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Charlym_Zuardan 07-25-07, 01:17 AM

My group just finished going through this dungeon and I just thought i'd post it and see what others think. the party of 4 is level 4 and is venturing into this place to recover a magical weapon used in the chaos wars a thousand years ago. as we have already played through it, i'll add some notes in italics as to how the players reacted. As always, they surprised me a great many times with some of thier decisions. This entire dungeon is saturated with a strange dark bluish vapour, half seen at times, nearly obscuring at others, changing colors from dark blue to black to blood red, and back again. It clings to the walls, ceiling, and floor as though alive, but is easily brushed aside with the same effort it would take to wave away a puff of smoke. Every room and hallway described below contains this vapour, as though it is infused into the very stone of the dungeon itself. 1. The Betrayed - Black Players are delivered into this room by a chute that drops them from the ceiling, 15’ up. The room is 30’ by 30’ and has no doors. There are several holes in the ceiling about 1’ in diameter that are shrouded in darkness. There is a chain hanging from the ceiling which splits into 3 parts and holds a round piece of wood about 4’ off the floor. The wood has holes cut into it and holds 3 potions. As the players come close to the potions, a magic mouth will appear in between two of the chains (whichever two would make the mouth facing the players) and begins to talk in a deep and somewhat sinister voice. “Hello friends. We’re going to play a little game. In a moment, this room will start filling with water. You have in front of you three potions of water breathing. The game is simple; three of you will leave this room alive, which one of you doesn’t will be up to you. Let’s play.” -cheesey ripoff I know, but it set the mood really well Once it has finished speaking, the mouth will fade away and water will start pouring into the room through the holes in the ceiling. The water in the room will rise at a rate of about 3’ per minute. Once the room has filled up with water and one of the characters has died, the water goes dark so that they seem to be floating in blackness. The characters find themselves regaining consciousness, all of them alive and healthy and perfectly dry. They can see Symbols of Sleep inscribed on all 4 sides of the chute where it opens into the room, and they realize they were dreaming. The character who was killed finds a small black orb the size of a large marble in his hand. There is a door on the north wall leading out. -one of my players surprised everyone by volunteering to not take a potion, although after the other 3 had drank, she was angry that they would take her sacrifice so easily and just let her die 2. Burn Baby Burn! This room is 35’ long and 20’ across. Once the players enter this room the door behind them disappears, leaving a blank stone wall. There are large puddles of oil about an inch deep scattered all over the first half (15’) of the room which the players are on. The far wall has a door leading out, but as the players watch, the doorway fills with huge roaring flames which begin to spread from the far wall towards the players. Each section of the room that fills with fire is covered from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall with flames. The flames advance at a rate of 5’ every 10 seconds (2 rounds) If the players step into the flames while they are still on the far half of the room, they will find that the fire does not burn and appears to be completely illusory, however, when the flames reach the oil, it ignites into a solid wall of real flames which deal 1d6 points of damage per round. In addition, characters caught in the fire are at risk of catching on fire (DMG page 303) -pretty basic, they figured this one out fairly quickly 3. The Blinded – White This room is 25’ by 40’ with only the one door through which the players enter. This room appears completely empty. Looking up will reveal that the ceiling (15’ up) is actually a huge mirror. This mirror does not show the players reflections, just an empty room except for a reflection of a stone statue near the middle of the room, the statue has one hand held out, reaching towards another statue on the south wall which is holding a small white orb protectively. The statue in the middle has cloth blindfold tied around its head. If a player removes the blindfold from the statue it becomes visible in the room. If a player puts the blindfold on, he disappears from the room and his reflection appears in the mirror. He can grope around blindly or the other players can guide him until he is able to find and take the orb from the statues hand in the mirror. Note: as this is his reflection, his movements would be opposite, ie. His group tells him to look left, his reflection would be looking right. Without taking direction from his group his search check is -10, if he is guided by the others, his search is -5 instead. Removing the blindfold will return the player (with the orb, if he has it) to the real room and make him visible once more. -this room was a lot of fun and caused them a lot of confusion, even though they figured out the general idea of it fairly quickly 4. You Look Familiar… This room is 50’ x 30’ with a door in the north side leading out. Each player that enters the room finds themselves alone in the room with a solid wall of magical force preventing them from leaving. In the middle of the room is a circular platform about 10’ in diameter, with a few steps leading up to it. Hovering 4’ off the floor in the center of the platform is a faintly glowing red orb. On the opposite side of the room, entering through the doorway on the far wall is an exact copy of the player. The copy looks and acts like the player in all ways, as though he were a reflection in a mirror. The copy seems just as surprised to see the player as the player is to see the copy. After a couple seconds an image appears over the orb, the image shows the player (or the copy) holding the orb, walking through the wall of force. It then shifts and shows the player (or copy!) lying on the platform as darkness shrouds the room, sealing him in forever. Then the image fades away. Regardless of which copy of the player leaves the room with the orb, it will rejoin with the rest of the group as soon as it passes through the door. The orb dissolves as it passes through the force door. (if the real version of the player was the one left in the room, he simply takes over the character sheet of the copy, which is exactly the same except for wounds and spells used, and continues on). -this room was the most fun. I was able to challenge the players and show them strategies and spell combinations that they hadnt thought of yet for thier characters. All of them defeated thier copies except for one, and when she left the room i gave her the new character sheet and told her that her memories and personality and everything was exactly the same, except that she remembered winning the fight and leaving the room instead of losing. The other characters of course didnt know the difference but OOC the players were going crazy at the idea that no one in the party knew if thier teammates were real or just some crazy copy from a different dimension. It was great fun for me and a challenge to keep a straight face and tell them that I had no idea how they were supposed to know who was real and who wasnt or if they were even who they thought they were. in the words of one of the players, explaining the fight to someone else "we just fought ourselves, to save ourselves from ourselves, so that we could escape ourselves and leave ourselves to die, and we dont even know if all of us are in fact ourselves or if we were actually defeated by ourselves." good times. 5. The Faithful - Blue This room is 30’ x 30’. There is a door on the opposite wall leading out. This room is empty, but the floor is made of different color stones set in what seems to be a random pattern. The closest 4 squares to the door are solid stone, but beyond that, where the colored tiles begin, the floor is illusionary and anyone who steps onto it will fall through into a 100’ pit. A statue of an old blind man stands in the middle of the room. Once the floor has been determined illusionary, the statue will speak to the players, saying “When not all is as it seems, you’re better off like me. Though blind I be, the path I still see.” If the players close their eyes they will see a shining path of different colored light, zig-zagging its way across the room. The path cross near the statue in the middle of the room at one point, and the first person to near it will be given a blue orb. As players are moving across the pathway, they will hear various monster noises around them, and smell things like burning oil, however if they open their eyes while over the tiled flooring, they will fall into the pit. -they figured this room out pretty quick as well but i was able to really scare them by having them hear huge beasts swarming around them and feeling hot breath on the backs of thier necks and things like that, some of the characters were feeling claws grabbing at thier legs or things brushing through thier hair, even OOC the players were getting excited and yelling to each other to keep thier eyes closed! 6. This way! No, that way! As the players walk along this hallway, they will come to a T intersection. To the left and to the right is equally long hallways (50’ each) that end in closed doors. When the players enter one of the doors, they will find themselves in a long hallway, and at the other end they will see the backs of their team mates as they walk through the far door. The hallway that they came from originally is still there as well, and once they have gone through either the left or the right door at least once, this hallway no longer leads back the way they came, but instead leads forward to the next room. -This was good for a laugh when they split up and a pair went to each door to open it at the same time, i had them roll initiative to see who opened it first and then the second pair stood surprised as the door opened and they stood face to face with thier teammates. :) 7. The Noble - Gold In this encounter, the players enter a room that is about 100’ long and 50 feet across. There are 2 platforms of solid stone, one by each door, and each about 15’ square. The rest of the room is a huge pool of bubbling acid. The surface of the acid is about 30’ below the platforms. Iron ladders lead down from the platforms into the acid. On each section are 2 stone posts, each with a chain either anchored to it or threaded through a loop. Each chain extends across the room to the 2 posts on the other side of the room. The end that is looped through on one side is anchored on the other side, and vice versa. In the middle of the room is a small boat of an unidentifiable material. Once all 4 players have entered the room, the door will disappear, and be replaced with an inscription in the stone wall that reads “Three to cross, one to remain. If that one should die, who’s to blame? But surely the noble will not despair, When he chooses life and receives his share!” Pulling on the length of chain will move the boat towards the platform they are standing on, but doing so also produces a low rumbling sound. Players will notice the platform is slowly being lowered as the chain is pulled. The boat can only fit one person, if more than one gets in the boat will sink into the acid. Every time the boat makes a full trip across the room, the platforms are lowered by 5’, so that once 3 people have gone across, the platform will be but a few inches from the surface of the acid. As the platform lowers the last 3 feet, a stone in the floor will pop up and a stone chest will rise up, as the platform comes even with the acid, the chest will be able to be opened. Inside will be a potion of fly, the orb for this room, and a chunk of treasure for the noble adventurer that chose life for his friends. -they bypassed this pretty easily with some clever use of a length of rope, but to get the orb the bard had to use up a bunch of his spells to open the chest and telekenises the orb back to them 9. This room is 45’ x 50’. This room is empty except for a large stone bowl about 6’ across in the center of the room. The bowl is set into a block of stone and has empty slots at evenly spaced intervals around the rim. The slots are the same shape and size as the orbs that the players are carrying. each slot has an inscription: The betrayed (black), the blinded (white), the faithful (blue), the noble(gold). Once all the orbs are put into their slots, the vapor throughout the dungeon will begin to rush into the room from all directions, as though being sucked out of the stone and into the bowl in this room. Players will be able to see only a rush of blue, black, and red and hear a horrible wailing noise and then suddenly they will find themselves facing the chaos elemental. This large beast seems to be made entirely out of the vapour that was drawn into the room, it has a roughly humanoid shape, with a gaping mouth and deep black eyes. Below the waist it appears as a small, slow moving cyclone, anchored in the stone bowl. It is constantly changing colors from deep blue to black to deep red, and its shape is not quite solid, fading in and out at the edges. -the chaos elemental was a homemade monster, stats basically the same as a large fire element, but for the chaotic aspect of it i had a list of all supernatural abilities found in the MM's, and i prerolled to get a list of randomly chosen abilities, every couple of rounds the chaos element would use one of the random abilities. for example he used darkness, bodak's death gaze, dragonne's roar, devils barbs, stunning gaze and a few others during the fight. it worked out pretty well all in all it was a fun dungeon for me and the players told me multiple times how much fun they had and how awesomely twisted it was.