle on the party.

How Do These Trees Talk?

They creak like motherfuckers when they want to say "no".

That's about it, really.

All the trees here are capable of talking like this.  Most of them prefer to ignore you.  Who wants to spend all day talking to mammals?

The Madman

He worships the Siege Castle as a god and is building a replica in order to summon it back.  He probably wants you to go fetch cogs from the Siege Pit or something.

The trees don't kill him because they're scared of the (mostly harmless) thing he's building.

Plague House

A bunch of friendly disease spirits trying to invent a cure for themselves.  They wear cute masks and struggle with human language+culture, adorably.

They want to throw parties and invite all those delightful humans over, but their guests keep dying on them.  This makes them sad.  It was rude of the guests to die at the party, but it was also rude of them to infect their hosts.

I guess these guys are quest-givers, too?  I might have too many.

They're actually pretty powerful.  So are some of the things in their house.  If you want to loot it, good luck.

Squirrel House

The squirrels will lay a trail of acorns, hoping to entice you into the mill.  Once you get inside, they'll ambush you.  You'll probably realize that you're in trouble when you open the silo and all these human bones come spilling out, and you realize that there are now thousands of squirrels gathered on the rooftops above you.

There is no treasure here.

Low level players can easily escape by diving into the nearby stream (3' deep).

Botanical Knights of Keldoon

I don't know anything else about them except that I like the sounds of Botanical Knights.  Possibly here to buy interesting plants off of you (unless that's why the Plague House is here).

Alternatively, recovering a deserter.

Alternatively, they open a new class option.  Now you can be a botanical knight!

at the Desert de Retz

Things Yet to Come

-Getting to the Castle

-The Courtyard Meadow

-Forest Castle