Perils & Wonders

wildfrontiers

#Dungeon23 (week 1 / day 3)

map

Oblong room, low ceiling. On the southern wall a large fireplace like a gaping mouth hurling sludge on the floor. An overturned table, recently moved, partially covers the opening. Mud caked kitchen implements lie scattered around, including a large cauldron. Wooden shelves crowd the walls. Closed doors on the east and west sides.

Upon entering: 2-in-6 chance a mudcrawler is skittering on the ceiling, dropping down and disappearing in the fireplace.

Muddy floor: digging and dragging turns up buried “treasures” (roll 1d6 every turn. if already found, tough luck)

1 fine silver spoon (value: 10 silver pieces)
2 rusty fire poker (damage d6, breaks on a 1-in-6)
3 mudcrawler molting
4 ancient bones (human)
5 a broken clockwork bee
6 A small metal flask decorated with coiled serpents, a dried drop of blood inside. The sealed vault in the mistress chambers will open when approached by the bearer

Shelves: clay and glass jars, decomposed food stuff. A thorough search turns up a small wax sealed vase of black honey.

Black honey: sticky, sweet and pungent, very addictive. can be applied on wounds as an healing salve. Eat too much in one go and lose your sight for d20 minutes. Made by clockwork bees.

Fireplace: mud spewed from the opening all over the floor. Strange thread-like tracks all over. The iron grate at the back is broken and bent. A brood of mudcrawlers makes their nest in the grimy chimney . The narrow passage down the stack leads to the noble quarters below.

Upset cauldron: a mudcrawler hides underneath.

Mudcrawler: HD 1, AC 15, Morale 5, Attacks +1 tail (d6), filthy bite (d4, poison)

Number appearing: solitary, 2d4 brood

Chitinous horseshoe head, wiggling antennae, scissor-like tail, too many scuttling legs. Big as a large cat, fast as one too. Gone in a flash.

Clings to walls, hides below mud on a 5-in-6. Attacks only if cornered or stepped upon. Poisonous bites. Every hour untreated: save or take d3 Dexterity damage.

Cooked meat tastes delicious.

#WildFrontiers

This entry is a placeholder, more on this later!

Carmenta is the palace, and the palace is Carmenta. It/She manages the palace for the Master. He will not be happy to see all this mayhem, oh no. Not happy at all.

#Dungeon23 #WildFrontiers

a #Dungeon23 #WildFrontier project

I love the idea of building a megadungeon one room per day in 2023.

I had this vision of a palace submerged under an enormous mud slide, with just the top accessible from the outside. But not just any old palace… The magically sentient seat of power of a dreadful blood sorcerer of course!

Well, at least it was sentient, hundreds of years ago. Nowadays, most of its core crystals have been misplaced, looted, or just plain broken and dispersed. Its mind feel slow, its thoughts patchy, and it lost track of entire sections of itself. Also, strange things started living in its guts, and now bands of pillagers started to infiltrate and plunder the higher floors.

Direct inspirations: – The Founders Trilogy (a specific part, but no spoilers here) – Gradient Descent for inspiration about how to handle a sentient dungeon. – The Dragon Prince for the inspiration on how Blood Magic works in my games.

P.S: what about that #WildFrontiers thing up there? Well, I haven't written anything about it yet, but that's my home-brew campaign world and system, mostly still WIP. In short, more about that later!