Happy Megadungeon Mond… Wednesday. Or Thursday. Whenever I actually push this out. I’m not sure when it will hit. Sorry you had to wait. But, it’s here. I didn’t consider that starting a new day, and a new level of the dungeon would involve a lot of groundwork. And not all of it is fun groundwork. The thing is, each of the four levels of the dungeon is contained in a completely different map file. So, all the s$&% I did with moving things between sheets and rejiggering everything to lay the scenario crap under the map design crap? It all had to be done again. On top of that, all of the other planning stuff – naming the rooms, having a f$&%ing vision, all of that stuff – well, it did NOT come easily this time around. I admit that I’m a little burnt out, what with throwing out that Kickstarter thing last week and having to manage that and finish writing a book while still maintaining my content flow. The problem with creative s$&% like this is, while I have always gone as record saying that “if you wait for inspiration, you’ll never create anything,” there is a counterpoint truth that goes “you can’t force this s$&%.”

But here we are. We’re ready to start a new section of the dungeon and a new day of adventure. And, ultimately, it’s going to be split into two parts. It shouldn’t need any more than that. But the first part needs a lot of setup. No, no, don’t worry. I’m not going to explain my mapping software again. Relax. But all that creative bulls$&% does need some attention. Because we’re moving into a completely different region of the map and we’re dealing with some interconnections between different floors.

By the way, I’ve decided just to work sequentially here. I’ve moved down to the third level of the dungeon and the second day of adventure. That’s where the players find themselves deposited via earthquake in the Crypt of the Ageless and have to find their way back out. That will allow them to access the Sacred Halls at the heart of Oran Ionath, but will also force them to unseal the crypts and let undead wander through the dungeon.

So, I guess, let’s jump into it.

The Drop from Day 1

Recall that, at the end of Day 1, the heroes find a big, inviting door pulling them further into the complex. The first such door they’ve encountered that isn’t locked. But they have a time-sensitive plot McGuffin to return first. And they also should have enough XP to gain a level. And we WILL be instructing the GM NOT to allow players to gain levels while they are in the dungeon. So, they will likely head back to town before they go through the big, obvious door. And if they don’t, well, they can always make new characters.

As the party crosses the threshold, the seismic activity in the dungeon that we will have referenced a few times by this point suddenly gives. The party is caught in an earthquake, the way back and the way forward are buried, and the party falls through the floor into the crypt below. Easy enough. But I had to design a hallway that looked like it COULD lead somewhere and that would also not accidentally permanently split a split party.

Now, parties don’t split themselves often, but it does happen. Usually, it happens because the group has gotten bored at a decision point or because the party has sent a scout ahead. More generally, parties do tend to spread out a little more in corridors, but they don’t like anyone being too far away to see.

I also had a small issue with aligning the levels of the dungeon. As many, MANY people pointed out, the drop point – we’ll call it that – the drop point had gradually drifted a little to the north as the map kept getting revised and detailed. And that meant the drop point was dropping into the wrong encounter area. I had to pull it back south a little.

So, check this out…

Beyond the door, the party encounters a hallway that is badly ruined. That carries the theme of seismic activity. While it does appear to offer a lot of different ways to go, they are all choked with rubble. All except one. And the party has to go around a corner to see that. So, that’ll cause the party to move away from the door. When they round the corner, they can see a section of the northern wall has caved in and closed most of the passage off with impassable rubble. There’s a narrow space a humanoid creature could squeeze through. This will cause the party to clump up and start debating who goes through. Right in that corner.

Just as the party elects someone and they start to push through the rubble, the earthquake can hit. In fact, we can tie the earthquake – for the GM – to one member of the party reaching a specific point on the map. That is when they start to squeeze through the narrow space.

After the earthquake, the map changes. The highlighted section of floor collapses. PCs in that area fall into the space below. Meanwhile, the hallway just inside the door is also buried, blocking any chance of retreat. And the hallway beyond the rubble is also completely caved in. Even if the party is a little spread out and doesn’t all fall, they are still trapped. They’ll have to climb down.

Easy peasy.

Using the inbuilt coordinate system, I copied the drop point to the same relative location on the lower level, so I had a place to start the map. It isn’t quite in the right encounter space, but it’s close enough that we can fudge it. It’s tiny, but it’s there.

And that done, it’s time to start level 3 and the Crypt of the Ageless.

Laying the Groundwork

As before, the first thing I did was try to come up with some evocative names for the spaces. And man, was this hard. And the problem is because, of all the regions in the dungeon, the Crypt of the Ageless is the one I had the least vision for. Even the name is basically just “Elf Crypt.” It doesn’t say anything. So, I was stumped and putting down a lot of generic names. It wasn’t until I started actually mapping that things turned around a little. And some names did end up changing. But let’s look at my names.

I wanted the heroes to fall into a grand, interesting space, but I also didn’t want it to be immediately crypt-like. I wanted the players to slowly realize they had fallen into a burial site. And, really, because of the way the party was going to fall here, I didn’t want them to fall into a space that had anything interesting going on. The room at the bottom of the fall needed to be a fairly neutral landing site. That would encourage the party to start moving to figure out how screwed they were.

Gallery is a fairly neutral word for a big, useless space. And the ceiling had just fallen in, so it’d obviously been ruined.

Now, I knew that these crypts would need places where the dead were actually buried. Since the original site was discovered by soldiers and then pilgrims came later, I figured I’d need some soldier’s tombs. Hence the Crypts of the Fallen and the Hero’s Memorial. Later, pilgrims and petitioners would be buried in more modest chambers like the Crypt of the Nameless. We’d need a shrine to the god of the dead, of course. And because I’m going for a “four seasons, four gods” kind of thing, I decided to use the goddess of winter as the goddess of the dead. That and the fact that I’ve been using the 4E pantheon as my defacto pantheon and this part was going to be played by the Raven Queen. But, I can’t use the Raven Queen because she’s trademarked and s$&%. And frankly, after seeing what WotC did to her and the Shadar Kai in Mordenkainens Tome of Bulls$&%, I don’t want to use her anyway. F$&% them.

Anyway, I’ve got a shrine. And I also put a chamber aside for the preparation of the dead. And both of those were near the stairs leading to the upper level since those places would need to be most accessible. The Hall of Flames and the Hall of Remembrance are both where the stairs that lead to the upper level are. It makes sense that they would be larger, grander spaces meant for remembering and honoring the dead. The Hall of Flames is probably a place where petitioners can light candles in memory of the dead. The Hall of Remembrance probably has memorials to especially honored dead. The Gallery of Bones is another open space. But it houses one or more ossuaries. An ossuary is a place where the bones of the long dead are gathered after they have fallen apart to make room for more dead. They are usually filled with grisly, bone-based artwork. I like ossuaries.

I have one room that is locked and requires the Arcane Key. It stands to reason that the room would contain valuable treasure that was interred with its former owner. Hence the security. So, a heroic elven warmage has been laid to rest there.

Finally, the Tomb of the Clanless contains a dwarf. And that’s because it’s time to start revealing some more significant story elements. If the party didn’t yet figure out that the dungeon was built by elves, the crypts will give it away. Elves would decorate the hell out of their tombs and sarcophagi. The whole place is probably covered with elven faces. And if the party did start to suspect elves, the crypt would confirm it. And that’s a neat twist because this sort of site is usually built by dwarves. Nope. Elves.

But the elves were allied with dwarves. They were fighting together against the giants in the mountains. How can we establish that? Well, we can have a boring expositional tablet or mural or some bulls$&%. Or we can bury a dwarf in the crypt. In an optional side room.

Why would the dwarf be there? Well, obviously, because he served with the elves and because he couldn’t be buried with dwarves. He was an exile. He accepted exile from his clan for some crime he knew he had committed. Probably an accident. It doesn’t matter what. But he was still a dwarf, and he still wanted to defend his homeland. Exile doesn’t end a true dwarf’s duty to his kin. So, he joined the elves and served with them. And they laid him to rest. Hence, clanless. Of course, an elven inscription could explain SOME of this. The broad strokes. But the dwarf probably never told the elves why he accepted exile, and they didn’t care because, well, that’s all lawful crap and elves are chaotic.

This is an example of “show, don’t tell.” An inscription describing the story of a clanless dwarf who joined the elves to help in the joint elf-dwarf war against the giants is no different than an inscription that explains that the elves and dwarves were allies against the giants for a time. But one is exposition, and one is a personal story that has the exposition baked in. One is facts, the other is an actual story.

Anyway, with the room names established, it’s time to establish the room sizes.

I started with my standard set of 6-square, 8-square, 10-square, and 12-square sizes. I’ll show you the sizes, and then I’ll explain why. And I KNOW those names aren’t accurate. But I’m calling them that anyway. The number refers to the number of spaces along each SIDE of the square. Okay?

First of all, anything with Hall or Gallery in the name need to be big. So, they all got 10-squares. That’s not for combat planning reasons. That’s just based on the function of the space in the world. Meanwhile, the Crypt of the Warmage, the Tomb of the Clanless, and the Ritual Chamber are all small spaces. They don’t contain much. One corpse in a box or an embalming table and some supplies. Done and done. They got 6-squares.

As a general rule, I prefer smaller tighter spaces for crypts and tombs. Claustrophobia works well in such spaces. So, I would have focused more heavily on 6-square spaces, but that’s just bad for combats with groups of enemies. And weaker undead – this IS a low-level area – weaker undead tend to come in groups. So, the rest of the spaces all got 8-squares. Standard. Except for the Broken Catacomb.

Catacombs are cool. Let me start there. They are these windy, twisty, narrow halls with shelves cut into the walls for corpses. And every crypt and tomb needs a good catacomb somewhere. But the mapping rules for this dungeon mean catacombs won’t fly. Not unless I can somehow manage to take a larger space and turn it into a windy, twisty mess. And those are fun spaces to fight hordes of undead and/or vermin in. And that’s what I’m going to do. I can use cave-ins and halls to nowhere to imply that this area is a section of a larger catacomb. So, it got a 12-square.

Once I got the sizes picked out, I shifted everything around in its space a little to get a sense of how the rooms align.

Phew. You see what I mean about laying the groundwork? I forgot what a chore all this crap was.

The Ruined Gallery

Okay, with the groundwork laid, I zoomed in on the Ruined Gallery, and I got to work. Staring. I stared, and I stared, and I stared. I drew a box. I deleted the box. I drew a different box. I deleted that. I realized that I had no idea what this f$&%ing space looked like. And not just this gallery. Whatever the hell it was. The whole crypt. I had no f$&%ing clue.

So, I pulled back for a little while and thought it through. See, mapping is a tricky beast. Maps are art. And the map itself conveys a lot to the GM. Even if the GM never shows the maps to the players, the GM is still taking a lot of cues from what the maps look like. The shapes of the spaces, the little bits, and pieces, they all convey something. That’s why you can’t just draw some squares and rectangles and call it a professional product.

So, I had to get a vision. I had to decide what elf tombs would look like. And, frankly, I knew these elves were different. I’m sure most elves don’t build massive, underground tomb complexes. But what would it look like when they did?

Elves are artistic. They like aesthetics. Their tombs would be monuments and memorials. And when I think of elaborate, aesthetic tombs that are all about symbolizing immortality, I think of the Egyptians. So, I went to Bing and did an image search for Egyptian tombs. Because – and this is a free bonus tip – no matter how much you know about how something looks and how often you’ve seen it, when you’re looking for inspiration, SEE IT AGAIN. As I scrolled through the standard images of plastered spaces covered with hieroglyphs and elaborate sarcophagi and all the jackal and eagle statues, I found this…

THAT’S ARCHITECTURE.

The use of raised and sunken spaces, the sense of crisscrossing rectangles, the pillars – all of those things will show up on a map. And I’d already established the raised and sunken spaces thing in the upper floor. As well as the projecting doorframes.

Crisscrossing geometric shapes, pillars, and elevated walkways were exactly what I wanted to make this place distinctly tomb-like. And I noted the use of alcoves even where there weren’t doors just to maintain a sense of symmetry.

And so, I got started. Instead of a gallery, I envisioned an intersection. Two wide, crossing halls with a sunken space in the middle. And, since it was ruined, perhaps it used to be a three-way or a four-way intersection.

I filled in the walls, added some square corner spaces just to make the lines more interesting and make the middle seem more room-like than hall-like.

But I still wanted to capture some of the claustrophobia of old tombs. I didn’t want these spaces to be too grand and too open. And, in the end, I realized an easy way I could convey the claustrophobia: I could narrow the hallways. Upstairs, all the halls were two or three squares wide. Down here, I’d use only five-foot wide halls. The party would have to walk single file between the rooms. And, because I was going for symmetry, that meant the rooms would have to have odd-numbers of squares along the sides. I quickly modified the cross-shaped space.

Obviously, the northwestern corner would have to be broken out. Basically, the masonry wall had collapsed and the earth beyond had spilled into the room, leaving a small void below the hallway above. The recent quake and the weight of the adventurers collapsed the floor into the void. So, now, there’s an inclined ramp of rubble climbing up to the floor above. Doing that – a sloping pile of rubble that spills into the room – means that the party wouldn’t suffer significant falling damage from the earthquake. They’d be dropping a few feet and then could slide down into the room.

Sort of like this side view…

 

That would work perfectly.

Meanwhile, I was also going to cave in the southeastern corner to create a sense that the space used to be bigger.

Add the sunken area – with spaces for stairs – and clean up the walls…

And then we’d need to add some rubble. And here is where I fully admit I’m crazy. I’m obsessed with rubble and debris. You might have noticed that, on the upper level, when I drew rubble, I made sure that it trailed out into the canals. That’s because, as it collapsed, more rubble would settle in the canals and, consequently, it’d stretch out like fingers. I also had spots where it even dragged along walls. Well, when I was setting the rubble down in this room, I got obsessed with accounting for the fact that it would spread further across the sunken central space.

See what I mean?

Anyway, following that obsessiveness, I added some pillars and stairs and stopped myself from adjusting the rubble on the lee side of that one corner pillar that survived the collapse. And, as I’m typing this and looking at the work I did, I realize that I left a pillar out in the southwest corner. I’ll fix that next time.

I labeled the room and changed the name when I did because this wasn’t really a gallery anymore. And now, I’m thinking Ruined Crossway might have been a better name. I guess I’ll fix that too.

Finishing Day 2

Wow. It took me almost 3,500 words just to get to this point. Laying the groundwork is a pain in the a$&. But what can you do? Rather than jump into any more rooms, I’m going to cut this off here. We’re off to a good start. Depending on how things go – and how much the other work in my life demands – we may be able to finish the entirety of Day 2 in one go next time. But I have a feeling, given some of the changes I’m already looking at making based on how the first room came out, we might split finishing Day 2 into two different articles. We’ll see how it goes.

See you all next Monday. For reals, this time.