Dig Site Incident (One Monster, Five Rooms)
The folks over at the Garamondia and Nothic's Eye RPG blogs came up with a cool monster concept generator (Monster-Making d666), and then used it for this simple challenge: "write up a quick dungeon with d2 monsters in it, and d4+1 rooms". At least one other blogger took up the challenge, so here are the 1d2 Monsters and 1d4+1 Rooms dungeons of which I am currently aware.
- Garamondia: Chem Pit Burial
- The Nothic's Eye: Sea Star Temple
- Whose Measure God Could Not Take: His Ghastly Song, No Chant of Victory
Anyway, this looks like loads of fun, so I'll give it a try.
Background
Four months ago, a team of scholars, wizards, laborers, and bodyguards from the Lyceum showed up in the remote village of Graywallow and paid the Inskle family a sack of coin for the use of their neglected back forty for the year. They then proceed to tear the rented land—and some of the neighboring fields—setting up temporary accommodations and staging for an ambitious, magically assisted excavation.
The project—lead by one Professor Olstokken—sought to unearth the sunken ruins of an ancient civilization known as the "Tshale Valley culture". Historical research led them to this site, and preliminary divinations confirmed the presence of artificial structures deep below the ground. Olstokken's people bored a shaft into the Inskle farm, and eventually hit a buried rooftop. Opening the structure, they found a vast hall of crumbling greenish stone. They widened and reinforced the pit, set up a pair of winch-driven elevators, and began to explore half-buried Tshale city.
They found some remains from the debatably human inhabitants, countless artifacts of daily life, and even a trove of mysterious magical—if largely nonfunctional—objects. When they uncovered a whole magical room, Olstokken could read enough of the remaining magic to be certain it was a large-scale teleportation device. Gripped by the hope that it might lead her to another Tshale site, she bought the Inskles' oldest sheep and had her assistants empty its veins into the chamber's sacrifice bowl, feeding power into the sleeping system.
The professor took all the precautions she could manage under the circumstances, intending only to revitalize the device enough to make its enchantments clearer, more decipherable. There was no way she could have known the stone-insulated depths below the disc still held enough power to open a gate, or that it wasn't enough to make a connection to any other Tshale planar well. Instead, the ragged end of the failed conduit scraped into some between place, and sucked a hapless alien being into that ruined city.
In its panic, the White Mandala killed Olstokken and her assistants and bodyguards first. Then it blundered through the rest of the site, smashing things and people as it went, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose. It tried to fly up the shaft, but got tangled in the chains and fell back into the ruins. It's been down there for two days, and both the Lyceum and the people of Graywallow are wondering what happened.
The dig site
1A: Shaft
The shaft leading to the dig site is about 100' deep and 20' in diameter. The first 10' are sheathed in rusty steel, and the remaining 90' bore through bare, maroon-colored rock. Two powerful, mine-style elevators were built (hastily) into the shaft: One 5' × 10' platform for people, and one 10' × 15' platform for freight.
The smaller elevator is at the surface, but its gear assembly is damaged, as if a huge force yanked the chains which move it. Its counterweight is still attached, and rests on the stone floor far below. The mechanism is repairable by a competent engineer, if they're willing to suspend themselves over an uncanny pit of doom for an hour or so.
The larger elevator is in working order, but the platform is 30' down the shaft, and its locking mechanism is engaged. It can't be raised or lowered from the surface unless someone goes down to the platform and flips a switch. Its massive counterweight hangs, threateningly, 30' over the bottom of the pit.
Either elevator—if it's in working order—can be raised or lowered from the surface with 30 minutes of exhausting effort by two people or a beast of burden, or a full hour by one person. A significant magical motive force could do it in five minutes. Neither elevator can be moved from the bottom, because those mechanisms were smashed by the White Mandala. They would take days of labor and replacement parts to fix.
1B: Great hall
This is a huge, partially collapsed underground construction. It runs hundreds of feet to the east and west, and is about 60 feet wide, but much of that distance is obstructed by stone pillars, wooden supports added by the research team, collapsed areas, and the wreckage of assorted temporary structures. The vaulted ceiling is about 50' high in the middle and 40' at the edges. The ruin is mostly of greenish stone, ornate and baroque to the point of convolution, and crumbling into a layer of gravel.
There are seven corpses of Lyceum scholars and laborers, each horribly broken by tremendous blunt force. One of these hangs 30 feet in the air, transfixed improbably by an abstract decorative protrusion on an ancient pillar.
Around mid-day, the middle of the great hall is lit by sunlight via the shaft. Otherwise, this area is pitch black.
2: Collapsed wing
The northern side of the great hall opened up into a multitude of side passages which, as they were excavated, were repurposed as subsurface barracks and latrines for team members while they worked below ground. This is also where most of the Lyceum's people took shelter when the White Mandala arrived. Unfortunately, the creature's frantic lashing and flailing collapsed the supports and entryways here, trapping four laborers, three scholars, and one guard inside. Ten others were crushed or suffocated.
The survivors are starving, severely dehydrated, and half mad with terror. They're likely to hear any adventurers moving around nearby, and will scream desperately for help. They won't be eager to talk about what happened or even who they are until they're safe on the surface, or at least freed from the collapse.
It would take 1d6 × 10 minutes of labor with tools (or 1d12 × 10) for someone in the great hall to save each person. Up to three people can work to extract one survivor, reducing the time needed accordingly. Rescued survivors can be convinced to help free their colleagues, but won't be eager. The work makes loads of noise, and while the White Mandala is entirely deaf, nobody here knows that.
3: Fungus cavern
The southern wall of the great hall was once lined with a series of tall, fused quartz windows which looked out on some primordial scene of wild beauty. Most of those windows have shattered inward millennia ago, each one admitting a small avalanche of maroon scree. To the southeast, however, there's a 30-foot stretch of windows that instead reveal a natural cavern.
One of the windows in this section was broken outwards by the Lyceum team, and gives access to a space even larger than the great hall. The roar of a waterfall can be heard somewhere within.
Beyond, much of the floor is corrugated with pale blue mycelium, which gives rise to a forest of bulbous fungal bodies around three or four feet high. These are harmless, but inedible.
A river runs through this cavern, spilling down from the ceiling at one end and carving a tunnel to greater depths at the other. The water is cool and clean, if treacherously fast in some places.
Past the fungus and the river, the far end of the cavern is pocked by gravel-choked tunnel openings around three to five feet in diameter. The desiccated carcass of a tremendous cavern worm extends from one of these. The Lyceum's security team killed this thing while exploring the cavern. A few broken arrows remain embedded in it, and there are many more wounds where intact arrows were retrieved.
4: Storage room
At the eastern end of the great hall, a 20-foot doorway opens up into a roughly dome-shaped space which might have once been a temple or arena. If the White Mandala's location hasn't already been established, there's a 50% chance it's in here. Otherwise, it's at the planar well (5).
The section of the dome nearest the hall has been furnished with tarps and wooden crates from the surface, and was used as a triage, cleaning, and storage area for artifacts retrieved from the ruins.
Immediately by the entrance, there are two dust-strewn tables where objects were cleaned and examined. One table is askew, and the other has been smashed. The area is strewn with tumbled chairs, lanterns, cleaning tools, and writing utensils. There are also three notebooks cataloging the items retrieved, various digging implements (enough to outfit nine people), a few mechanical tools, and replacement parts for the elevators.
To the left of the entrance, the incomplete skeletal remains of 38 humanoids have been arranged on a series of tarps and a few tables. A small card with a hand-written number accompanies each one. The skeletons appear human, but possibly pathological: distortions and asymmetries mark nearly all of them.
To the right, more tarps and several crates host a multitude of mundane—if frequently ambiguous—ancient objects. Nothing here would be valuable to anyone who's not a scholar of Tshale studies; all the stuff somebody might steal was already hauled back to the Lyceum.
Directly across from the entrance—almost in the center of the dome—are dozens of smaller wooden crates that have been methodically arranged in a 30-foot circle and torn open. Within each one, a Tshale artifact sits among burlap cushioning and splintered wood. Many of these bleed a lurid violet haze into the air: They're all magical, and their enchantments have all been rotting away into mildly dangerous arcane pollution for millennia. They're basically useless, but they could be fully dissolved to harvest their remaining magical power.
That's why the White Mandala comes here: It's used to a much more high-energy environment, and the stinking miasma of these relics is more comfortable than the cold sterility of the rest of this place.
The further reaches of the dome are partially collapsed.
5: Planar well
At the western end of the great hall, a 10-foot doorway opens up into a 40-foot circular chamber. A pair of thick, wooden doors lie splintered on the floor of the great hall, obviously torn free when something huge pushed out from the smaller room. If the White Mandala's location hasn't already been established, there's a 50% chance it's in here. Otherwise, it's in the storage area (4).
The planar well chamber is dominated by a 20-foot disc of black, glassy material set into the green stone floor. There's a bowl-shaped depression to the left of the doorway, and the whole room is slightly concave. Channels cut into the floor lead from the bowl and across the floor, ultimately encircling the disc in a pattern of grooves. A dead sheep lies in the bowl, and its days-old blood crusts the channels on the floor.
There are five corpses here: Professor Olstokken, two assistants, and two guards. They're mangled much worse than the folks in the great hall. Their clothing and gear are pretty much destroyed, but Olstokken still has some salvageable jewelry and her excavation wand. This device can soften stone into something like clay, and suck up loose earth or sand and store it in an extraplanar space. It's only got a little charge left, but a qualified professional could fully recharge it. (And a desperate fool could attempt to charge it with the artifacts in the storage room (4).)
This room is the device that summoned the White Mandala. It's a powerful point-to-point teleportation device, and while its enchantment is wildly uncalibrated, it's not rotting like those of the devices in the storage area. An expert could reinitialize it, and possibly gain access to other Tshale sites. Even in its current state, it could be used to send the White Mandala back to its own world, if the creature can be in position when the well is activated through a fresh blood sacrifice.
The creature hangs out in here a lot, just waiting for the way back home to open up. Unfortunately, it fears and hates every living thing it's met in this world, so it's unlikely to be cooperative unless communication can somehow be established.
The White Mandala
The creature ensnared by the Professor's experiment is a radiate mass of wings that branches fractally out from a complex central joint, each one streaming with rubbery "feathers" that are extensions of—rather than extrusions from—the thing's smooth, matte-white integument. Fist-sized iridescent black spheres—electromagnetic sensory/communication organs—are placed around the body haphazardly. Three pale pink gripping legs, spined and joined like insect limbs, unfold from the thicket of wings. The whole thing is about 30' in diameter, but it can collapse itself tightly enough to fit through a regular doorway.
It's sapient, but pretty dumb, and used to being part of a collective—something between an army and an extended family. It's freaking out badly over being dumped in a strange world, but even worse over being alone. It's trapped behind enemy lines, and all local life is the enemy. It just wants to go home. It doesn't speak or even hear, but it could be reasoned with if contacted via telepathy or something.
Under most circumstances, it will attack anyone in the same room with it. It's not very interested in chasing people, and would prefer to stay in the storage area (4) or the planar well (5) unless somebody really bothers it. If it's completely infuriated, it might even try to fly up the shaft (1A) to kill someone, but it's not eager to get near the elevator chains. If it's hurt, it will flee to the magic artifacts in the storage area (4), which gradually heal it.
It can fly reasonably fast, even in the confined spaces of the dig site (although it does a lot of just pushing itself along the walls, here). It's stupidly strong for something that weighs about as much as a tall human adult, and flails away viciously at multiple targets within reach. A solid hit from it can send a target dumpling several feet away. It can see in the dark and in all directions, and detect magical auras and lots of other stuff. It has no sense of hearing or smell. Raw magic attacks (like magic missile, not fireball) heal it rather than harming it.
I'd maybe use the stats for an owlbear, but give it flight, more attacks, and some kind of knockback effect.
