Dungeon of Happy Fun-Love

[itches]

Let's put this thread to some real use? This is what I managed to hammer out for the dungeon, if you have objections or previous ideas raise them now or forever shut up. ;)

Basically this place was created by a sect of dwarves, with to contain, profit, and worship the ruin stone all wrapped up into one.

Room the first
We go through the entrance, and find ourselves in a small little cave which apparently doesn't go anywhere. A search ends up revealing a hidden door which leads up to ...

Room the second
It appears to be some sort of small antechamber, with a clear iron door, locked opposite the hidden one we just came through. On the wall will be a plaque declaring that this is a sacred place, where trespasses only endanger themselves. It will be repeated in Common, Elvan, Dwarven, and Orcish. Through the iron door is...

Room the 3rd
It's a long corridor with religious depiction on the walls. This is the one with the traps, and bodies on the floor to clue us into the traps' existence. I'm thinking that they key to getting past here without being killed would have a religious theme (think Indiana Jones). A Hymn or something, I don't know nor about the traps nature. Through the end of the corridor we enter ..

Room the 4th
The one with the guardian in it, and more bodies. Because of the nature of the ruin-stone, I'm thinking a construct as it would be free of the stone's influence. I like the idea of it being depicted as a dwarven demi-god (we might mistake it at first for a statue). Also it might be an idea if it were damaged from the previous attempts to access the ruin-stone

They key to getting past it would be a dwarven prayer, and it won't come alive or act hostile until we attempt to move past it without praying or attack it. After that we go through a lead door to find ...

Room the 5th
It's a lead lined room. In the centre will be a stone pillar, on top of which lays our prize. In the room there will be strewn about various ores which have been, or are in the process of being warped into metals/gems/minerals not native to the planet. Kind of like Mithril, but not mithril.

Some of those materials might end up being magical or with special properties, some would be worse than normal. In any case, the dwarves would cherish them, sometimes crafting them into items other times just making them into jewellery or leaving them the way they are and just putting them on a shelf.

[Gralhruk]

I like it, but I say room the 5th is actually a decoy room. It looks like it should have the Runestone, but it doesn't. The dwarves have actually set it up to look like someone already stole the stone. Then a secret door off of there leads to the real chamber.

[itches]

Gral or Cad might want to post their ideas on the nature of the stone itself, I'm not going to get into it now beyond saying lead in the last room is there to cause the stone to slumber, and the transforming ore is a result of it’s dreams.

Room 5 needs to stay the way it is now; it's a good idea and has received the most work. I'm rather fond of room 1, and the idea of the warning in 4 languages in room 2. Now go mad and pick my ideas apart, but only if you're willing to put it back together again. :)

[Gralhruk]

Cross posted!

[itches]

That's a lot of lead, or did they just not bother with the decoy room 5?

[Gralhruk]

They didn't bother.

[itches]

Then we could go into some detail about that room being full of scroll work, and with gold laying around. The real chamber could be a much simplier and smaller room, perhaps a natural cavern they lined with lead?

[itches]

Is that acceptable? If anyone has any objections that have until the time I post to make them.

[Black Plauge]

Works for me.

[red_dr4g0n94]

Any ideas of what the Guardian construct should be made up of? I was thinking perhaps lead, since apparently its stops the stone's affects, like kryptonite.

[itches]

Rope! Think about it, it's the ultimate construct. Cheep too.

[red_dr4g0n94]

But it has a nasty tendancy to get cut by saber-wielding pirates intent on swinging from one ship to another.

[itches]

That's why it's in the desert.

[red_dr4g0n94]

What about Sand pirates?

[itches]

Sand sharks ate them all.

I was thinking that it would be stone, kinda like a statue (I was originally thinking of tossing in a Gargoyle).

[red_dr4g0n94]

That would be in line with dwarven sculpturing, and makethe statues easier to make, but wouldn't stone have been warped and twisted by the Runestone?

[itches]

This thing is outside of the lead lined chamber, so no.

[red_dr4g0n94]

Oh. Hah, I missed the lead lined part. Alright then, I've got no problem with letting it be stone.

[itches]

I win! In your face everyone-who-didn't-want-me-to-win!

[Gralhruk]

Yes, but you won in the plot subforum, so it's still a victory for me of sorts.

[itches]

Anyone have any ideas about the the trap in Room the 3rd?

[Black Plauge]

I think it should be simple, but effective. A proximity trigger that can be disabled via some dwarven ritual.

If triggered, the door seals and the walls collapse, crushing the occupants.

[itches]

That beats spikes shooting out of the ground.

[itches]

At some point the doors need to close automaticly behind us

[Cadrius]

I know I'm in the minority on this, but I really think we've complicated things too much. The artifact can defend itself, why would the dwarves need to set up a bunch of elaborate, and totally lethal, traps? Not to mention expensive guardians? Why not have a simple lead chamber that requires some sort of dwarven prayer or motto or slogan in order to enter it? How we'd get said password is beyond me.

Side note: A lead golem? I'll pass on fighting that one, thanks.

[Gralhruk]

I don't think the dwarves would leave it entirely unguarded. I'd be fine dispensing with the golem, but I like the collapsing room trap. It certainly seems dwarvish enough to me.

[Cadrius]

Okay, but are the walls enchanted? I mean, I just have this mental image of the dwarves coming back to find a giant pile of rubble and going, "God damn it! Not again!"

Lethal traps are good. Lethal traps that take a ridiculous amount of effort to reset are less good.

[Black Plauge]

I suppose I should have been more specific when I said the walls "collapse." What I meant, was that side walls move together. Think of the garbage compactor in Star Wars: A New Hope (only slightly faster).

Consider the following:

The dwarves havediverted the tinyest of trickles from an near by underground stream. This trickle slowly fills a series of buckets attached to a conveyer. As the buckets fill, their weight drives the conveyer (they dump at the bottom and return to the top empty). This conveyer is the reset mechanism for the walls. It turns a ratcheted flywheel which raises a weight attached to the walls (the flywheel is need so that when the trap is reset, the conveyer can freely move without affecting the system). With the weight up, the walls are seperated (the floor is sloped slightly away from the middle so that the walls prefer to remain on the outside of the corridor). When the trap is triggered the ratchet catch is released, the weight falls, and pulls the walls together (crushing anyone in the room).

The door behind us closes automatically because of its weight and the way its set on its hinges. Nothing magical or mysterious there. It could be proped, if you thought about it and took that precaution.

The dwarven ritual would trigger some other mechanism which would lock the ratchet catch while you crossed the room and then unlock it on the other side.

As for the trapp trigger, it could be a simple pressure plate about halfway down the hall way.

Certianly this kind of trap is difficult to set up, but once built is simple in its operation, lethal to intruders, and provides a easy means for bypassing by those who know about it. Those last three seem to be the basic elements of an effective trap.

As for the golem, I like the idea that its been damaged by previous attempts to retrieve the stone. Perhaps it clearly shows that damage and has only a single hit point left. Really, its the trap that was meant to keep people out. The golem was only placed there as an after thought and nothing was done to make sure it stayed in working order. Also, who said anything about it being made of lead? I think it more likely that its made of stone.

[Cadrius]

This is far more acceptable.

I'm biased when it comes to traps. They need to be lethal, easily avoided for those in the know, and reasonably simple to either create or reset. If they aren't those three things, then they shouldn't be bothered with. I grow so weary of seeing traps in D&D that aren't lethal, are ridiculously complex, and make zero sense to have in a well-traveled area. One of my favorites was a room with an illusionary floor above a water trap filled with vampiric bacteria. Useful? Maybe. A good idea in a complex where 100+ people have to live? No.

But that's just my opinion.

Any ideas of what the Guardian construct should be made up of? I was thinking perhaps lead, since apparently its stops the stone's affects, like kryptonite.

That's where I was drawing lead golem from.

I'd be interested in seeing the golem be nothing more than a caretaker for the trap and any tablets/other holy things left there by the dwarves. Naturally, it would never be able to enter the inner sanctum where the relic lays...for obvious reasons.

[red_dr4g0n94]

I have an idea for the Golem. If the trap is supposed to be the main method for stopping interlopers, then anyone who survives would probably be suspicous of any further traps. So making the golem attack right after escaping a trap might not be the most effecient method.

What if the Golem let people pass by towards the room with the runestone, without any sort of password or hyme, but once it detected people leaving the chambers with the runestone, it would require a password/hyme to bypass the golem. Otherwise it would attack the possessors of the runestone, presumably after they've let their guard down since they have retirieved what is being protected.

And this would be a good excuse to make the golem and statues out of lead, to avoid the warping presence of the runestone ;)

[Black Plauge]

Well, actually, if we assume that the runestones magic takes a bit to act, we don't actually need the golem to be made of lead. Since its not in the same room as the stone, and protected from it on a regular basis, it may not need to be made immune to the stone's effects.

I like the idea of the golem attacking things on the way out though. Its orders could be to attack any one carrying the runestone who fails to pay proper respect to some dwarven god (perhaps the god the stature depicts) and then return the runestone to its resting place when the opponent is defeated, before resuming its sentinal position.

In that case, however, the golem would also need to reactivate the trap. Since whoever entered to retrieve the rune stone disabled it and is now dead (and thus in no position to reactivate it) when the golem puts the rune stone back, there has to be a way to reactivate the trap (i.e. unlock the ratchet catch). Perhaps the pedastal for the runestone contains a pressure plate that when pressed unlocks the ratchet (so the act of putting the runestone back would reset the trap).

[itches]

Does anyone care to summerise the current plan for the layout?

[Gralhruk]

There is a trap, and then a lead golem (or not).

[Cadrius]

Have we figured out yet why the dwarves like this thing so much that they'd put this level of effort into protecting it?

That it's a "holy relic" doesn't quite work for me. Moreover, if they really loved it, wouldn't they keep it closer to home?

Or will we be fighting dwarves here too? Dwarves riding lead golems? Lead golems riding dwarves? The mind boggles.

[Black Plauge]

There's two rooms. One with nothing in it (save a secret door). The second with a plaque with a warning and a door.

I think that's as far as we've gotten.




Oh! You meant for the rooms we haven't been in yet. Well, the next room (just beyond the door in front of us) should be shaped like a long corridor, say about 30 or 40 ft long and 5 to 10 ft wide. The walls, for anyone who's adept enough to notice, are not structural, but appear to be free standing. About 20ft into the room or so, there's a trigger plate, that when stepped on causes the walls to squeeze inwards like a big garbage compactor. The door is mounted on its hinges such that it will swing shut if not held open.

I think that's as far as has been agreed upon.

As for getting by the trap, besides the obvious Search and Disable Device DCs (which we can leave floating and Gral can merely decide if Shade finds it or not) there should also be some kind of Str check in order to be able to hold the walls apart (at least for a little while). Though it should be higher than anyone in the party can reach solo, we need to decide if the whole party working to gether could reach it.

[itches]

Have we figured out yet why the dwarves like this thing so much that they'd put this level of effort into protecting it?
In the room there will be strewn about various ores which have been, or are in the process of being warped into metals/gems/minerals not native to the planet. Kind of like Mithril, but not mithril.

Some of those materials might end up being magical or with special properties, some would be worse than normal. In any case, the dwarves would cherish them, sometimes crafting them into items other times just making them into jewellery or leaving them the way they are and just putting them on a shelf.

That it's a "holy relic" doesn't quite work for me. Moreover, if they really loved it, wouldn't they keep it closer to home?
Too dangerous.
Or will we be fighting dwarves here too? Dwarves riding lead golems? Lead golems riding dwarves? The mind boggles.
Shouldn't you be posting IC?

[Cadrius]

Please. I've already posted this quarter. I believe that fills my quota.

[red_dr4g0n94]

Why does everyone think the golem is made of lead? It was just an idea I had, that was promptly shot down for several reasons. The golem is made of stone.

STONE! Like the stuff some people who I know (who shall remain nameless:yum: ) have their head made out of.

I dunno why I'm complaining, since I WANT the golem to be made out of lead. It probably has something to do with me not wanting to be blamed for killing the party like with Gral and the lions.

[Gralhruk]

I was joking when I made that comment about the lead golem. I should use more smileys :) :) :).

And yes, I was a little overzealous with my lions.

[itches]

This is taking longer then expected, as much as I liked the idea of having a short and pointless guardian battle let's skip that for to save time. We could stick the remains of the guarding in the fake chamber, it having been destroyed at some point by those who came before, or we could just leave it out all together. It doesn't really matter to me.

Not the point, I'm about to have Nicos through a light into the room and spot some bodies on the flood which will give away the presence of the trap. However I'm not sure what condition that corpses would be in after having the walls crush them ah-la Star Wars.

Suggestions?

[Black Plauge]

Rotting piles of flesh that only resemble corpses because their clothes held them in that general form. Broken bones and damaged gear (especially metal armor) should also feature prominently.