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.

Slitherhoof and Gobblehorse

They're only ever found as a wandering encounter.  And of course, you might very well find evidence of them before you bump into them directly.

by Stephen Gammel

Tracks

Slitherhoof leaves weird tracks, like someone dragging a bundle of rugs.  You'll see little bits of blood, here and there.  Slitherhoof's skin was never designed to be pulled over so much of the forest.

Gobblehorse leaves normal horse footprints, except they're not in a straight line.  They wander like a drunkard.  Sometimes there are knee prints in the pine needles, where he stumbled.

Where you see one set of tracks, you'll find the other set nearby.  The two horses are never far apart.

Meals

After Slitherhoof succeeds in her hunt, she's always careful to save some for later.  She folds her kills in half and wedges them into holes.  You might come across a pair of boots sticking out of a hillside.  Looking closer, there's a pair of gloves in there, too.  If you pull the corpse out, you'll find a bandit bent backwards, spine broken, folded in half.  All of the tender bits will have already been eaten.  (Face, belly, ass.)

Gobblehorse doesn't leave much behind when he eats.  Just a pile of what looks like steaming, bloody puke full of well-chewed bones.

Lair

A sandy cave in a hillside.  Even standing outside, you can smell bile, like someone vomited on an empty stomach.  

If you mapped it like a dungeon, it would only be two rooms.

The first room is a shallow descent.  Slitherhoof sleeps at the bottom, beneath the bones, looking like a pile of horse hide.  She's quiet.  She'll probably ambush the party.

Among the bones is a masterwork axe with three notches in the handle.  

In the second room, the smell is stronger.  Gobblehorse sleeps here, wrapped in his nightmares, grunting like the scared animal that he is.

There's a tarnished suit of half-plate in here.  The smell will never quite leave it.  On a half-melted hand, there's also a ring made of poisonous black metal.  It causes subtle weakness in the arm when worn, and paralysis of the limb if it is worn for more than 4 hours.

Backstory

There's a unicorn maker in Asria.

He claims that the baby unicorns come to him because they've lost their parents, and that they sense his gentleness.  

That is a lie.  He's had to make each and every one of them from scratch.

Well, not quite from scratch.  

The process requires a child, a foal, and a narwhal horn.  He's been doing it for decades, and has nearly perfected the process.  The resultant animals are gentle, intelligent, and good natured.  They look almost exactly like young unicorns, too.

Their upkeep however, is laborious.  Problems with skin that wants to slough.  Joints that gradually loosen in their sockets.  

But no matter.  It's nothing he can't fix.

His name is Agamond.  I've written about him before.

Anyway, Slitherhoof and Gobblehorse are the byproducts of this process.  They're old foals that were left for dead on the cutting room floor, and survived despite their butchery.  Now they butcher back.

Description

Slitherhorse is a boneless horse.  She moves by slithering.  Her sunken eyes and boneless head make her look like a bulky horse hide, until she moves, which she does with terrifying speed.  Like a rug sliding across the floor, untouched and with terrible purpose.

Gobblehorse looks like a headless horse.  His belly is distended and his knees are battered.  He reeks of bile.

Stats

NOTE:  They're always encountered as a wandering monster.  One horse will always be absent to begin with, but then join on the second round.  (The two horses hunt near each other, but not on top of each other.)

Slitherhoof

HD 3  AC leather  Bite 1d8+grab

Move 9  Burrow 6  Int 4  Morale 7

Ambusher - Surprise 5-in-6.

Tactics - Slitherhoof likes to grab someone from beneath, pull them into the ground, and then eat their legs.  She's very good at it.  If prey escapes, 50% chance she'll burrow beneath someone else and try again, 50% chance she'll risk a lunge.

Gobblehorse

HD 3  AC leather  Kick 1d10

Move 15  Int 4  Morale 7

Spew Acid - 30' cone.  Usable every 1d4 turns.  Does 1d6 damage the first turn, and on does decreasing damage on subsequent turns until washed off.  1d6-1 (min 0) damage on the second turn, 1d6-2 (min 0) damage on the third turn, etc.  Gobblehorse moans after using this ability, as the acid burns his throat.

Tactics - Spew acid whenever possible, otherwise just take evade.  (Run around the party in a big circle, like a kid playing tag, usually while taking defensive actions.)

The Nibbler

HD 1  AC leather  Bite 1d6

Move 6  Burrow 6  Int 4  Morale 2

Tactics - The Nibbler is actually the Gobblehorse's old head.  Gobblehorse got the brainstem, the Nibbler got the rest.  You'll only ever see the Nibbler once Gobblehorse is dead--the Nibbler lives in Gobblehorse's stomach.

by Theo Mercier

also by Theo Mercier

The Serpicant, King of Beasts

When the Authority created the universe, he created all possible Forms of beasts.  And prime among them was the King of Beasts: the Serpicant.

But some of the Forms were disharmonious.  They ruined the landscape, incited men to sin, or made unpleasant noises.  The serpicant was one such disharmonious beast--it was simply overly good at catching and killing humans, the favored creations of the Authority.

And so the serpicants thrived while the humans dwindled.  And since the serpicant was pleasing to the Authority in its own way, he did not destroy it, but instead separated it into three animals: the elephants, the lion, and the serpent.

That is why lions, elephants, and snakes have been mortal enemies, each sensing their own incompleteness mirrored in the other.

by herbert dicksee
a man who specialized in drawing deerhounds

The Arrogance of Wizards in the Age of Serpents

"What heaven cleaves," said Kadoom the Ur-Wizard, "I can join."

Kadoom was incandescent in his ambition.  No wizard before or since has ever shown more alacrity towards abomination, nor talent for it.

The recreation of the Serpicant was the first blasphemy that saw Kadoom driven from his kingship and into exile.  Despite being suppressed by the church, the process of their creation is common knowledge among wizards.

It is said that it involves the marriage of a viper and an lioness inside the slit belly of a living elephant.  Since no priest of the Church will ever preside over such an act, it must be performed by a demon of appropriate rank.  In the consummation of that marriage the viper is consumed entirely--being too small to serve as a proper husband, the serpent functions as his seminal issue, and disappears into the lioness' tissues.

Four months later, the lioness will lay a single black egg.  She must be separated from it immediately, since she will instinctively destroy it if given a chance.

The actual incubation requires a witch and a black hen, who take turns incubating the egg.

(This is the actual method to make a serpicant.  It's not hard to do at all (compared to some of the shit that golem manuals require).  It's a ritual that isn't abstracted.  If the PCs ever find themselves with possession of a captive lioness, you might mention (remind the wizard) that they just need to get a demon to conduct a wedding.)

Biology

Weasels, snakes, and daschunds all share a similar bodyplan.  Narrow, sleek, and compact.  They're meant to fit into small places, where they will kill animals smaller than them.

They have short, powerful legs, good for pushing but not for jumping.  They have powerful jaws and strong necks, that they use to crush and shake their prey.

Digression: I remember playing WoW and fighting dragons.  Their attack animation was often just a little claw swipe, like they were reaching out to pick up a beer.  Or a single dainty bite.  It's very different from how predators actually catch and kill smaller prey.  Crocodiles, dogs, lions: they bite it across the back or neck, they pick it up, and then they shake the shit out of it.

If it wasn't circle-strafing and breathing fire, that's how a dragon would kill you.  It's like being in a car crash that keeps repeating.

Usage

There is a niche for intelligent, persistant, and cruel enemies.  Ones that are tactically brilliant and infuriatingly proactive.  (The opposite of 3 orcs who just sits in a room waiting to be killed, although those orcs have their place, too.)

Remember in Jurassic World, when all the mercenary dudes realized that they were fighting a cagey, clever mini-Godzilla?  That's what you're going for.

Keep them clever.  A single serpicant will use it's poison cloud to drive it's prey into disadvantageous locations.  In a dungeon, they may even try to drive the party into other rooms, where other monsters can attack them.

 "Go kill the serpicant that lives inside the wooden palace." is a good quest, but it gets better when there turns out to be two of them.

Serpicant

HD 6  AC chain  Bite 2d6+grab
Move 15  Climb 9  Int* 15  Str 18  Mor 7

Immune to Poison.

Opportunist - Deals +2d6 damage when attacking with situational advantage (surprise, prone, held enemy, blind enemy).

Spit Poison- Usable 3/day.  50' range. Spits a glob of noxious poison.  On a direct hit, treat like acid arrow except that it is poison damage.  Regardless of what it hits, though, the poison quickly forms a toxic yellow fog that fills the air within 30'.  This fog blocks vision beyond 10' and deals 1 damage per round to every creature in the fog.  Anyone who opens their eyes within the fog must make an easy (+4) Con check each round or go blind for 1d4 days (where 4 = permanent).  Without a strong wind, the fog will last for 1 minute.

Remember that the purpose of Spit Poison is to kite the party through the dungeon, or to force the party to kite the serpicant.

Tactics

• Never engage in a fair fight.  Engineer traps.  Kill one, then retreat.  Use the environment to your advantage (leverage that Opportunist ability).
• Use your poison cloud to drive enemies out of defensible positions, and to create advantageous environments.  Maybe just spit poison and then run away in the confusion, returning 10 minutes later.
• Kill them one at a time.  Bite an enemy, hold on to them, and then just shake them until they are dead (Opportunist).

Treasure

• A nest will have 1d2 eggs, each worth 1000g.
• In the hands of an alchemist, serpicant blood can be used to enhance all manner of poisons. But anyone can render the blood down into 3d6 Antidote potions.
• Adamantine collar inscribed with wizarding insignia, with 3' of adamantine chain.
• Pearl-covered serpicant saddle.  Worked leather, dyed crimson.  Pommel hides a poisoned punch dagger.  All worth 1500g.

How I Write An Adventure

I'm partially writing this in response to Patrick's excellent post about how he writes adventures.

I write them very differently.

Many Boxes At Once

I don't work on single adventure at a time.  I multiplex.  (This is partially why I so rarely post any adventures.  The other reason is that I'm never satisfied.  The other other reason is that I'm a lazy shit.)

I have a folder named Fingers of the Maggot. . .

I have a folder named Fossil Dungeon.

I have a folder named Bad Druid.

I have a folder named Asria Hexcrawl.  Subfolders for the House of Healing, Unicorn Farm, Clay Town, Rat Puzzle Dungeon.

I have a folder named Abasinia Hexcrawl.  Subfolder for the Plateau of Leng and the Bronze Colossus.

I have a folder named Goblintown.  Subfolders for the Witch Ravine, Filth Library.

I have a folder named Mount Maggaroth.  Subfolders for the Doppleganger City and the Living Mountain.

I have a folder named Gazebo Dungeon.

I have a folder named Telescope Dungeon.

And then when I have an idea relevant to one of those dungeons, I put it in the appropriate folder.  (Someday I'm just going to publish 10 dungeons at once and it's gonna be great.  I'm sure that's how it works.)

Sometimes I sit down and brainstorm ideas for a specific dungeon, but more often I just come home, pull up the computer, and remember all the DnDable ideas I was exposed to that day.  (Watch Adventure Time, you'll come away with a couple.)  And then you just sort those ideas into the most appropriate box.

But when I just need a dungeon now and I'll have enough content in one of those folders to sketch out a dungeon in the half-hour before the game begins. And honestly, running a dungeon for your players is the best way to (a) get ideas for your dungeon and (b) expose your dungeon's weaknesses.

telescopes confuse the shit out of me
I think I'll actually use a microscope for inspiration

The Telescope Dungeon

Originally this one started from an unfinished blog post.  It was a living dungeon written backwards, with the deepest room first, all in the voice of the eldritch horror that had been summoned to inhabit it.

But as I started filling it with ideas, I started hating it.  The cruel, naive voice of the eldritch horror became stale and inelegant.  So, a bunch of shit got thrown out, and a lot of stuff got revised.  The ancillary dungeon feature, a telescope that distilled exotic species of light from stars, became the main feature.  The eldritch horror has been reconcepted as a wizardly bid for immortality involving a series of interdimensional fleshtunnels of infinite length.

I like it better now.  Everything that goes into that folder now follows one of three themes, in decreasing order of priority.

1. Alien light.  Light in general.  Sight.
2. Failed immortality.  Monsters with different types of flawed immortality. 
3. Non-Euclidean Shit.

I moved some stuff out of other folders and into the Telescope Dungeon because I felt it belonged there better.  I also don't want too many overlapping concepts in my different dungeons.

I'm also trying to stay away from body horror shit, because I always do body horror shit.  I'm failing utterly.

Tip #1: Don't Commit

Don't draw your map too soon.  This ties you down to a single idea and restricts you.

I start with a very simple concept sketch.  In this case, the telescope dungeon is a tower with a big lens on top (or at least it used to be) and beneath it is basically just a giant microscope that separates alien starlight by wavelength (or at least, the Centerran equivalent of wavelength) and diverts it into different side chambers.  It's going to be super-vertical.  Like 10+ floors, each of which is usually only 1-3 rooms.

That's enough detail to get the brain juices flowing, without baking them.

Yes, having a concrete map of the dungeon will allow you to draw interesting conclusions.  If you put the myconid town next to the ship of honorable ghouls, you'll immediately start coming up with prouctive ideas about how myconids will interact with ghouls.  That's good!  But you'll have time for that step later.  Right now you need to be unfettered.

Apply the same philosophy to: 

• Your backstory.  Keep it general at first. 
• Your monsters and NPCs.  Make a list of concepts like "floating tyrannosaur head" and a list of roles like "guards the big ruby" before you start fusing them together into "tyrannosaur head that guards the ruby".
• Your loot.  Keep concepts and goals separate.

Tip #2: Focus On the Functional Bits

Write snippets.  You'll have time to sew them together later.  Here are some example snippets:

• This room has an effect that blocks light.  Torches are visible as muted orange things that can be seen, but shed no light.  The effect is caused by a single enchanted brick in the wall.  The effect is strongest there (torches dim near the center of the room, and near the ceiling, because they are nearer the enchanted brick).  The brick can be pried out as loot.
• In this part, a halfling can actually enter the optical tube and squeeze into the next room.  The next room contains something mildly dangerous and something mildly useful.  Alternatively, they could also pick the lock (difficult) or find the key later on in the dungeon.
• In the telegolemetry room, there are four pods.  One is sealed closed.  A PC can sit on one of the other three to control one of the giant golems inside the reactor core.  The golems can work together to restore power to the facility.  They can also break down the glass separating the reactor from the rest of the dungeon (this is a really bad idea).  The sealed pod contains an mad, old, immortal wizard who is also plugged into a telegolem.  When he notices the party messing around in the reactor, he'll try to break the glass.
• A monster cloaked in darkness.  If anyone has darkvision, they can see it.  This is a very bad idea, since it will drive you mad if you look at it.  (The wizard cloaked it in darkness for his safety.)  IDEA: This seems like it would go good with the darkness brick room.  I'll put it in there.
• 2D projector can turn 3D things into 2D things and vice versa.  (As duodimension).  IDEA: Scatter 2D treasures around the dungeon that can be turned back into 3D treasures here.  IDEA: Put 2D enemy shadows in the dungeon somewhere.  They're much easier to fight if you are 2D yourself.
• Slobs: These are fucked up immortal people.  They are super-brain damaged from all the times their heads have been smashed open and the dungeon has put them back together again.  Each one has 1-3 behavioral expectations based on its role (some inaccurate) and if these expectations are met, they're cheerful (if unreliable) allies.  If they are contradicted, they'll flip out and attack you.  Something about them makes them especially odious to fight.
• Ouroboros slob: Formed from guy who went mad and started practicing autocannibalism.  Is basically a giant flesh-snake man eating himself, except he grows as fast as he can eat himself, so he's just a disgusting loop of autocannibalistic insanity.  Expects other people to eat him?  Expects other people to stop him from eating himself?
• *Potential Slob Stats: HD 2, at the end of every turn that he takes damage, he heals all HP damage, max HP goes up by +2, and he grows a new head (out of the wounds) with a bite attack for 1d6.
• The Phoenix.  They call it that because it's a bird (mostly).  It hunts the party.  Whenever it dies, it comes back with an adaptation that makes it harder to deal with.  (You kill it with fire, it becomes fire-immune, etc).
• The Infinite Fleshtunnels are each a random dungeon generator that creates a linear series of rooms, each with a different theme.  They can only be entered once.  There's at least a mile between each "room", so exploration can be quite the ordeal.
• Rooms radiating out into the spectrum (ROYGBV) and the anti-spectrum (Ulfire Smaudre Pallow Jale Dolm Purple).  Each one collects a different type of light.
• Players killed in a certain area of the dungeon automatically resurrect with a mutation (?) and a 1-in-6 chance of becoming a hostile slob.  IDEA: The Phoenix can be killed permanently if the machine (?) is destroyed, but without the machine, the players lose their free resurrections.
• I really want there to be a part where a slob is fused with the wall in a giant gross flesh heap.  And he's immobile and harmless, but he's like, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KILL ME KILL ME KILL DESTROY MY BRAIN" and "YOU MUST KILL ME NOW OR I'LL SCREAM" and if you don't kill him, he starts screaming (summoning the thing that lairs in the light collector below) and if you do start killing him, the flesh heap shudders and he is pulled into the ground still screaming and begging.

Snippets can be map fragments, ideas for traps, or just scenes that you think would be cool.  

Tip #3: Watch Your Goals As You Sew It Together

This process isn't linear, it's iterative.  You keep going over your dungeon until it feels fleshed out.  Playtest it.  Rewrite it.  Try to come up with a reason why each part of the dungeon exists.  Try to come up with reasons why you should remove it.  

Cut away all the parts that aren't awesome.  It's better to have a small, excellent dungeon that it is to have a bloated, generic megadungeon.  (Deep Carbon Observatory > Rappun Athuk.) Be aggressive in your deletions.  Remember that amputated content can go back into your slush pile.

Keep doing this.

Towards the end, make sure you complete the dungeon checklist, make sure that your dungeon has the topology (linearity, interconnectedness, etc), and flow control (i.e. Will the players encounter the statue garden before they encounter the medusa?)

perhaps the Phoenix
by Mavros-Thanatos

Hobgoblins, Half-elves, and Half-giants

Genetics doesn't work the same in Centerra.  The race of your children is mostly determined by where they were born, for example.  (Accents are the shibboleths and the grounds for discrimination, not skin color.)

And of course, ogres are made from children via a specific diet and certain treatment.  

But making ogres from children is just the tip of the iceberg.

by tsvetomir georgiev

Hobgoblins

Goblins are right horrible little bastards, and everything that joins them at their table will also become a right horrible little bastard, too.

It doesn't take long.  A few months of goblin food will do it.  If you join them in in their songs, the process will hasten even further.

Goblins sometimes do it intentionally.  They you in a pit full of goblins.  They feed you their horrible food (usually at least 5% goblin secretion by weight).  They force you to play their horrible games, such as stomp-rat, piss-glug, and wrestle-worm.

And you'll dwindle.  First one inch, then another.  You'll be six inches shorter before you're done.  Your nose will lengthen and fresh rows of sharp teeth will grow in behind each other, like a shark's.  Your hair will flee from you.

Your eyes will yellow and become beady.  Your skin becomes a sickly shade of green.  And your mindset will become goblinish--rapacious, curious, hasty, loud, quiet.  You will not be pleasant to be around, and the only people who will tolerate you will be goblins and other goblin-men.

There are many goblin-men (and goblin-women) in Goblintown.  (Stats as normal humans, plus darkvision and the personalities of goblins, including the lack of self-preservation.)

Humans are not the only thing that goblins can transform thus.  Goblins can make everything horrible.  (Daniel Dean has said this before.)

Expect to see long-nosed goblin dogs skulking around Goblintown, They sneak into rooms and shit in your boots.  They piss in any open container of drinkable water.  Packs of them will bite open your packs, swallow valuables until they gag, and then run off with bellies of silver.  And they never bark, only ever mustering a wheezing laugh or mad yowling.

There are goblin pigs, which are a bit like greenish, long-nosed pigs, except for their remarkable flexibility and their habit of shitting in their own mouths.

There are goblin bats who--to be perfectly honest--just shit on everything.  They'll follow you quietly until combat breaks out and then they'll try to shit in your eyes (10% chance per bat per turn, blind until you wipe it out + disease chance).

And you'll find all sorts of other goblin-animals in Goblintown.  Goblin hippos lounge in the filth-fountains.  Goblin geese will whack the shit out of your kneecaps.  They're all shitty, hairless (although not featherless), greasy, and slightly smaller than usual.

Setting Note: I never liked hobgoblins as "militant goblinoids who got their shit together".  I always felt that orcs could fill that niche better.

a classically smug elf
from Lord of the Rings

Half-Elves

Elves (and by this I mean low elves) surround themselves in beauty.  This requires them to insulate themselves from the rest of the world.  

And insulation requires walls, of course.  Some walls are temporal, some are spatial, and some are literal walls.  (But even the literal walls are subtle--an enchanted forest that diverts all travelers from the elven city at its heart, and thwarts all attempts to map it.  This is pretty bog-standard as far as elven isolation magic goes.)

But even elves sometimes need to interact with their neighbors.  

This is a repulsive idea.  Everything that is not an elf or of elven manufactures is usually repulsive at beast, and nauseating at worst.  (If the average party of gore-spattered adventurers bursts into an elven wedding, expect half of the elves to cast disintegrate spells and the other half to spend their first turn vomiting into their silken napkins.)

So that is what elven slaves are for--except they aren't slaves.  They're loyal little brothers and little sisters to the elves that they are forbidden to meet, less their ruin their older siblings delicate appetites.  (It takes very little to ruin an elf's appetite.)

These pseudo-slaves are usually elevated into pseudo-elfhood through the administration of elven hormones and genetic activators.  (Of course, the elves don't know the science behind their own elevation.  They only know that making certain types of wine from certain types of plants turns elven children into elven adults.  The plants of course, were genetically engineers millennia ago for this very purpose, although the purity and potency is a tiny fraction of what was originally intended.)

So elves give their loyal slaves elf-drugs to make them more elfy.  When administered to a prepubescent human slave, the result is the creation of a half-elf.  Confusingly, they are also called elf-men and elf-women.

Like all responsible pet owners, elves spay and neuter their little siblings.  This makes them easier to control and explains why elves are always buying human babies (or stealing them).  It also means that if you want to play a male half-elf in one of my games, you're not going to have any testicles.  (We can discuss the plausibility of a quest to recover them from the elves.)

A half-elf looks a lot like an elf, minus the extra foot of height and twitching xenophobia.  Unlike elves, they can be PCs.

They are agile, beautiful (by human standards), and wise.  In fact, most people think that half-elves are actually elves, never suspecting that their more agile, more beauteous, more genocidal masters lived deeper in the forest, disgusted by the possibility of having to talk to a human king.  (The hair!  The pores on their faces!  The smell of defecation!)

Sidebar: Dragons also breed clans of loyal humans called drakencults!

Half-Giants

Little is known of this particular transformation, but we do know that it requires at least two things (a) large volumes of giant food consumed over a year, at a minumum, and (b) marriage to a giant.

Other possibilities (the consumption of giantish breast milk, beating a giant in a contest of strength) are rumored but not confirmed.

Half-giant Stats

(posted here not because they are good, but because I don't want to lose them)

Str +1 or Str 14, whichever is higher.

Once per day, can treat Str as if it were 20.

Can zone out and build buildings as long as you have enough raw materials.  Can only ever build buildings (towers but also things like bridges) and earthworks (trenches) due to weird racial compulsions.  More giants working together can build exponentially larger buildings.  In one 8-hour building frenzy, the giants can build X * Y * 100 square feet of wooden house, or X * Y * 5 square feet of stone house, where X is the number of giants and Y is also the number of giants, but Y maxes out at 5.  Usable once per day.