Fantastical Geography

Overview This week sees another semi-mundane section of the dungeon, focusing on child raising.  We've got a room set up for giving birth, with a secret passage to the Shaman Chamber, allowing the Shamans to easily arrive to oversee births.  A room for babies, with intricately carved cribs; a large playroom, and then sleeping chambers for the children and their caretakers.  All this now standing unused.  A couple bottles of 500 year old wine and some minor, fun magical trinkets in the playroom represent the only lootable treasure.  Well, that and the peyote.  Flumphs floating in the playroom are the only life here now.   Shaman Influence The Shamans favor circular rooms and curving passages.  This styling will show up elsewhere in the dungeon, and will always signify their hand in its construction.  Therefore, it can be a clue that the room or passage had a mystical use and may have more than meets the eye. Future I wanted Flumphs in the playroom, but when I read about them, I foun

  This week, we have a semi-mundane section of the dungeon, although Room 9 starts with a Merc with a slit throat, face contorted in rage.  Three rooms follow, the workrooms of old: weaving, sewing, and dying fabric.  The dyeing room has a skeleton in a vat, bones stained black with dye; it could be inferred that he was drowned in it.  The big room is home to Rocs, very large birds, although I guess these would have to be Lesser Rocs or something, since my old 2e Monster book shows a Roc holding an elephant in its claws, and these aren't nearly that big.  Dead Mercs and bloody feathers mark the scene of battle.  I should add a blood smear leading from the big room back west to the main chamber from last week to imply that a Roc was subdued and dragged back to McLeash for payment.  The Merc in Room 9 was killed to have one less division of the reward.  Of course, all this is for the players to figure out (or not), none of it is explicitly told to them. The final room, in the south,

  For this week, we start right off the bat with our first faction: Mercs.  Leather armor, shortsword/shortbow, lazy but will work for coin.  Hired by McLeash, the notorious poacher.  All of this expanded faction information will be featured in the binder, which will be created at the end of the month.  Speaking of expanding on things, I'm not loving the tiny writing space in this notebook.  While it does drive me to be terse in my descriptions, it is a bit cramped, and doesn't have the space to write much in the way of evocative description.  I've started a note file on my phone where I can add to the room keys; I'll have to see the best way of including that with the finished product.   Treasure: Basically none.  The Mercs looted everything already.  I tried to "show, not tell" this, with the statues in room 6 and then in room 7.  There is a jar of scorpion poison nestled with the spears in room 5, though.  Save vs poison, on success vomit for 1d4 rounds, on

This is a day of firsts.  This is my first time blogging, and this is my first megadungeon.  Actually, it's my first dungeon of any kind.  This post will go a bit into the background and general idea of my megadungeon, and also what I did today on it.  I think I'll post every week.   Background This megadungeon is set into the wall of a canyon.  Here's a side view, from the ancient times and the modern: In the ancient times, there was a deep raging river that carved out the canyon.  Giant sea serpents glided along its surface.  At the top of one canyon wall, a hunter-gatherer tribe of humans dug down and carved out a home for themselves.  They carved down 12 floors.  Eventually, they tamed the sea serpents, riding them forward and back along the river, establishing trade up and down along the canyon.  They became wealthy.  As the river receded in later years, an opening in the far canyon wall was revealed, that the sea serpents went in and out of.  The ancient ones guided a