Little solace comes to those who grieve.
Quote Originally Posted by Tzimtzum

Spoiler: Log
Show
Highsun 12
I write this entry in good spirits, as we have accomplished the purpose of our delve. The idol of Lak-Mur, thought lost for a hundred generations, has at last been retrieved! Three thousand pounds of solid gold shine brighter than I could ever have imagined, and the fee it will fetch us should see us set for life. Its naga guardian proved trivial to overcome, thanks to Khark's axe and Petyr's spells! The only obstacle now is to drag our newfound wealth back to town (what a problem to have!). It's a daunting task, but an eminently doable one thanks to the wagon we had the foresight to bring. When next I write here, I will be a rich man!

Highsun 13
My earlier optimism was clearly unfounded. Even with the wagon's load, our journey out of the dungeon should not have taken more than an hour, but somehow we have gotten lost in the sprawling temple complex. Meck, our designated pathfinder, swears up and down that his maps are accurate, and that it's the walls that have moved; I think it more likely that he took a wrong turn and is now trying to save face. Fortunately, even though we've blundered into a new area of the dungeon, it appears to be one without denizens, so we shall spend the night here and retrace our steps tomorrow.

Highsun 14
Meck seems even more restless today. I cannot fault him: I would almost swear that he is right, and those corridors have subtly changed since we last walked them. Doorways have disappeared or changed position, former dead ends now connect to new rooms, and in one uncanny case, a pair of statues seems to have changed places (we smashed both, just to be sure; they seemed perfectly mundane). We have come to a stop before a doorway that seems to have narrowed overnight, and Khark is busily hammering away at the rock to allow the wagon through again.

Highsun 15
We have reached what Meck swears is the entrance room, but the entryway has disappeared and only a solid gray wall remains. Khark is calling him a 'useless waste of pay' and insists this must be a different room somehow, Meck is insulting Khark's parentage. I'm pretending that this log is important enough to warrant not getting involved.

Highsun 15 (continued)
After watching the heated debate for a few minutes, Petyr strode over and knocked on the gray wall, confirmed it hollow, and blasted it down with a spell... only to find that rather than the exit, what laid beyond was just another dark passage.

It seems different than the dungeon corridors we've explored so far. The walls and floors are all made out of the same gray stone that blocked the tunnel off to begin with, and not a single adornment disrupts their smoothness: no carvings, no sconces, not even scratches or bootmarks. Implausibly enough, Petyr swore that not a single part of it detected as magical, and that if this was some sort of portal-mouth, it was one his spells could not discern.

Highsun 16
Decided to venture into the passage. We quickly figured out that the walls are hollow, and Khark smashed another open, but only more of the same dark gray corridors laid beyond. Immediately after, a terrible howl echoed through the tunnels, chilling me to the bone and sending poor Meck into fits, but though we remained on guard for many minutes, no foe appeared.

However, our passage immediately became more difficult. The corridor began to branch and loop back on itself, the ceiling lowered (forcing tall Khark to stoop), and in places we found the floor twisted into jagged points. At times, the floor would drop away into pits of indeterminable depth, or a passage would bent into a tall skyward shaft.

After six hours of travel, we came across a larger room in which two rows of columns held up the ceiling and a large cracked font adorned the wall. We have made camp here, hoping that this sign of civilization means the exit is near.

Highsun 17
We awoke after a seemingly uneventful night, but as we returned to the corridors, I happened to glance back and found my own visage staring at me! Crudely hewn into the pillars, located as to be invisible from the campsite, were our faces, each twisted into an expression of madness and pain. Petyr insisted no magic marked them, and they were ordinary stone carvings in all respects, but we hurried out of the chamber all the same.

The passages seem to go on forever. By Petyr's calculations, we have traveled nearly twenty miles since leaving the entrance room, and yet no end seems in sight. I don't understand: we entered the dungeon only a week ago: what could've built all this in such short time, without leaving the merest trace of its presence?

Highsun 18
After a full day of travel, hampered by many twisting pathways and sloping floors, we rounded a corner... and found ourselves back in the pillar room, the twisted carvings still in place. Meck insisted this wasn't possible, and we should have been traveling nearly straight away from it, while Petyr suggested this place might loop back in on itself in some fashion. At any rate, none of us fancied spending another night in the chamber, and we traveled for another two hours, this time in another direction.

No further chambers were encountered; perhaps it's for the best. As I write this, we're making camp in the middle of an expansive hallway: I have the fortune of taking the last watch.

Highsun 19
Some horrible thing struck in my sleep. Meck's screams woke us, the ground around him red with blood, a large chunk of his arm gone. A healing spell stopped the blood loss, but not the screaming: only with concentrated effort did Meck calm down. Even then, the tracker was unable to identify his attacker. A blur of something hairy and big, a flash of teeth, a burst of pain - and then it was gone again, back into the shadows. Petyr suggested we set double watches from now on: it will only slow our progress further, but I have little issue with this. Truth be told, part of me suspect we won't find an exit unless this place allows us to.

Highsun 19, continued
Our progress today was slow: every corner I feared some monstrous bogeyman would jump out and charge, but no such thing occurred. Petyr, now clearly anxious to find a way out, began experimenting more, sending arcane sensors up and down shafts, painstakingly taking samples of the walls, even drilling through a floor (only to find yet another gray passage). Aside from the discovery that sparse pinprick holes connect some corridors, he found no way out: whatever this complex is, it seems to extend eternally in all directions. We must have traveled more than fifty miles east from the original dungeon by now: did we cross into a demiplane or folded space? Or are these corridors real, and has a sprawling gray blot replaced the Talon Forest and Khaldran Plain? I don't know which thought is more horrifying.

Highsun 20, early morning
Meck is gone. I don't know what happened.

We were on watch together, staring into the blackness that stretched beyond the fire's light, listening to distant groans and growls that might even have been real, trying to not show the other our fear. Without warning, Meck began to scream, jumped up, tore at his face with nails that (looking back on the memory) seemed sharper than I recall them being. Then he ran off into the darkness with incredible speed; for some reason, I recall smelling burnt meat. I woke the others, then ran after him, following two parallel trails of blood and charred meat. But before long, his cries disappeared in the distance, and the trails ended in ashen smears, and seconds later i felt jagged chunks of stone tear through my shoes and rend my soles to ribbons. I truly believe that I would have kept running to whatever dark fate awaited me had the pain not forced me to stop.

The others caught up with me not long after. We have decided to abandon the wagon for now. Khark has decided to break up the idol (a loss for the historians; too bad for them) so we may at least take the small portion we can carry, and Petyr is preparing a teleportation spell as we speak. Soon, we will finally escape.

Highsun 20, afternoon
Blue skies! Smiling people! Real food! I should be mourning my friend, but it's hard to do so when every breath of fresh air fills me with joy. Petyr's teleportation spell took us to our home of Rubyriver, a thousand miles away, so news from the region we escaped is sadly quite sparse, but rumor does have it some strange construction has appeared over there. I'll hunt down some rumors later: first we sell what gold we brought back, and then we party!

Every second back among friends reinvigorates me, and in fact part of me already finds itself wondering if we could mount an expedition to recover the remnants of the idol... and Meck's body, of course. Petyr is already researching some new divinations, and I truly do believe we can prepare for anything that place has to pull. Some twisty corridors and a big scary monster? So what? I'm an adventurer, I deal with those as my job!

Highsun 21
It's back. I'm back. No no no no no no no no no no no

Highsun 22
Spent the last day traversing the corridors in a blind panic, only for them to spit me back out here: my room at the Rubyriver Inn, all of its walls and windows engulfed by that gray stone, the one door leading to a bare corridor instead of the common room.

I don't understand. I was supposed to have gotten out. It's not fair. It's not fair. I don't even have the others with me, I don't even have food with me.

It's not fair.

Dungeons aren't supposed to follow you home.




All remaining pages blank


Spoiler: Build
Show
Tzimtzum, Building Nothingness

CE Wendigo Sun Giant Ranger 1 / Jaunter 4 / Fighter 1

Spoiler: Build Table
Show
Array: 13 str, 10 dex, 12 con, 14 int, 8 wis, 15 cha
Racial: 39 str, 14 dex, 26 con, 18 int, 16 wis, 19 cha
Post-wendigo: 43 str, 22 dex, 30 con, 18 int, 18 wis, 23 cha
16 HD increase in charisma for a final 24 charisma.

Languages known: Common, Giant, Draconic, Dwarven, Goblin, Undercommon
CR 15+: Sylvan (only)

CR Class Base Attack Bonus Fort Save Ref Save Will Save Skills Feats Class Features
12 Sun Giant (13 RHD) +9 +8 +4 +4 Hide +16 (16), Knowledge (The Planes) +8cc (4), Listen +16 (16), Move Silently +16cc (8), Spellcraft +16cc (8), Spot +16 (16), Survival +8cc (4) Expeditious Dodge, Mobility, Tomb-Tained Soul, Tomb-Born Vitality, Spring Attack Rock Throwing, Rock Catching, SLAs, Fire Subtype
13 Ranger 1 +10 +10 +6 +4 Hide 16, Knowledge (The Planes) +4cc (6), Listen 16, Move Silently 8, Spellcraft 8, Spot 16, Survival +6 (10) TrackB Favored Enemy (Humans), Voice of the City
15 Wendigo (+2 CR) +10 +10 +6 +4 Hide 16, Knowledge (The Planes) 6, Listen 16, Move Silently 8, Spellcraft 8, Spot 16, Survival 10 - Fey (Cold), Fly 120 ft. (perfect), AC bonus, Bite (2d6), Disease, Maddening Whispers, Ravenous Bite, Corner of the Eye, Regeneration 5, Wind Walk
16 Jaunter 1 +10 +10 +8 +4 Hide +2 (18), Knowledge (The Planes) +2 (8), Listen 16, Move Silently +2 (10), Spellcraft 8, Spot 16, Survival +2 (12) Snatch Travel Power, Benign Transposition
17 Jaunter 2 +11 +10 +9 +4 Hide +1 (19), Knowledge (The Planes) +3 (11), Listen 16, Move Silently +2 (12), Spellcraft 8, Spot 16, Survival +2 (14) - Baleful Transposition, Fast Movement
18 Jaunter 3 +12 +11 +9 +5 Hide +1 (20), Knowledge (The Planes) 11, Listen 16, Move Silently +4 (16), Spellcraft 8, Spot 16, Survival +3 (17) - Dimension Door, Teleport
19 Jaunter 4 +13 +11 +10 +5 Hide +1 (21), Knowledge (The Planes) 11, Listen 16, Move Silently +5 (21), Spellcraft 8, Spot +2 (18), Survival 17 Astral Tracking Freedom of Movement, Plane Shift
20 Fighter 1 +14 +13 +10 +5 Hide +2cc (22), Knowledge (The Planes) 11, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +2cc (1), Listen 16, Move Silently +2cc (22), Spellcraft 8, Spot 18, Survival 17 Bounding AssaultB Hit-And-Run, Bonus Feat


Spoiler: Writeups
Show
CR 12-13
Pre-transformation Tzimtzum is a big, burly brute, made only slightly more interesting by the Sun Giants' affinity for hiding in desert conditions (and even then, +18 isn't too impressive). His ability to Spring Attack can be used to decent effect if the terrain allows it (and his base 40 speed and reach make him at least a little annoying to slower PCs), his rocks hurt a solid amount and his immunity to the cleric's shiny new Harm may come as a surprise. He actually makes for a pretty good over-CRd puzzle threat: how will the players elude a sleepless boulder-flinging tracker too powerful for them to fight directly?

I envision this Tzimtzum working as an overseer on the construction of some great monument or dungeon, serving some greater master (a death giant? a lich? pick whatever fits best; but playing up the negative energy connection helps justify Tomb-Tainted Soul) with the PCs sent to free his enslaved laborers. After annoying them with boulders for a while and maybe fighting a bit in melee, Tzimtzum ends up falling/jumping/fleeing into the massive quarry next to the construction site (or perhaps a nearby planar portal? gotta qualify for jaunter somehow) and is presumed dead.

In fact, the giant survives, legs shattered and skull fractured (good thing falling damage caps out at 20d6 huh?). His semi-undead nature allows him to go without food or sleep, but not without water, and Tzimtzum is forced to feed upon the blood of the other corpses that have fallen down. Before long, the terrible wendigo curse overcomes him... but rather than awaken as a simple blood-crazed beast, a strange madness forms in his shattered mind. His shame and frustration at failing to defend the construction site combine with a lust for revenge, and a single, insane goal looms larger than any other: the desire to imprison the PCs in an eternal dungeon.

CR 15
With no need to sleep, at-will Stone Shape and Wall of Stone, and continuous Wind Walk, Tzimtzum is ready to begin constructing his dungeon. CL 13 Wall of Stone produces 26 5-ft squares if you halve the wall's thickness to 1.5 inches (each square still has hardness 8 and 22 HP, so nontrivial to bust down), which lets us create 32.5 feet of cramped 5x5 corridor, or slightly more than 15 feet of 10x10 corridor. Over the course of a day, that's 41 miles of 10x10 corridor, and twice that if you narrow it; note that your average party with one heavy armor wearer or small-sized PC travels about 16 miles per day, and that in a compact mazelike design all the walls are essentially doing double duty.

And if Tzimtzum wants to slow the PCs down further, he can force them to squeeze, waste time on dead ends, ascend vertical shafts, climb down pits, or very nervously tiptoe around a Stone Shaped statue that probably isn't going to come to life but let's not take any risks. In brief: he's building allways faster than they can walk, so they'll never escape his realm unless they put in some serious effort.

(More fun things to include in the dungeon: wafer-thin floors covering pits, random inscriptions that don't mean anything, large footprints leading into a random wall, a single corridor that just goes on ahead for fifty miles, grave markers with nothing beneath them, nonfunctional doors, and Spike Stones, lots and lots of Spike Stones that all take a DC 29 search check to detect and force the rogue to take point)

While the PCs are trying to navigate this ever-growing maze, you're free to stalk one with Corner of the Eye and Maddening Whispers, slowly wearing away at their wisdom (if this is the party tracker, they'll steadily get worse at their job, too). When the time is right, split the party up (narrow corridors that only the small-sized member can explore, cryptic puzzles that suggest multiple distant switches must be flipped at once, or when all else fails a crude Wall of Stone) and attack, trying to infect a PC, then cause more paranoia and infighting when the wendigo curse takes hold.

As another way of wearing down the party, given that the PCs will presumably carry a light source, Tzimtzum can watch them from afar (20 time the radius of their light, the rules compendium tells us), Wall of Stone + Stone Shape up some boulders, then send surprise rocks rocketing towards the party from hundreds of feet away, leaving them spooked and confused while he escapes once more. A boulder sailing in from the edge of darkvision every couple dozen turns, with Spike Stones acting as a second layer of defense, is certainly a cheap way to win the war of attrition, but what's the party going to do about it? Nothing but long-range spells or longbows can even function over that distance, and if anything actually threatens Tzimtzum he can flee before it gets to him.

If they somehow force him in straight combat, PCs will -still- find Tzimtzum quite hard to kill. High natural armor gets further boosted by charisma to AC, and Wendigo regeneration combines with his fire subtype to leave him impossible to straightforwardly kill (+20 fortitude works well enough against most death effects), and his 120 ft. fly speed combines with spring attack to allow for 60 ft. move, attack with reach, and 60 ft. move back to the original position: sufficient to put him outside of charging range, let alone regular movement range (especially because we fly, and can thus prepare the whole battlefield with spike stones). And if he has to flee, engaging Wind Walk is a move action and lets him jet away at 600 ft. per turn. PCs who misidentified Tzimtzum as an incorporeal or undead might further waste actions (or refrain from trying anything undead are immune to), or at least be surprised when his very corporeal jaws bite down for 2d6+24 damage.

CR 20
Snatch now means our biting spring attacks give us a free grapple attempt (at +38) and let us immediately drag the poor unfortunate soul with us into the darkness (up to 115 feet, depending on how close the party just approached you). Bounding Assault grants a second chance to hit, or at least allows us to avoid AoOs from the fighter while snatching up the wizard behind him. Once grabbed, a lot of PCs will struggle to get loose even while we're taking the -20 penalty, so we can then proceed to drag them 240 ft. further away from their allies every turn (or simply grapple normally and effortlessly make the check to move 120 feet every turn). If we grab someone small, they even take automatic bite damage every round! It's the classic horror monster move: pull one PC with you and let the others hear their friend's screams fade away... right before they blunder into whatever hazard you prepared in advance.

Astral Tracking and Jaunter levels combine to let us ensure the PCs can never, ever escape. With +8 to tracking from Wendigo, 17 ranks, and a +4 bonus from wisdom, we have +29 to survival and can always determine where a teleportation spell (including Plane Shift) took them. We then follow with our travel power (Plane Shift + Teleport + Wind Walk means it takes at most 8 hours to arrive at their location, even if your spells are greatly off-target) and begin constructing the dungeon right where we left off!


Spoiler: Sources
Show
Wendigo - Fiend Folio
Sun Giant - MM2

Jaunter - Expedition to the Demonweb Pits
Hit-And-Run - Drow of the Underdark
Voice of the City - Cityscape Web Enhancement

Tomb-Tainted Soul, Tomb-Born Vitality - Libris Mortis
Expeditious Dodge - RotW
Bounding Assault - PHB II
Snatch - MMV
Astral Tracking - DComp

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski