WE'RE DOIN' IT AGAIN!!!
This dungeon can be either standalone (in which case there is an area for a potential entrance marked with a large E on the map above) or it can serve as a lower dungeon level for the previous post-it dungeon, with a staircase connecting room 11 on the previous map with room 1 (the circular room) above. I'm going to be running this as a dungeon of multiple post-it sized levels, but you don't have to :)
This dungeon is divided into two distinct halves by a ravine which is itself crossed by a single rickety rope-and-plank bridge. Rooms 1 through 13 are subterranean, carved into the cliff-face on the western side of the ravine (if using this as a lower level from the previous post-it dungeon, then the floor above is located entirely on this side of the ravine, seeing as the previous floor is entirely underground). Rooms 14 through 22 are part of a vaguely triangular hedge maze/garden (i.e. unlike the other side, this side of the dungeon is completely open air and, during the day, well lit). The rocky outcropping which serves as a connection point for the bridge between the two sides is marked with a *.
Room Key
1: Wide circular room with one entrance and exit, a stone doorway carved to resemble two Grecian columns. On the opposite point of the circle from the doorway is a statue of a skinned saint, holding his skin loosely in his hand. The statue has been defaced with a stinking black oil, and a paper slip written on with the "abyssal" trigram (☵) is affixed to the statue's forehead. At the statue's feet is the burnt residue of some magical ritual. There is a stand in the center of the room that would have originally held a fully articulated skeleton, but everything except the feet are missing.
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| from The Boxer's Omen (1983) |
2: Small square chamber with three entrances/exits; the northern exit has a locked door, while the other two are wide open. There is an elaborate series of pulleys connected to a wooden plate on the floor just inside the door that connects rooms 1 and 2. On the pressure plate is written a sacred sutra. If the pressure plate is stepped on (and the sutra disrespected) a glass jar full of concentrated poison of several snakes and scorpions will swing down and hit the stepper in the head, dealing 1d6 damage and poisoning the victim (save or die in 1d4 turns without antidote).
3: Empty storage room full of crates and clay pots. Most of the containers are empty, but one clay pot contains honey flecked with gold worth 75 gp.
4: A large, open many-columned reception hall, now empty. There is a single throne, the cushion slashed and defaced, against the southwestern wall, between the two doorways. Four tattered tapestries depicting battle scenes of nameless knights hang between the columns on either side of the hall.
5: The sleeping quarters of a few of the laborers who built this place, now long dead. The skeleton of one such laborer is under a motheaten blanket on a small cot. 4 hungry ghosts linger in this room. There is nothing of value.
6: Triangular chamber with 5 jiangshi listlessly lingering. Cushions and broken plates strewn about imply a party was once held here.
7: A small shrine room with only one entrance/exit. On the opposite side of the chamber, flanked by facsimile trees, sits a stone statue of a saint that seems to have been doubly defaced, first by spilling blood on it and carving a pentagram into the statue's chest, and then by the affixing of a paper slip with the "abyssal" trigram onto the forehead of the saint. The saint's left hand points down, and on his outstretched finger is a ring of control plants.
8: Small square chamber decorated with paintings, all slashed and defaced. A locked ebony-and-silver chest (itself worth 100 gp) on the western wall contains 400 gp worth of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, long pepper, etc).
9: Circular room with a deep turquoise reflecting pool in the center. The water itself reaches up with furtive tendrils when objects of any sort are held over it, and anything which is given over to the water is returned broken down into its fundamental parts. I.e., a sword is returned as the ingots of metal and strips of leather used to make it, and then if the metal is dropped in it is returned as unsmelted ore (or an unprocessed hide in the case of the leather), and so on. A secret door on the south end of the room is only able to be opened if an object refined by the waters is touched to it.
10: Hallway flanked by large stone columns, to which stick the still-writhing crushed bodies of a few muttering jiangshi. The flagstones on the floor are decorated with heraldic insignia; if any flagstone (pressure plate) decorated with the cross is stepped on, the columns surge out and crush the stepper, save or die.
11: The doors to this room are barricaded shut from the outside. Within, a cloud of seven giant mosquitos suck blood from each other ad infinitum, corpses long sucked dry strewn about on the floor. A single dried-out body in mystical robes (if the sorcerer in room 13 is asked, it is his assistant Pan Qigang) clutches a crystal ball with clauraudience, as well as a small packet of rare spices worth 25 gp.
12: A long, rectangular room with a long rug (worth 50 gp) down the room's full length and a large sandalwood chest on the western wall. The chest contains a brocade of silk worth 400 gp as well as a set of silver buttons worth 100 gp. However, the lock on the chest is a complex puzzle lock that, if not solved correctly, instead opens a secret compartment which flings out a magically enlarged saint's tongue that pins the player against the opposite wall of the chamber, immobilizing them and dealing 2d6 damage. If the secret compartment is broken open through means other than the puzzle lock, the player finds a dried flake scraped off of the tongue of a martyr-saint. There is a secret door on the eastern wall (opposite the chest), connecting to room 3. If this secret door is opened even once, the tongue cannot pin the victim against the opposite wall.
13: Large, coffin-shaped room visibly carved out more recently than any other room in the complex. Was once the resting place of the vampire which now lives in the garden/hedge maze. Now serves as the lair of the dark sorcerer Xuán Fashi, master of jiangshi. He can cast the spells darkness, sleep, phantasmal force, hold person, and magic missile. In addition to the sorcerer himself, there are 2d6+2 jiangshi in this room at any given time, serving as guards or domestic servants for their master. Underneath Xuán Fashi's cushion, he is hiding a cursed gemstone (functions as a staff of withering); he has a scroll of blight (as the reversed cleric spell) sewn into the sleeves of his robe. There is a large sack of golden animal figures worth 1,000 gp sitting on the floor next to the sorcerer's cushion. There is a barrel full of garlic and onions off to the side of the room.
*: Rocky outcrop on the cliff-face, onto which is affixed a rickety rope-and-board bridge. This bridge can only support one person at a time, and if they are fully encumbered they will count as two people for the purposes of risking breakage and tumbling down into the ravine below.
14: Half-circle of hedges with three openings to the northwest, northeast, and southeast. An armless marble statue of a beautiful woman (150 gp) stands watch in the center of the "room."
15: 7 jack-o-lanterns slumber in this half-circular hedge-room. When "sleeping" they appear as oversized carved pumpkins, but they can be heard to softly snore. When awoken, their full bodies reveal themselves and they attack. There is a wooden table in the center of the room with a picnic arrayed on it.
16: A small room, only slightly wider than the halls of the hedge maze, crisscrossed by thorny vines. Must be carefully traversed, lest the player (on a failed DEX check) trips and falls onto the thorns, taking 1d6 damage. A skeleton caught in the vines is holding a silver dagger +1 against apes.
17: The largest single area in the hedge maze. Empty save for a stone fountain in the center, burbling with slightly mineral-tasting water. The fountain features a central figure of a robed woman pouring out water from an amphora, flanked by frogs, fishes, herons, and large insects.
18: A vaguely triangular clearing in the hedgemaze, featuring a large grandfather clock on the outside (west-facing) wall. This grandfather clock is inhabited by 3 imps of the perverse, but if they are appeased or dispelled then the hands on the clock may be moved to change the time of day manually.
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| from The Gorilla (1927) |
19: Square hedge maze room with a single large peach tree in the middle, on which a tree house sits squarely in the branches. This is the lair of the vampire Frau Viktoria Blutinova and her Gorilla. She despises the dark sorcerer Xuán Fashi for exiling her from her abode in room 13. She has a wooden garden bed filled with her grave dirt on which she sleeps during the day, and is seen presiding over a court of 2d6 giant mosquitoes, 1d8+1 vipers, and The Gorilla at night. She sends The Gorilla (which is under her mind control via a television set embedded in its chest) out on her evil business. There is a televisual transmitter (complete with camera) at a desk in the corner of the tree house lair (the camera and any of the other devices are worth 200 gp each). She does not have much in the way of treasure or magic items, since the dark sorcerer stole most of it when he took her previous lair. A secret door made of vines and roots connects to the hallway between rooms 18 and 20/21/22.
20: A stagnant pond in the center of this room is the home of 12 giant mosquitoes, as well as their defenseless larvae.
21: A small side area in the hedge maze with a tall wooden gardener's shack. Inside, in addition to the skeleton of the long dead gardener, are several rusted trowels, hedge clippers, sickles, shovels, etc. There is a chainsaw, but no fuel. In the gardener's dead hand is a whittled carving of a bird.
22: A pumpkin patch (just normal pumpkins, no jack-o-lanterns present other than from a wandering monster roll). One of the larger pumpkins has pinned a dead squirrel to the ground, on top of a dirty silk cushion. If cleaned properly, it is worth 300 gp because of its fine detail work.
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
Roll 1d6:
1: 1d4 hungry ghosts (stats as wraith, easily pacified/distracted by food or sacrificing money, completely dispelled by helping them move on past their fixation on desire)
2: 1d6+1 jiangshi (stats as wight, cannot be turned as normal, see below)
3: 2d6 imps of the perverse (stats as goblin except with flight and the spells putrefy food and water and cause light wounds)
4: 1d8+1 pit vipers
5: 1d8 jack-o-lanterns (stats as bugbear)
6: 2d6 giant mosquitos (stats as stirge)
7: The Gorilla (stats as white ape with charm person via the vampire's television screen embedded in chest)
When the players are in the subterranean halls (west side), roll 1d6. When the players are in the hedge maze (east side), roll 1d6+1. If the dark sorcerer Xuán Fashi has been defeated, roll 1d6 but replace #2 (1d6+1 jiangshi) with The Gorilla. If the vampire Frau Viktoria Blutinova has been defeated, just roll 1d6 as normal for both sides of the dungeon.
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| from one of the Mr. Vampire movies, I'm pretty sure |
Jiangshi
Stats as wight, except:
Hopping: Jiangshi can only locomote by hopping due to rigor mortis.
Mundane Damage Immunity: Jiangshi are immune to damage from mundane weapons and any magical weapon with a bonus less than +2. They take double damage from any weapon formed from the wood of a peach tree.
Turning: Jiangshi cannot be turned by clerics.
Weaknesses: Jiangshi are turned when presented with mirrors, or when they hear the call of a rooster. They are completely immobilized by a paper talisman being affixed to their forehead. If you hold your breath, a jiangshi is unable to perceive you.
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Just like how the last one lifted liberally from 1950s/60s sci-fi horror (with the two-headed wasps like something out of The Wasp Woman or Monster from Green Hell, the mad scientist, and the robot) as well as undead gothic stuff with the ghouls (Tombs of the Blind Dead or (indirectly) Lovecraft's Pickman's Model), this one takes inspiration from suitably seasonal media and literary sources. This paragraph might as well serve as a kind of appendix N of sorts. The main sources here are Hong Kong horror films (Devil Fetus, Mr. Vampire, Troublesome Night, A Chinese Ghost Story, and especially The Boxer's Omen), vampire media/literature (the original Lugosi Dracula, Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla and 1970s lesbian vampire movies like The Vampire Lovers and Vampyros Lesbos), and, of course, horror movies featuring gorillas (especially poverty row pictures like The Ape (1940) or Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932, also with Bela Lugosi); also of note here is the TV-headed gorilla-bodied Ro-man from The Robot Monster (1953)). Put one of these on in the background for ambience when running this dungeon, why not!! On top of all this, I'll recommend Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitaro, manga or anime either one, for the crossovers between east Asian folkloric creatures and western movie/literary monsters. Backbeard would be a very fun villain to drop into a D&D game.
ALSO I got several (exactly two) comments here on the blog/on Discord about how the key for the last dungeon can't fit on a post-it, so I wanted to make sure to go ahead and write a pared-down version to do just that.
Transcription of my hard to read handwriting:
1: 7 walls depicting saints. Articulated skeleton in center, 1 gp worth of silver wire
2: Red devil head on wall, opal eyes 25 gp each, stepping on tongue floods room w/ blood
3: Pipes + rag-man
4: Library, skeleton w/ stinger in back. Silver book 1k gp
5: Flickering candle wick w/ whale oil trap
6: empty armor + empty skin
7: Pond w/ 5 pale crocs. Jeweled gauntlet 1k gp
8: 36 ghouls in lair
9: see above. secret door.
10: 5 black puddings + green slime
11: Idealized vision mirror
12: Ghoul princess lair. peacock fan worth 350 gp
13: Antique chair nailed to floor, 600 gp
14: banquet hall
15: Scientist's lab. The Robot, needs silver wire.
16: 10 wasp-things
17: tiled mosaics
18: tiles on floor, pressure plates launch bricks, 1d6x1d6 damage.
This loses a lot of the vibes of the original key but it replaces it with a certain Arnesonian/Castle Greyhawkian minimalism.
I will not be doing this for dungeons in the future. I just like drawing the map on a post-it to be completely honest.
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