Following the “Appendicitis N” Prompt: in the vein of D&D’s Appendix N, create an Appendix (letter) to describe the creative influences on your own work.
Cloak-and-Sword is the name of a TTRPG system from 50 years ago, now lost media. I recovered this monster from GM session notes scribbled on a half-burnt stack of loose paper in my dead father’s attic.
Note: The Terasque, as my father ran it, is of inconsistent size, being whatever scale is the most mythically appropriate at any given moment. It seems to be simultaneously large enough to require siege weapons to deal with it, but also small enough to wrestle with a Herculean hero. As far as I can tell, it’s a different creature from Letarrasque, who is described as a mountain-sized dragon.
The Terasque is a huge, lumbering beast, a cross between an ox and a giant tortoise. It growls, spews smoke, tramples things over. Describe it to your players the way a 16th-century peasant would describe a monster truck. It does not give a shit about nearly anything. Killing the Terasque is worth 300 XP de Corps.
Every week, the Terasque has a 5-in-6 chance to move from its current region to a random connected region. No establishment in a region can be productive while the Terasque is present, no food or goods may be produced, no crops can be harvested, supply lines are disrupted, poets can’t write, singers can’t sing, all governments are in a deadlock, paralyzed by its presence. Each day there’s a 1-in-6 chance it besieges a random city, dealing 1d8 damage to each city resource.
The Terasque has 99 Elan (HP) and deals 1d20 damage to characters with its attacks. When it brings a character to 0 Elan, there’s a 50% chance it swallows them whole instead of outright killing them.
After the Terasque is killed, 1d6 friends and loved ones may be cut out of its belly.
The Terasque takes no damage when attacked normally.
Siege weapons deal 1d8 damage to the Terasque, and have a (100-Terasque’s current Elan)% chance of driving it away from its current location. It will hide in the forest and lick its wounds, roll 1d100 and if the result is higher than its current Elan, set its Elan to the result.
A character who holds Esprit for the Terasque deals 8 damage only when their attack rolls a perfect 8.
Anyone who knows someone who was killed or eaten by the Terasque may choose to hold Esprit for it.
Esprit for the Terasque is an obsessive fascination, a one-sided rivalry. All rules regarding a PC holding Esprit for an NPC are still in effect.
In addition, holding Esprit for the Terasque allows a PC to act as though they do not hold Esprit for any other characters so long as they are going out of their way to hunt for the Terasque or a way to kill the Terasque.
The Terasque is a poison-breathing monster. It has Fertility Type D. Its noxious breath renders crops and men infertile. To attack the Terasque, one must Save or inhale its breath, taking 1d4 Constitution damage.
The Terasque cannot hold Esprit except for priests and saints who have looked directly into its flaming eyes and seen that despite everything it’s just an animal. They may use the Esprit it has for them once, ever in their lives, to direct it away from an innocent person or a group of innocent people. The Terasque does not make reaction rolls.
Back out of the fight but make it seem like you’re being merciful to your opponent rather than cowardly
Get an alchemist to grow a clone of you in a vat which will fight in your place
Assassinate your opponent
Feign your own death
Call out your opponent for breaking some obscure rule, which renders the fight void
Seduce your opponent
Lobby to make duels to the death illegal where you live
Accumulate so many adoring fans that if your opponent kills you they’ll riot and kill the opponent as well (make sure your opponent knows this)
Bribe your opponent with a ridiculous amount of money
Dramatically declare that a duel of this import must take place in a location that’s impossible or nearly impossible to get to, like the edge of the world, the point where the tallest mountain touches the sky, or on the surface of the moon
Insist that your sword must be as sharp as possible before you can fight, spend all day sharpening it, and in the night secretly ruin the blade so you never finish
PROMPT 4: nanodungeon
ALT
Composed in 15 minutes. What’s the least amount of information that can convey a dungeon? 1 room, 1 “monster”, 1 npc, 1 magic item? I’m not satisfied, could probably be smaller. Maybe remove Blembus because Sir Gadfly could play a dual role pretty easily. Also kind of a “rest of the owl” copout situation because there’s obviously more dungeon to get through outside the grate.
Well, the last one was so much fun. Let’s roll another and see… oh. This is number 903, the Sword-Swallower, by Caput Caprae. I remember this class well, it’s a lot of fun. But immediately the problem with this method shows itself.
ALT
How do I make an entire party of sword-swallowers without it feeling one-note? Well, here’s my honest attempt.
The Mouth of God
This is a travelling cult bound together by a sentient sword known as DESOLATION OF MIST which exerts control over anyone foolish enough to swallow it.
All members besides DESOLATION (which is a sword and has no mouth) have the ability A: Nature’s Scabbard in addition to their corresponding Sword-Swallower template abilities. They get +1 to-hit and damage with swords and sword-related weapons per Nature’s Scabbard slot.
X: DESOLATION OF MIST
DESOLATION OF MIST is a three word sword. It is a sentient weapon, able to influence the minds of those who wield it. In addition, if it’s swallowed, it gets full mind control, and a strong influence over whoever swallowed it even after they regurgitate it. It’s slowly collecting a cult of poor Sword-Swallowers who didn’t think to Identify the random sword they found in the cursed dungeon before swallowing it.
DESOLATION speaks and acts through whichever member of the cult is currently wielding (or swallowing) it. Its voice is hollow and resonates on an octave just at the bottom of your hearing range.
DESOLATION is megalomaniacal and wants to become God. It guides its cult all around collecting all the magic weapons from dungeons and using the ability D: Stomach Forge to fuse them into itself, thus becoming more and more powerful. You can match this cult’s power level to the PCs by picking the number of magic sword abilities it’s absorbed so far. If you want to be mean just go down an entire magic sword table and add every single ability to it.
When fused with a cursed sword, DESOLATION can choose whether to apply the cursed effect and to what extent.
When fused with another sentient sword, DESOLATION usually predominates.
A: Grimelda the Gullet
A large, burly woman. Quiet, surly. Keeps a broadsword in her throat at all times. As a child she got infected by a tapeworm from Hell and now she can only digest metal. As the cult travels through dungeons, she picks every room clean for coins, non-magical weapons, and armor that she can eat later. This diet of iron and steel leads to her being absolutely JACKED with a soft layer of strongman fat from gold and silver coins. She’s the cult’s muscle.
Grimelda is strong-willed and the least affected by DESOLATION’s mind control. Nonetheless, she sticks with the cult out of loyalty and because it gets her a steady stream of food.
Although she’s loyal and wouldn’t choose to digest it, DESOLATION doesn’t allow her to swallow it except under very dire circumstances, just in case.
Nature’s Scabbard slots: 1. Broadsword.
B: Jingles
Full harlequin outfit, covered in bells. Doesn’t speak at all except when DESOLATION is inside her. She’s a weird gross freak who can’t take anything seriously. Makes fart noises at inappropriate times. Knows magic tricks (not real magic, stage magic). Can regurgitate her daggers and hit a bullseye from across the room. The first time she uses Vise Jaw in a fight automatically succeeds.
Jingles is the most skillful swordfighter of the cult (despite lacking Grimelda’s brute strength) and they might pass DESOLATION to her in a combat scenario. When DESOLATION takes over, her vibe completely changes, she becomes dead serious and is somehow able to move without ringing any of her bells.
Nature’s Scabbard slots: 4. All daggers.
C: Sister Glave
Wears a nun’s habit (is not really a nun). True believer in DESOLATION. Main cult recruiter, seeks out sword-swallowers and tries to trick them into swallowing DESOLATION. Most big-name circuses and carnivals know her face and will warn their performers. In addition to Internal Identification, each magical or cursed sword in her throat can be cast as a 2MD spell once a day. Casting DESOLATION like this is extremely chaotic since every single spell effect happens at once. Used sparingly as a nuke if they’re losing a fight.
Nature’s Scabbard slots: 2. One flaming cutlass (casts Fireball) and one glowing rapier (casts Light).
D: Stodir, the Forge
A dwarf, though you wouldn’t know it. He is tall, like a short human, gaunt, and clean-shaven. He wears a gray hooded cloak. There are bags under his eyes, his expression is haunted. DESOLATION spends the vast majority of its time in his forge-belly keeping itself in pristine condition and fusing with whatever magic weapon they found most recently.
Nature’s Scabbard slots: 3. Holds DESOLATION, one empty slot or random magic weapon, and a saint’s spine (secret, even DESOLATION doesn’t know about it).
—
Oh, and all of them are gay, or at least bi. (Can’t argue with the class.)
I think this works as a rival party. They can show up early and be silly comic relief, then with just a few acquisitions of swords become a legitimately terrifying threat. Even if the evil sword trying to reach apotheosis isn’t cause for alarm, they’re definitely going to be in conflict for resources with the players. Obviously they’re hungry for magic items, but Grimelda ensures they’re also clearing out coin and any other metal objects from a dungeon. If one of the players gets Excalibur or something that could put them in the cult’s crosshairs.
… I’m actually very happy with this one. Your players have almost certainly committed some crimes, at least graverobbing or being a public nuisance. A fantasy SWAT team is a fun and believable adversary to be hunting them down.
Civic Strike Team 487
Each member has all abilities of their corresponding Judge template, even if not specified here.
A: Magistrate Boldgrave
Face and leader of the Strike Team. Charismatic smile, big square jaw, deep voice. Boldgrave will be the first to make contact with your party. He’ll come alone, introduce himself, ask a lot of questions. He’s investigating a serious crime, you see, and thinks your testimonies would be valuable. If the party catches on, he’ll offer them the chance to turn themselves in peacefully, and if (when) refused, will get the fuck out of there - he won’t stick around for a fight when outnumbered.
If you kill him before he reports back, Executor Veem becomes the new leader, and the Strike Team’s tactics get way more brutal.
Equipment: armor, longsword, badge.
B: Inspector Mumwell
Twitchy, wide-eyed. Unwashed hair. Paranoid. Encyclopedic knowledge of the law, can smell crime and false statements. Mumwell is your genius Sherlock Holmes type, the Strike Team’s secret weapon. She’s like a ghost, watching from the shadows, collecting evidence to use against you, material with which to blackmail you. As long as she’s alive, the Strike Team will always be able to track your party. (Always replace one entry on any encounter table with them. If she dies, it takes 1d6 days for them to lock onto the correct location every time the players are able to shake them off.)
Secretly carries a notebook with extensive dirt on her teammates (mostly Thundercork).
Equipment: leather armor, crowbar, binoculars.
C: Warden Thundercork
Wears a trench coat. Tattoos obscured by long sleeves. Has connections to all the local enforcer gangs. Wherever you are, if there’s a town or city nearby, Thundercork brings 1d6 watchmen thugs to support the Strike Team. Only member of the team willing to outright disobey the law.
Mumwell doesn’t trust Thundercork, she can smell the corruption on him and his thugs. Thundercork knows she’s watching him but assumes their bond as teammates outweighs her obsession with the letter of the law. (It doesn’t, she’s biding her time.)
Slicked back hair, leather jacket, shows too many teeth when they smile. Power hungry. The Strike Team’s other secret weapon. Any command they give prompts a Will save or it must be obeyed, as long as obeying it doesn’t break the law. Veem is a sadist and enjoys using their power to control people, but as long as Boldgrave is alive will only use it on criminals. Respects the law, but doesn’t see imposing their will using their Voice as a violation. Turns a blind eye to Thundercork’s shady dealings.
If Boldgrave is out of the picture, any civilian you meet could secretly be under Veem’s orders (replace one entry of the reaction roll table). They won’t fight, but they will make things as inconvenient as possible, jack up shop prices, immediately alert authorities. Refuse service, give false information that leads the party into traps or ambushes, that sort of thing.
Equipment: leather armor, throwing knives, jar of wax (for their hair).
PROMPT 1: Create Something Inspired By Kingdom Hearts Without Looking Up Anything About Kingdom Hearts
CHARACTERS IN THE MULTIVERSE CROSSOVER
1d6 species:
1. Human
2. Cartoon animal
3. Tolkien species (d4 dwarf, elf, hobbit, orc)
4. Star wars or star trek alien
5. Robot
6. Wears a shadowy hood/cloak, species to be revealed at a later date
1d6 class:
1. Fighter
2. Healer
3. Mage
4. Gunslinger
5. Evil mage
6. Roll 2 and multiclass
1d6 motivation:
1. Save their home from being destroyed when the universes overlay
2. Use the overlay to their advantage while they can, but obviously ultimately want to reverse it because it’s a disaster
3. Find a way to stay together with their best friend/lover from another universe, but obviously ultimately want to reverse the overlay because it’s a disaster
4. Keep the magic powers they got from another universe at any cost (even if it means the overlay stays)
5. Add even more universes to the overlay
6. Roll 2. The lower number is their stated goal, the higher number is their secret true motivation.
1d6 character twists (only 1 in 6 chance to roll one of these):
1. Already had this conversation with an alternate universe counterpart of you
2. Is a Planeswalker like from MtG
3. Somehow immune to the effects of the overlay
4. Born from the void, no home universe
5. Clone or alternate universe counterpart of an established NPC
6. Clone or alternate universe counterpart of a PC
PROMPT 2: Two wizard organizations and their centuries-long rivalries over MINOR variations on a classic spell (i.e. Fly, Lightning Bolt),
MAGE HAND DEXTER AND MAGE HAND SINISTER
The names are actually only accurate in a right-handed mage - the spell Mage Hand Dexter creates a hand which aligns with the caster’s dominant hand, and Mage Hand Sinister creates a hand which opposes it.
Mage Hand Dexter: Creates a Mage Hand which aligns with your dominant hand. Strength score is equal to [dice]. Dexterity score is equal to your own. Casting this spell occupies your dominant hand for the duration (which is until you decide to stop).
Mage Hand Sinister: Creates a Mage Hand which opposes your dominant hand. Strength and Dexterity scores are both equal to [dice]. Casting this spell only occupies your non-dominant hand, leaving your main hand free to wield a weapon or write something out maybe cast another one-handed spell.
If you try to cast a Mage Hand while its counterpart is active, they annihilate each other and create an explosion centered at your location, dealing [dice of both spells]+[sum of both spells] damage to you and anyone around you.
Those who favor the Hand Dexter say it’s more versatile - the Hand Sinister is clumsy, a blunt instrument, only suitable for carrying things.
Those who favor the Hand Sinister say it’s more versatile - having your dominant hand free to do something else is an advantage that can’t be overstated.
A wizard who subscribes to one or the other will wear a right or left hand symbol somewhere discretely on their person. Confusingly, this traditionally lines up with the actual handedness of their personal spell, not with the Dexter/Sinister of it. This leads to right-handed mages (most are left-handed) often getting the cold shoulder when they try to hang out with their Dexter/Sinister compatriots.
Any type of creature may play the role of a psychopomp, but by far Nature’s most prolific are the industrious shade-bees, who are estimated to ferry at least 40% of all deceased souls from this world to the next. In return they get to carry back to their hives all sorts of exotic underworld nectars with which to make potent honeys.
Shade-honeys are nearly always hazardous to mortals, but a skilled beekeeper can encourage a shade-hive to select only certain flowers. Should the results be pure enough, the honey can be taken safely as a potion.
A hive will produce (on average) 40 potions worth of honey every year, or 1 a week except during the hibernation season.
Meads
If kept in an adventurer’s inventory for too long, these honeys begin to ferment into shade-meads and their effects mutate. This goes by real-life time elapsed, so even if you pick up a session right where you left off last week, there goes your honey.
At 2 weeks, it’s just beginning to ferment. Roll a d6 if consumed.
Effects of the honey.
Effects of the mead.
Same effects as a wild shade-honey. (Idk, wild magic table or random poison or something.)
No effects besides a tummyache.
No effects besides a bad tummyache.
Effects of both the honey and the mead, and the worst tummyache of your life.
At 2 months, it’s fully matured and provides the mead’s effect with no side-effects besides an appropriate level of drunkenness.
At 1 year, it’s a fine vintage, and provides a doubled effect, or the normal effect with a half dose.
Potions
I wrote 1d20 underworld flowers and the honeys/meads they make, but can’t embed a table like that in Tumblr, so here’s a link to a spreadsheet. Please check it out, it’s where most of the actual gameable material of this blog post lives.
Somewhat inspired by Dwarf Fortress, though I didn’t actually go look at the game’s internal process for making its syndromes. General content warning, but especially for medical horror! My goal was to make the results of this table highly varied and usually gross and unpleasant to think about.
A weighty tome, leatherbound, an exhaustive encyclopedia of every kind of blade ever conceived by humankind, each with exhaustive diagrams and detailed instructions for its handling, maintenance, and above all, its optimal use in combat. It doesn’t matter if the blade itself is a surgical scalpel or a lumber axe - the main thing this book is concerned with is how best it can be applied to the cause of senseless violence. Those who devote themselves to the study of this book are superhumanly proficient with any kind of bladed weapon (including improvised ones). They are also infected by this book’s ideology - every situation is best approached with the application of a blade.
Pages and pages are cut out and missing, excised by previous fanatics. Followers of the Book of Knives wander in droves in search of them. They are not necessarily hostile to strangers, but their idea of a friendly greeting involves stabbing. Lost pages can be sold to them for a healthy sum of money (the circumferences of the coins are hammered and filed down into razor edges).
D20 skills gained from reading one random page of the book:
You learn how to sword-swallow.
You learn how to play a sword as a musical instrument. Ringing it with a mallet, spinning it through the air, or playing it with a bow (like a musical saw).
By examining a cutting wound you know exactly what kind of blade caused it.
You can tell individual blades apart and recall them like faces of people; even two identical swords made by the same blacksmith you can tell apart about as well as you could twins.
You can cut someone so fast and precisely they don’t even notice.
You can tell if someone is hiding a blade on their person.
Nobody can tell if you are hiding a blade on your person.
You can perform intricate surgical procedures with any bladed instrument, even in the most primitive conditions.
You can always find cracks in the armor. Attacks hit opponents as though they’re unarmored.
A surgical scalpel is as effective as a dagger in your hands.
A pair of scissors is as effective as a dagger in your hands.
A lumber axe is as effective as a war axe in your hands.
Attacks you make with blades are never lethal if you don’t want them to be.
When you enter a new city you already know where to buy the best swords.
If you see someone use a fancy blade technique you can now replicate it perfectly only against them.
Sentient magical blades like you by default.
Given 20 minutes you can turn some random shit around you into a useable blade. A rock, scrap metal, piece of glass, plastic, wood, whatever.
You can throw a knife and hit a non-moving target with perfect accuracy.
Blades won’t kill you. They can bring you to 0HP but they sense you’re one of them so they won’t kill you.
If you see someone else draw a blade, you’ve already drawn yours, slightly faster.
At the foot of the World-Tree, the Elf of Year’s Turning summons an annual Quorum - one representative from each kind of spirit and creature - to debate and vote on all matters of the world in a lengthy month-long process. Thus human society has ordered itself in turn. The Ordinators form an educated, priestly philosopher-class whose goal is to organize society, church, and state as efficiently as possible. Hindering this is the plurality of competing schools of thought among them. There’s a great deal of rivalry among them about which philosophy gets to represent humanity in the Quorum, and a great deal of rioting among them if humanity’s representative turns out not to be an Ordinator.
As an Ordinator you are trained in the details of how to conduct for a great variety of ceremonies and services. You can marry people, compose their wills, declare them dead, conduct their funerals, exorcise their revenant corpses. All these procedures are passed to you through oral tradition, committing it to writing is absolutely forbidden. You know 2 modern languages, 2 dead ones, and 2 spoken by spirits or creatures.
backgrounds/skills: 1. bard 2. calendar 3. land surveyor
equipment: 1. brass ritual bell 2. astrolabe 3. abacus
A. While you are conducting any ceremony or ritual, beasts and spirits who are represented in this year’s Quorum will not purposefully disturb it. Those that do disturb it take +[templates]d6 extra damage from each attack in the ensuing combat.
B. Once per day, you may forbid anyone or anything in concert with the Quorum from doing one simple thing. For example, if you tell a wolf, “do not bother us!” then wolves will not attack you for the day. If you tell a river spirit, “do not sink this vessel!” then it will not sink due to the conditions of the water, but can still sink from being attacked or by your own stupidity. People have more free will and this will only work for a single person and only for about an hour. If you tell a guard, “do not reveal my presence!” that command only applies to the one guard.
C. Once per month, you can use some gossip of the Year-Turning to know what was happening in your current location exactly one year ago, and what will be happening exactly one year in the future. (None of the events between.)
D. You learn one of these powerful rituals and can conduct it once a week. Each lasts an hour if you are not interrupted.
- Antimagic Zone: Within 50 ft, spells cannot be cast and all ongoing spells are suspended for the duration.
- Sanctify Ground: If this ritual reaches completion, a radius of 100 feet is sanctified for the next year. The dead cannot be raised and all spirits and devils must reveal themselves.
- Zone of Truth: Within 10 feet, lies cannot be told and all illusions are dispelled for the duration.
- Oathbinding: Two parties must willingly swear the same oath to each other. If this ritual reaches completion, it cannot be broken for the next year, under penalty of becoming an enemy of the Quorum.
- Weigh the Soul: Conduct a full ritual over a body (or grave) to determine the moral and spiritual balance of the deceased: their regrets, their deeds, whether they are at peace, and what they still owe.
- Rite of the Fifth Chair: Allows you to speak with one representative of the Quorum (not of your species) as if they were physically present, for ten minutes. The entity speaks cryptically but honestly.
Rolled this on the d666 monster generator by Loch and Louis that’s going around the GLOG discord.
FORM: TREE
DANGER: DOPPELGANGER
MIEN: RAIN-SOAKED
HABITAT: MOUNTAIN PEAK
DRIVE: HOARDING
WEAKNESS: DARKNESS
The Warderwode is a huge, gnarled tree. If you squint, you can make out hundreds of faces all over its bark. When it rains, the wood becomes slick, almost flesh-like in appearance, and a mass will peel off the tree, soaking its shrivelled limbs in the rain until it swells up into a perfect replica of a human being. This doppelganger’s goal is to seek out the person it mimics, steal one precious item from them, and return to the Warderwode. Over decades, a Warderwode can build up an enormous stockpile of treasure in the center of its trunk.
The “consciousness” of a Warderwode resides in the doppelganger when it’s active, and in the tree otherwise. Killing a doppelganger returns the consciousness to the tree, with no memories of its latest excursion (though it will try to deduce a rough idea of what happened). If the clone can return, then it has persistent memories of events, but no specific personality or sense of self besides that of the person it’s currently copying. It may be very easy to negotiate with in one form, and very difficult in another. It can choose a form based on traits it believes will be most advantageous in its current situation. It is very reluctant to return to the tree without having stolen a treasure, but will if it risks death otherwise.
A doppelganger must constantly remain moist or its skin will dry out, revealing the bark-like texture. In addition, its only sense is the sense of sight. Not even touch. It can speak, and naturally has the exact voice of its target, but it must read lips. It mimics the personality of its target, but its memories from the victim’s life are spotty (and disappear when they return to the tree). It must make Int tests (with the victim’s score) when its memories are challenged.
No direct contact is needed with the Warderwode for it to copy you. With its vast intuition it can extrapolate a shocking amount of information about an individual simply through ambient information of its environment, humidity, atmospheric pressure. Simply being in the same or a neighboring hex makes you a potential target. It can sense minute details about the treasures within it, so it’s easier for it to copy you if it holds a treasure of someone close to you, but may strategically opt not to - if multiple people who know each other are targets then it’s easier for them to connect the dots and sniff the tree out.
The Warderwode typically plays a stealth game and will leave quickly the moment it gets its hands on a treasure. Having the victim’s personality, it is reluctant to harm the people they care about, though the tree’s consciousness will compel it to do so if necessary to secure the treasure, possibly with a great deal of visible grief and confusion about its own actions. It is greatly disturbed and uncomfortable when interacting with the person it mimics and may lash out.
The tree itself is very difficult to kill. It has no way to defend itself besides normal combat as a clone. But its trunk is thick, its roots grow deep, and it can regrow over the course of a few years if most of them are still present.
lol someone commissioned me to design a death counter for their dnd stuff.
i feel like this would be a particularly good candidate not for a print, but for a downloadable pay-what-you-like on the ko-fi
thoughts?
youd want to resize it to a4 and 8.5x11 though, very few have what is that? legal sized? readily available
yeah the commissioner wanted the original in legal size but I think kofi’ll let me attach multiple pages to downloadables so I’ll make edits once I get the scans through
okay they DO in fact allow you to upload multiple pngs! if you download this sucker you’ll get a letter sized and a legal sized
have at it!
as usual it’s pay what you want so you can send me 0 dollars or a hundred dollars, i’m not in charge of ya
Hey, any chances for A4 on that one? sure I can adjust the letter, but I thought I’d ask, cause like. most people use a4 and the proportions are a bit different. and I want to kill my PCs with class
sure gimme a little bit to make the edits but it should be easy enough to scale something between letter and legal so you don’t have to warp it to make it fit
I think this is about the right math for it
okay @acidtygr the listing should be updated! The a4 version should have juuust enough extra length on it against the ratio of the width against the lettersized that it oughta be able to scale.
Hey everyone. I wrote this Zungeon (zine dungeon) today. The proper way to read it is by downloading the PDF from my itch page, printing it, and folding it up into a booklet. But if you’d prefer a blog post, just keep reading here.
All art is either by me or modified from public domain imagery by me.
ALT
(“itinerary” in the image should say “retinue”.)
1d6 ENCOUNTERS (only after the party reaches 2: the egg room)
1. A piercing, warbling wail echoes through the dungeon.
2. The necromancer’s ghost pokes his head through a wall to spy on you.
3. Ghost stops to chat with you, or throw shit around like a poltergeist depending on how you stand with his mistress.
4. 1d6 stray language-leeches. Hold words of passing conversation and incorrect guesses at the puzzle.
5. 1d6+1 language-leeches, led by one which holds a spell-fragment or divine word.
6. Edgar, a questant worm-slayer who has cold feet now that the time has actually come to do the slaying.
1. THE NECROMANCER AND HER RETINUE
Young and ambitious, this necromancer promises to resurrect the worm’s child. Well, she would promise that, but she’s stuck at the entrance to the worm’s lair - she doesn’t have a key to room 3 and can’t figure out the puzzle in room 2.
ALT
She commands 1 skeleton, 1 zombie, 1 vampire, and 1 ghost. The skeleton fights for her. The zombie carries all her shit. The vampire is dead in room 2 (failed the puzzle). The ghost floats throughout the zungeon, scouting and spying, and reports back to her all the information it finds (including the solution to the puzzle when you figure it out). Each day she can resurrect 3 dead creatures as her servants, she saves this ability for when she’s in danger and prefers to use it on her retinue if they are slain.
The necromancer’s promise is a lie! She wants to study and dissect the egg for her own nefarious research. If she convinces the worm to relinquish her egg, she will never return with it, and the worm-mother will go on a rampage in 1 month.
2. THE EGG
It sits on a pedestal in the center of the room. The worm-mother will not come through the hallway to 6 - she cannot bear to look at it.
Wormlings hatch after a year, this one has been 2 years. In reality the wormling is NOT dead! It is simply a runt, small and too weak to break the shell. It sits nearly catatonic, feeding off the dwindling yolk, and will starve in 2 months.
Any number of spells could reveal this. A dwarf or other creature with stonesense has a chance to feel the vibrations of its heartbeat. The necromancer will certainly find out upon directly observing the shell but will try to hide it from you.
You must break the shell! When you first attack it this will enrage the worm and she will come out of room 6 to kill you. In this state she cannot be reasoned with. Only when you free the wormling and it starts breathing will she be calmed.
Starting west and going clockwise, this room has: locked door to entrance room 1, hallway to puzzle room 3, opening to treasure room 4, hallway to worm lair 6, hallway to key room 5.
ALT
3. SPEECH PUZZLE
As you enter from room 1, the air in this room feels thick. Footsteps are unusually muffled. An engraving in worm-script over the hall to room 2 reads:
ONLY WHEN ITS NAME IS SPOKEN
SHALL MY SEALING SPELL BE BROKEN
Trying to pass through the hall without dispelling the magic leads to the air getting thicker and thicker, eventually crushing you to death before you reach the other end.
ANY word (including those involved in spellcasting) spoken in room 3 or the 3-2 hallway, besides the key word, emerges lurching from your throat as a slippery leech-like creature intent on killing its creator. This language-leech whispers the word that created it over and over. It is the size of a rat and can fly, its bite heals it for half the damage it drains. Language-leeches with magic words have some properties of the spell used to cast them.
Speaking the name of the sealing spell will dispel it for 1 hour.
The name of the spell is “silence”.
(It’s a pretty easy puzzle, I think? Let me know how it goes if you run it!)
4. TREASURE ROOM
The worm-mother hoards coins of strange denominations. No one coin matches another. They are from distant lands and long-dead empires, alien dimensions and places that do not exist. They are counterfeits, jokes, misprints, oddities. They are made of gold and silver and iron and wood and paper.
Around 600 silver and 400 gold are passable as currency or can at least be melted down. It takes a full day to sort through them, roll 1d6x100 and 1d4x100 if you don’t do this.
If you free the wormling its mother will tell you to take what you want, knowing her most prized coins are by nature of little interest to an adventuring party. If you DO try to take her plastic chits and monopoly money and glass cubes and shit from her, she will rescind her offer and will kill you if you try to leave with anything.
If you take it and leave without saving her wormling, she won’t stop you (she can’t bear to pass through room 2 with the egg in it) but she will come after you when she goes on her rampage.
Also in this room is a potion which turns all of the words of the one who drinks it into language-leeches as described in room 3.
5. KEY TO DOOR 1-2
The key takes the form of a stone statue, a cylindrical spine with 10 teeth branching out and five feet radially around its base.
It is the size of a human, likely too heavy to carry alone. (Though a barbarian or similar can test strength.)
The lock it matches is pickable, though traditional lockpicking tools won’t work at all. (The devices within it are meant to be pushed by thick branches of stone.)
If left in the lock, it will animate after an hour, remove itself, and walk back to room 5.
It’s basically the only way to get out if you stay more than an hour, as trying to go back through the 2-3 hallway with the spell active puts you right in the most crushing part of it before you get a chance to say the code word. If you are on speaking terms with the worm and have saved her wormling, and you’ve broken the key somehow, she’ll be annoyed but will break open the door for you.
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6. THE GRIEVING WORM-MOTHER
She is a colossal green serpent, slimy in texture. Her head is somewhere between that of a snake, a dog, and a lamprey. She has no limbs but can manipulate objects with her tail and tongue. She normally stays coiled up but rooms 6 and 5 are large enough for her to stretch out in. When she passes through the 10-foot-wide hallways of her lair it’s impossible to squeeze around her except maybe if you’re a gnome or goblin or something.
She’s currently freaking the fuck out and is much more likely to react with violence.
In general, she is egotistical, thinking very little of small (that is, human-sized) creatures, and is dismissive of them unless provoked. She will hear you out if you suck up to her, (the necromancer plans to do this,) but will not accept that her wormling is currently alive unless you actually break it out of the egg and show it to her. This initial act of breaking the egg will provoke her.
She collects riddles, languages, and coins.
She keeps potions which will transform her into a human for 1 day. Her appearance is that of an elderly woman with green skin and silver-grey hair. She only has 50 doses remaining and the alchemist who made them is dead so she uses them sparingly.
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