New Darkness Beneath Submissions

Wishing you had been able to contribute to The Darkness Beneath? You still can! Here are some dungeons from The Deep Caves (Issue 12) that could still be developed. All should be challenging for characters of levels 8+; some could well be designed for even higher level baselines. All are open to creative reinterpretation by prospective authors.

3. The Tilting Tunnels are a complex, three-dimensional maze of caverns and wooden buildings and bridges counterbalanced over vast subterranean abysses. The whole tunnel complex is somewhat akin to a giant Rube Gold-berg contraption, and when the wooden segments move relative to one another PCs may often be left at a dead end or unable to retrace their steps. There are however two routes down through the tunnels that allow one to reach the Underwilds two hexes SE of the Tunnels, and this is known to Snearg (4), who will suggest this as an alternate route for the parsimonious. The Tilting Tunnels are inhab-ited by the Puppeteer (Neutral Mag 12 with Dr. Octopus-like wooden prosthetics), a bizarre enchanter of semi-sentient, Oz-like constructs made from wood and sawdust and dungeon detritus. Along with his twin djinn servants, the Puppeteer creates a vast panoply of servitors – anima-ted puppets, life-size cuckoo clocks and jack-in-the-boxes, juggernauts, spinning tops, and his vexing masterworks, the Bad Puppets, sentient, free-willed animates who are quite willing to thwart the Puppeteer’s will whenever they can get off the strings that bind them to him. The Puppeteer is avid to trade for more wood, and if PCs of insufficient strength challenge him he may well Geas them (with a clockwork device grafted to their backs) to bring him more from the Underwilds, as he is loath to lose any more Bad Puppets to the bandits there. The Puppeteer is obsessive and eccentric, monomaniacally focused on his creations, but not malevolent per se. He is very powerful, especially in his own realm, and coexists with the Undoers and the dark trolls in an uneasy détente.

5. After the Pteroc Stables the Troll Highway once again becomes tunnel-like, and a smaller (one-elephant) branch leads to the Dagendreng Hold, a carved-out redoubt for highborn and recently wealthy dark trolls, as well as the bravest wayfarers in The Darkness Beneath. A sort of dungeon-bound Gentlemen’s Club, this is the best place for non-trolls to go if they wish to purchase influence or mercenary support from the dark trolls, although prices are always high and service always uncertain, and petitioners may be eaten for their trouble. There is also a teleportation circle hidden here that connects to the Thieves’ Guild in the city of Marchand, and a particularly ruthless coterie of thieves (some placed high in the Dragon Earl’s retinue), working to further the dark trolls’ purposes in the world above, can sometimes be found here as well. (The Puppet-eer (3) deals with them for wood.) Highborn Dark Trolls are known as Drones, and those who loiter here play the role of the young, idle scion of wealth to the hilt; Nellie Dean may be heard at all hours, emanating from the gin-drenched bowels within. It is hard to imagine spirits more crushed than those of Dagendreng’s elven barmaids.

13. The Tomb of Thirteen, a lethal dungeon, may present welcome respite from the terrible dinosaur-infested wilder-ness outside. In addition to monsters and treasure, the Tomb includes a great number of puzzle-traps and will require dumb luck as well as good play to reach some of its most remote secrets. Treasure maps may well lead here.

Caithena has already done some work on 14-16, but who knows when they will write it up - possible collab or fresh takes welcome:

14. The Nightwing Temple and dungeons beneath are the dwelling-places of the psychic, extradimensional Con-trol Freaks (treat as intelligent Unseen Stalkers with telepathy and mind control), allies of the Undoers who keep Gorangal the Night Dragon (16) and the goblins of the Thousand Spears who worship her (15) in mental thrall. Cave-villages of enslaved Troblins who serve the Control Freaks ring the temple, and these will both fight off outsiders and warn the Control Freaks of their approach. Nominally a semi-ruined temple to the Night Dragons, the dungeons here are difficult even by the standards of The Deep Caves, but if a party has the ability to cope with psychic attack and invisible foes, the strange extradimensional spaces beneath the temple contain a great deal of information and valuable magical and technological treasure. Gorangal’s consort Liringhast is imprisoned here as well. Victory here also opens up the possibility of friendship with two Night Dragons and a thousand goblin warriors, if the thralldom of the Control Freaks is broken.

15. Cliff-City of the Thousand Spears: The proud goblin warriors who live here (treat as 2 HD hobgoblins who regenerate 1 hp/round) once held these lands against the troll-folk above, hunting dinosaurs for meat and hiring out as mercenaries. But since the coming of the Mourners, the Multiversal Bazaar, and above all the Control Freaks, they have been brought low, and now live in psychic thralldom, their souls slowly flensed for the Freaks’ nourishment. There is a secret passage here to an underground shrine of Chaotic priestesses (Level 6, The Fane of Salicia in the full dungeon) who sometimes hire or kidnap these goblins as well as selling them healing and other services. The Goblins of the Thousand Spears worship Gorangol, the Night Dragon, and her consort Liringhast, in great caverns higher up in the cliffside (16). They would die to a goblin against the Control Freaks at her orders, but as long as they have Liringhast she will not act against them.

16. The Lair of Gorangol, The Night Dragon stands higher on the cliffs and to the north of the City of the Thousand Spears. Ancient idols flank the cavern mouth; within the dread Gorangol (Chaotic Huge Ancient Night Dragon) mourns with her hoard, pining for her stolen consort Liringhast. Gorangol is neither good nor patient, but she does love Liringhast and will reward any who rescue him, with her friendship if not her treasure. She is strong enough to resist the Freaks’ mind control, but not so strong as to act against them without losing Liringhast first, so she does nothing, leaving her worshippers to be enthralled and muttering into her vast golden troves.

19. Beneath the waves of the Lightless Lake here is a Sunken City, where dwells an ancient race of sea elves that neither has nor desires any contact with the world outside. There is ancient magic and technology here, and the City is very large, full of forgotten areas, strange interlopers, and interesting treasure. It is not magically concealed, but it is in the dark, and its highest spires are one hundred feet below the Lake’s surface.

Learn how to contribute here.

– Ignatius Ümlaut, Publisher and Editor