Dread Angel
2012-09-30, 06:48 AM
Hello Playgrounders!
I've just been designing this dungeon for a portion of my campaign that I anticipate the players probably reaching tonight.
Small background: The party is running about the continent (Golarion, pathfinder setting) fetching various magic items from various locations to help them break the BBEG's haha-you-cant-hit-me shield. They've just finished winning a rather cool swordbow in a gladiatorial tournament up in the north in the Lands of the Linnorm kings (the PC that won the tournament played so well it amazed me, with tactics and forethought and everything!!! I NEVER see this from this group!) and one of the ones they're intending to go after soon is a pair of magic gauntlets.
Now, these gauntlets are in the possession of a Mercane named Zjakklin (an homage to my best friend, Zack Lynn) who is a bit of a sleazy, used car salesman type guy....except he hawks souls. He is based in Katapesh, in the Nightstalls (massive open bazaar for literally everything and everyone across the planes, very very very fun location). The PCs find him, but likely won't be able to pony up the asking price (level 2 and he wants basically a stack of magic items for these gauntlets, mercanes don't do cash). As they're discussing it, another NPC walks up and bargains for the soul of a young gold dragon (this is me foreshadowing the sequel to this campaign, this NPC is a very important dude and the BBEG of it is a gold dragon...lots of good material here but I'll explain it at some future thread)
Zjakklin agrees, and goes to fetch the soul from his magic chest...which blatantly refuses to cough up the proper item. After an embarassing amount of searching, arguing and cursing, he offers the PCs a deal - fix the chest and they get the gauntlets.
The magic of the chest itself is actually a semisentient spell used to store and retrieve all manner of items in its own personal miniplane.
Zjakklin will transport them into the miniplane, but warns them that the magic is alive enough to recognize intruders and defend itself against them, but not actually enough to recognize that they are trying to heal it.
SO.
The PCs end up in a very colourful dungeon with a very outright magical atmosphere - no ceiling, just boundless stars and galaxies that don't really exist (or do they?), blue-stone floor and walls with glowing golden veins through them etc etc.
What sets this place apart is that the dungeon itself is alive. There are no actual monsters per se here....but there ARE a ton of magic items, not to mention souls of creatures. And the dungeon animates the items as the PCs find them. Example of such an encounter:
The PCs find a room with a blue tunic floating in the middle of it. This tunic is a Bolt Shirt, essentially allows a 60ft line of sight and effect teleport once per day as a move action (3.5 magic item compendium). The door vanishes as they enter, the walls begin showering sparks. The sparks fill the shirt, which assumes a vaguely humanoid form and begins teleporting around the room zapping the PCs for small amounts of damage. As its body is a constantly-renewing "swarm" of sparks, I gave it DR5/bludgeoning, but minimal HP. The tunic itself teleports around the room, and the sparks where it teleports refill it, so it heals itself for 2 HP every time it teleports...which is often.
Once the PCs defeat a given item they get to use it for the rest of the dungeon, but the items don't transfer with them when they return from the chest. They know this from the outset.
On top of that, the dungeon uses the souls trapped within it to "create" shadows and afterimages of the creatures. So they might end up fighting...pretty much anything Zjakklin has a soul in his inventory of...but at far less power than usual. So perhaps a gold dragon, for example, but with massively scaled down stats.
Not only is this a seriously cool variation on the normal dungeon style, it allows me to let the PCs get a taste of some seriously cool magic items without actually endangering the campaign itself, as they don't get to keep them or use them outside the dungeon at all ever.
What do you folks think? I absolutely love this idea I've had.
EDIT: Whenever they run into a soul spawned monster, it is bound to a nearby crystal embedded in the surface of the dungeon. When they reach the final room, they see one of these crystals, but it is covered in a dark purple mineral growth of some kind. It spawns the soul of the young gold dragon the NPC was asking about, which attacks them. As they defeat it, the growth spawns a black mist which infuses the corpse and reanimates it. The growth is the corruption which is attempting to take over the souls of all the creatures within the chest. Defeating the dragon spirit will destroy the intelligence behind the growth and fix the box. :D
I've just been designing this dungeon for a portion of my campaign that I anticipate the players probably reaching tonight.
Small background: The party is running about the continent (Golarion, pathfinder setting) fetching various magic items from various locations to help them break the BBEG's haha-you-cant-hit-me shield. They've just finished winning a rather cool swordbow in a gladiatorial tournament up in the north in the Lands of the Linnorm kings (the PC that won the tournament played so well it amazed me, with tactics and forethought and everything!!! I NEVER see this from this group!) and one of the ones they're intending to go after soon is a pair of magic gauntlets.
Now, these gauntlets are in the possession of a Mercane named Zjakklin (an homage to my best friend, Zack Lynn) who is a bit of a sleazy, used car salesman type guy....except he hawks souls. He is based in Katapesh, in the Nightstalls (massive open bazaar for literally everything and everyone across the planes, very very very fun location). The PCs find him, but likely won't be able to pony up the asking price (level 2 and he wants basically a stack of magic items for these gauntlets, mercanes don't do cash). As they're discussing it, another NPC walks up and bargains for the soul of a young gold dragon (this is me foreshadowing the sequel to this campaign, this NPC is a very important dude and the BBEG of it is a gold dragon...lots of good material here but I'll explain it at some future thread)
Zjakklin agrees, and goes to fetch the soul from his magic chest...which blatantly refuses to cough up the proper item. After an embarassing amount of searching, arguing and cursing, he offers the PCs a deal - fix the chest and they get the gauntlets.
The magic of the chest itself is actually a semisentient spell used to store and retrieve all manner of items in its own personal miniplane.
Zjakklin will transport them into the miniplane, but warns them that the magic is alive enough to recognize intruders and defend itself against them, but not actually enough to recognize that they are trying to heal it.
SO.
The PCs end up in a very colourful dungeon with a very outright magical atmosphere - no ceiling, just boundless stars and galaxies that don't really exist (or do they?), blue-stone floor and walls with glowing golden veins through them etc etc.
What sets this place apart is that the dungeon itself is alive. There are no actual monsters per se here....but there ARE a ton of magic items, not to mention souls of creatures. And the dungeon animates the items as the PCs find them. Example of such an encounter:
The PCs find a room with a blue tunic floating in the middle of it. This tunic is a Bolt Shirt, essentially allows a 60ft line of sight and effect teleport once per day as a move action (3.5 magic item compendium). The door vanishes as they enter, the walls begin showering sparks. The sparks fill the shirt, which assumes a vaguely humanoid form and begins teleporting around the room zapping the PCs for small amounts of damage. As its body is a constantly-renewing "swarm" of sparks, I gave it DR5/bludgeoning, but minimal HP. The tunic itself teleports around the room, and the sparks where it teleports refill it, so it heals itself for 2 HP every time it teleports...which is often.
Once the PCs defeat a given item they get to use it for the rest of the dungeon, but the items don't transfer with them when they return from the chest. They know this from the outset.
On top of that, the dungeon uses the souls trapped within it to "create" shadows and afterimages of the creatures. So they might end up fighting...pretty much anything Zjakklin has a soul in his inventory of...but at far less power than usual. So perhaps a gold dragon, for example, but with massively scaled down stats.
Not only is this a seriously cool variation on the normal dungeon style, it allows me to let the PCs get a taste of some seriously cool magic items without actually endangering the campaign itself, as they don't get to keep them or use them outside the dungeon at all ever.
What do you folks think? I absolutely love this idea I've had.
EDIT: Whenever they run into a soul spawned monster, it is bound to a nearby crystal embedded in the surface of the dungeon. When they reach the final room, they see one of these crystals, but it is covered in a dark purple mineral growth of some kind. It spawns the soul of the young gold dragon the NPC was asking about, which attacks them. As they defeat it, the growth spawns a black mist which infuses the corpse and reanimates it. The growth is the corruption which is attempting to take over the souls of all the creatures within the chest. Defeating the dragon spirit will destroy the intelligence behind the growth and fix the box. :D