Another entry in the great and terrible dungeon duel with Loch of Nothic's Eye. Shout out also to beloved Bamzo who once mentioned that she liked an old post of mine that didn't get so much play in the run of things.
ROPE 23
Imperial cities do not have names - the army and the pragmatists give them working names when they need to, but otherwise, officially, they are all 'Iron City' or 'Drug City' or 'Training City', etc. Most people use a vernacular of numerical designations to distinguish between them day-to-day.
Rope 23 is a white-stone city in the Northern hinterlands, bisected by a broad, slow-flowing river, and surrounded by fields of hemp crops that feed its main industrial function. The climate is hot year-round. In the wet season sheets of lashing rain sweep over the low, red-earth plains, and swell the river, and in the dry season the earth is baked hard and the vast horizons sing in the heat. The city was walled once, but the Imperial armies breached and then systematically demolished those ancient fortifications a century ago, and used the stone to build rope mills. The walls have never been rebuilt.
Like all Imperial cities (save the White City itself, of course), Rope 23 is agriculturally and militarily self-sufficient. Its cropland is mostly given over the hemp, but there are many smaller food farms scattered throughout the industrial fields, and the river provides freshwater fishing, mussels, and crayfish to the inhabitants.
It is also a road terminus - one of the rare nodes on the Imperial map from which travel flows back towards the Imperial core, but not further out. It is a borderland.
The Story of the Snake and the Basilisk
King Snake was the great lord of the surface and its people; King Basilisk was the lord the underworld. They quarrelled over Lady Moon, the most beautiful woman in the universe, and, to stop their two great armies from warring, made a pact to share her between them evenly. Both were too blind to see that her own affections were for King Sun, the laughing lord of the upper air, and her endless passage across their kingdoms was in truth only her endless, futile pursuit of him.
The Great House of the Snake was the ancient city that would became Rope 23, after its subjugation by the Imperial armies. The legendary underworld House of the Basilisk has never been found. The old people and ultranationalists of Rope 23 tell stories of the impending end of the world, when the vengeful demon armies of Basilisk will return to judge and destroy the Empire of the White City for its incalculable sins.
The Snake-Men
The so-called snake-men have traditionally valued rhetoric, subtlety, discretion, and directness of action. They practice song duels and the kingly art of poisoning, and were said, many years ago, to possess sorcerous methods of discovering the secrets of their enemies. The old people of Rope 23 still practice these arts in semi-secrecy, as best they can reconstruct them by passed-down oral testimony. The Imperial victim-cult sponsors local re-enactors and educators whose job it is to memorialise their doomed resistance against the Imperial Army.
The Imperial barracks maintains an open bounty on snakes - officially because they are dangerous (technically true, many local varieties are extremely venomous) - and many local people make their entire living poaching serpents outside the city walls, and in the hemp fields. Their carcasses are hung on on iron scaffolds in the central squares.
Of the basilisk-men, nothing is now known, save that they were demons from beneath the earth.
Truth-Telling and Condemnation to Insanity
In ancient times the great judges of the city would condemn criminals to insanity - a fate considered worse than death. Research would be undertaken to discover the true facts of the accused's life, with particular focus on shameful or horrible secrets, and on personal weaknesses and vulnerabilities. State-appointed 'callers' would follow the condemned within the walls of the city, proclaiming their shames to all. Most victims of this punishment chose exile voluntarily, some went mad attempting to stay, and a very few, cherished as exemplars in myth, lived without secrets of any kind, and were wholly unaffected by the process.
Recently
Around a week ago, a ragged troupe of about fifteen hundred flare children cordoned off the high road just beyond the city limits, and began to infiltrate its boundaries at night to prosecute a campaign of street violence and punitive killing against the local garrison of soldiers. The soldiers, recognising the danger, attempted a sally in force to bring their enemies to a decisive confrontation, and were trapped, surrounded, and massacred, at great cost to their foes.
The surviving revolutionaries, flush with victory, swarmed into the city, slaughtered the remaining militia, and burned the imperial offices and barracks. The population have been required to declare for or against this act of insurrection, and the city itself has fractured into roughly-fortified quarters that either resist the new state of affairs, loyal to the Empire or fearful of the sure prospect of retaliation, or enthusiastically supporting the insurrectionists.
It also appears that this attack has been planned in advance and advertised to anti-Imperial elements in the area. Flare children from all over the region have been arriving in groups of various sizes for the last three days, and continue to come in ever increasing numbers.
As of today, one week from the arrival of the first insurrectionary forces, there are also rumours of a full Imperial army group marching towards Rope 23, with orders to re-pacify it and restore Imperial governance. Reports on their ETA vary, between three to six weeks.
You
Are passers-through in Rope 23. You and your companions are staying in one of the revolutionary burroughs, and have convinced the resident flare children officers of your loyalty to their cause, but of course your true intentions and feelings are your own. You have been given leave of free travel, as long as you do not leave the city limits (all able-bodied men and women are required to fight to defend the revolutionary polis in times of war), but you think that a group with useful skills like yours might be able to acquire more freedom of movement by making themselves conspicuously useful.
The flare children are currently engaged in a vicious campaign of barricade storming, house-to-house fighting, and public execution over the final resisting quarters of the city, notably the old military quarter, barracks, and citizen apartments. The rest of the city, including all of the food reserves and silos, lie in the hands of the revolutionaries.
Rope 23, the House of the Snake
Rope 23 is built around its watermills, which are the main industrial focus of the city. The cluster along both sides of the river, and, when they were functional, were manned on shifts, such that production never ceased.
The great, wide, slow, languid river runs north to south. When it floods in the wet season the waters are captured and distributed via an extensive network of red earth irrigation works. The great monocrop fields stretch out around the city for miles and miles. Inside the city limits, the banks of the river are built up with banks of white stone, such that even at its greatest flood it poses no risk to the surrounding architecture.
It is currently the dry season, and the river can be easily crossed on foot without the use of the bridges.
The road west leads back to better settled Imperial territories, and eventually, of course, to the great capital. Unlike most Imperial cities, Rope 23 has no aqueducts, and no running water, even in the citizen apartments. The citizens here consider themselves pioneer types, and are fond of talking up their own ruggedness and disdain for the creature comforts of the interior.
The Revolution
For each day that the revolutionary state of affair continues, 2d6x20 additional flare children arrive in Rope 23 from the surrounding countryside, ready to fight. If the Citizen Apartments are destroyed, add an additional 2d6x20 to this daily figure. If the barracks and military quarter are destroyed, add an additional 2d6x40.
The city includes:
- A: Worker Districts
- B: Citizen Apartments
- C: The Military Quarter and Barracks
- D: The Collection Depots
- E: Drying Quarters
- F: The Mill Strips
While traversing the districts in contention (the drying quarters and mill strips, and the bridges), encounter rolls are made every hour, with a 2 in 3 chance of encountering a group of citizens and a 1 in 3 of encountering 2d20 soldiers.
When traversing occupied districts (the citizen apartments and the barracks), encounter rolls are made every ten minutes, and the type of encounter is appropriate to the district.
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| Rope 23, The House of the Snake. Note that the three worker districts are much larger than indicated here, and stretch 'out' from the central city for a distance of about a mile. |
Worker Districts
The homes of the indigenous population, the non-citizen workers of Rope 23. Dense and crowded, but not uncomfortably so. The local style is for small, white stone family homes, which typically house between 5 and 10 people. Wealthy workers might have several rooms built in stone, but the majority of worker houses consist of a single stone 'unit' which it then extended with timber, as needed. Many worker houses feature a timber second story annex, where the house head sleeps with their husband or wife. Many of these annexes incorporate holy texts and small shrines to King Snake and his brother Basilisk, badly remembered facsimiles of holy and legal texts long since destroyed - technically illegal, but broadly tolerated for decades by the garrison soldiers, for pragmatic reasons.
Worker districts are fed by their own wells. They also include small public squares and markets where workers used to spend their days off; the workers are not citizens, and have no right to the Imperial food houses on the eastern side of the river. They trade in local currency chits, minted in the barracks, mostly in tin, and cook in their houses, or in large communal barbecue pits. The local style is to spit game on iron crosses, which are then planted into the earth above the coal pits. Hemp is smoked recreationally almost universally, and also makes its way into the local cuisine.
At the current time, all three of the worker districts are in open rebellion, and patrolled by gangs of flare children and local insurrectionists. The streets in and out are barricaded and manned, and the populations have armed themselves as best they can. The northwest and southwest quarters are mostly free of fighting, and each house around ten thousand workers and their families, along with two thousand foreign flare children. Both bridges are currently held in force.
The southeast quarter is under constant contention from the surviving soldiers and citizen gangs, and low level skirmishing is near constant. It houses around two thousand citizens and an additional thousand flare children. The insurrectionists try their best to rotate their fighters through the beleaguered quarter and evacuate the old, young, and infirm back across the river, but the soldiers in the military quarter are veterans, and very good at preventing this from their position of strength.
A typical fighting group in the worker districts will consist of 2d20 Insurrectionists, 2d20 Flare Children, and d10 Ultranationalists. There are around 22 thousand workers in the city, roughly 15 thousand of whom are capable of fighting under arms.
Snake-Man Insurrectionist
HD1, light or medium spears, knives, and clubs, 50/50 unarmored and captured light armour. 1 in 5 with captured heavy steel arbalests, 1 in 5 with a single petrol bomb. The insurrectionists of Rope 23 are mostly caught up in a type of revolutionary mania, and are focused on the slaughter of the local citizens and soldiers. Deeper down, many of them understand that the struggle is a doomed enterprise.
Snake-Man Ultranationalist
HD1+1, two light bronze knives (ceremonial but completely functional), poison spit, truth-telling, light bronze armour. The Ultranationalists are the ones who keep the pre-Imperial culture of the city state alive as best they can; who tell the stories of King Snake and King Basilisk to children, and who still practice the arts of the old warrior elite. They hold poison in their cheeks when they fight, and spit it into the faces of their enemies: once per combat, the enemy must save DEX or take d6 poison damage and be blinded for the combat. They also practice the ancient art of truth-telling, which, to their horror, no longer has any effect on citizens or soldiers of the White City. What, if anything, truth-telling once accomplished is not now remembered.
The flare children in Rope 23 have been fighting for literally decades, losing people and picking up fresh recruits as they go. They are the ragged sons and daughters of a thousand cities like Rope 23. This is the first time they've managed to take an Imperial settlement. The older soldiers know that if they try to hold it they will be destroyed, but the younger fighters see the influx of anti-Imperial elements from the surrounding country as proof of a broader movement that might actually survive long enough to start a general revolutionary war against the distant City.
Citizen Apartments
Every Imperial citizen is guaranteed personal accommodation by law, and these spacious stone apartments are built into towers, in ordered grids. Even out here in the borderlands the citizens are allotted their due.
The citizens of Rope 23 are administrators, clerks, settlers, and militia. They are also game players. There are 1254 apartments (and there were exactly as many citizens, until they started getting lynched and burned alive), built into 310 towers of local white stone. Each apartment is wide and spacious, and each has been appointed with 'menials' from town, to supply it with water, fuel, food, incense, and other necessaries.
The interiors of the citizen apartments are strange, open, airy, light, and empty, and 'furnished' mostly with mobile timber and glass screens that can be moved around the interiors to build spaces to the given needs of the citizen who lives there. All citizen apartments are built with wide open, unglazed windows into the walls, and the citizen style is to have these open as much as possible (they are sealed with screens built for the purpose in really bad weather).
The citizen apartments are built around great municipal food halls and bath houses, both of which are reserved for citizen use. Some of the soldiers quartering in the barracks are also citizens, and have their own apartments. Most are working towards citizenship by serving.
At night the citizen apartments are lit with chemical lanterns, in place of the tallow lamps and candles of the worker districts. This cold, pale (and occasionally brightly hued) light gives them a fey and alien mien that the workers of Rope 23 find famously unsettling. The material traces of the image game - the painted boards, fabrics, panes, and other surfaces - are particularly potent at night.
At the current time, the citizen apartments are in a state of active siege and resistance. 80 or so towers have been forced open and their inhabitants massacred by the insurrectionists. The rest continue to mount active resistance, at street level, from behind barricades, and from the towers themselves when the barricades fail. The soldiers in the barracks and the citizen militias in the apartments have experience working together in wartime, and are occasionally successful in counterattacking and destroying overexposed elements of flare children who push too far into the apartment district. The Snake-Men of Rope 23 hate the citizens even more than they hate the soldiers.
In a key early victory for the flare children, the food stores on the eastern side of the river were burned, and currently the only remaining food stores under Imperial control lie within the barracks. The citizens are being slowly starved, and they are aware of this. Both sides understand that soon they will need to break out and escape the city entirely, launch a definitive counterattack, or join the soldiers in the barracks.
A typical citizen band in the apartment districts will consist of 2d20 Citizens of the White City, and d3 Archimimes. All ingress into the apartments is blocked off with manned barricades. If these are breached, the Citizens will hurl heavy screens, paving stones (they have been stockpiling them), iron cook pots, firebombs, etc. down from the apartment towers onto any assaulting force (-1 to hit, d6! damage).
The Citizens have twelve days of food remaining.
A week of intense conflict has poisoned most of the food in the river, and overfished the rest. There are currently no supplies to be fished in Rope 23.
Citizen of the White City
HD1, medium spear, light misericorde, heavy arbalest, light armour, game player. Citizens in Rope 23 have access to combat drugs generally reserved for soldiers, distributed from the barracks through the apartments at the commencement of hostilities. Each citizen carries a single dose of them, and each tower contains another d20 doses. A dose gives the citizen a second attack for the rest of the combat, but also deals 1 psychic damage to them when they take it (they're not used to it).
As game players, the citizens are completely fearless while fighting in defence of the apartments. Additionally, while fighting in the apartments, non game-players take 1 fear damage (or lose 1 morale if not PCs) for every ten minutes they spend there, and an additional 1 for each time they see a game player kill someone.
At night, anyone who has taken psychic damage, or who has lost morale, in this way gets -1 on any roll to avoid being ambushed or surprised by game players. If one or more people in the party have died to game players then this is -2.
Imperial Archimime
HD1+1, two medium bronze fighting knives, poison spit, truth-telling, medium bronze armour, game player.
The Archimimes of the victim cult are Imperial specialists, trained in the capital, whose job it is to mourn the necessary destruction of the empire's enemies. They reproduce the customs and practices of the people they are seconded to, and the official line is that they do so perfectly. In Rope 23, the Archimimes practice poisoning and truth-telling. They will tell you that the Snake-Men of old fought with honour and bravery, but that their extinction was inevitable.
Like the Ultranationalists, they hold poison in their cheeks and spit it into the faces of their enemies: once per combat, the enemy must save DEX or take d6 poison damage and be blinded for the combat. They also practice truth-telling, which deals 1 point of psychic damage to locals in combat with them every time they kill someone.
Lastly, they are game-players, as detailed in the Citizen stat block above.
The Military Quarter
The great stone barracks and military quarter of the city. It is manned by 212 soldiers (there used to be around 800, but the majority were slain during their ill-fated breakout), and also incorporates a well, food to feed the garrison for months, drugs, ammunition and powder, two bronze bombards, and telegraphic equipment.
The soldiers have already signalled the situation to Imperial elements outside the city, and are grimly confident that they will be delivered when the army group arrives in three weeks or so. They are focused, first, on surviving until then, and second, trying to get the citizens from the apartments into the relative safety of the barracks complex.
26 Citizens have already made it through to the barracks. A couple of hundred others have been caught and slain in the attempt, and their bodies lynched from the bridges.
The Imperial barracks is large, bright, airy, spacious, and clean. The soldiers are strange people. Their emotional range has been brutally reduced by extended use of Imperial combat drugs, and when off duty they mostly sit perfectly still and silent in the great, empty leisure halls. They don't like to be touched when they are not high. This barracks incorporates a gymnasium, a magazine, a food store, and a play hall, upon whose walls the soldiers play the image game. The two bombards function perfectly well, but there are only 12 shells remaining and the soldiers would like to save them for an emergency. If they do decide they need to use them, they can target any point in the city with precision - they have the whole place gridded up and ranged. A shell can level any building in the city, and will deal d10 within 50ft, and 2d10 within 10ft, with an AC save for half.
The walls of the barracks complex are manned at all times, and the sentries are alert professionals. They also have access to eight large parabolic mirrors on the ramparts, which, on a sunny day, they can use to attempt to blind people that approach the walls.
The mirrors are kept covered behind the crenelations when not in use. They can be focused in an area of 50 or so feet - everyone inside this area must blind themselves (by looking away, or by shutting their eyes), or test CON per round or be blinded for one hour. The second time this happens, the blinding is permanent. Smoked glasses and similar nullify this effect. If you need to determine wether a given moment during the day is sunny enough for the mirrors to be used, the chance is 5 in 6 for any given hours that they are useable in the current dry season.
The soldiers are perfectly aware of their advantages against the insurrectionists, but they also know that they will be slaughtered if trapped in the open, and as such will not leave the barracks under any circumstances, unless the food stores are somehow destroyed.
White City Soldier
HD2, gigantic sword, musket, plate armour, combat drugs, game player. Combat drugs give soldiers an additional attack, 1 DR (to physical damage), and make them immune to morale for the duration of the fight. A soldier takes 1 psychic damage per dose past the first that they consume in a single day.
They wear injector harnesses incorporated into their armour, which each contain 6 doses, and have 4500 doses stashed inside the barracks. The armour also features two chemical lanterns built into the pauldrons.
Non game players take 1 fear damage (or lose 1 morale if not PCs) for every ten minutes they spend in the barracks, and an additional 1 for each time they see a game player kill someone.
The Collection Depots
Large stone depots with high vaulted ceilings, full of thousands of tonnes of hemp rope, ready for export into the rest of the empire. The collection depots have been commandeered by the Flare Children leadership as a supply depot and command centre. The Flare Children have enough supplies to last two weeks, and can supplement that with the surrounding farms for a further two weeks after that. There is a great fear among the leadership that the soldiers in the barracks will attempt to sabotage or bombard the food stores, so they have been distributed out through the huge complex, and much of it has been buried or secured in iron chests.
The flare children leadership have their quarters here, and so do the White City Red Team. See Dramatis Personae for details.
The Drying Quarters
The great drying sheds contain raw hemp material stretched across timber frames. They formed a sort of no man's land during the initial struggles for Rope 23, and have been burned mostly razed by both sides during the fighting. Now they are soot-black stone shells, and are often the site of skirmishes and standoffs between the flare children and the Citizens.
The situation has stabilised over the last few days but for a time neither side could dispatch people to clear bodies from the drying sheds, and the rotting blood and bodies became a serious risk of disease. As of the present time most of the sheds have been cleared, but the three that form the western border of the citizen apartments have been left as stinking charnel houses, to form a barricade between the two sides. The citizens know that they have more and better medicine than their enemies.
While traversing these three sheds, you are exposed to a random disease, and again each time to take damage, as per the rules for diseases. The citizens have rigged crude trip-lines, broken glass, and other boobytraps throughout. Anyone who falls prone in these spaces takes d4 broken glass damage (-1 for medium armour, -2 for heavy and better), and anyone who critically fails a physical check (including an attack), or who sprints in combat or another situation that takes their attention must save DEX or suffer even chances of: d6 trap damage damage, or falling prone.
Finally, corpse worms have begun to breed in the carnage there. Corpse worms are local scavengers, called 'false serpents' by the locals. They are long, black, sinuous centipedes, with a venomous bite and a territorial mien. Each shed contains 3d20 of them, and they attack citizens and non-citizens without discrimination.
Corpse Worms
1hp, venomous bite (deals 1 piercing damage, CON save for an additional d6 poison), unarmoured, speed as human. Corpse worms hate fire and will not attack torchbearers. They will prioritise the wounded, those who fall prone, and children.
The Mills
The great water mills of Rope 23, which once twined the ropes and spooled them onto heavy drums for export. All now lie in ruins, smashed to pieces with special attention by the local insurrectionists. From their splintered wheels are hung the lynched bodies of hundreds of captured soldiers and citizens of the White City.
Like the drying sheds, the mills have been trashed and burned. The children of the Snake-Men have taken to daubing them with elaborate serpent graffiti.
The Hemp Fields
The great monocrops of Rope 23 stretch out around the city outskirts for miles. They are cut through by small hamlets and rough shelters that were once used by the workers, and they are also supplemented with small food-producing farms, which are still tended by their workers. The hemp fields themselves are untended and wild.
You can encounter groups of flare children in the hemp fields, making their way towards the revolutionary city on something like pilgrimage. If you tell them that you are also fighting the Imperial troops they will share food and alcohol with you, and tell you stories of the great heroes and martyrs of the post Imperial territory. There are thousands of them, and millions of stories.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
The Flare Children
Brenton the Paragon
The hero of the resistance, its Achilles and its Ajax. Brenton is an ox of a man, tall, strong, young, beautiful, and absolutely fearless. He has never been wounded in combat, and has personally slain many soldiers. He is, apparently, the sole survivor of an extinguished people, but he will not talk about this.
Brenton wears a panoply of iron and fights with a long steel spear, which he handles with one hand, like a rapier. He is addicted to Imperial combat drugs, which have destroyed his emotional range, and also the sensitivity of his skin - when not fighting, he spends his time seeking physical closeness and intimacy with the other flare children. He is a blood-drinker, and his fighting rage is terrifying to witness.
HD4, heavy spear, heavy iron armour, Arrow Catcher, Like for Like.
Brenton's spear deals 2d6, and ignores armour (hits against AC10).
Arrow Catcher: When he has his right hand free (he is left handed), he can use it to swat aside incoming blows - the flare children swear that they have seen him catch bullets. Any physical attack that hits Brenton has a 3 in 6 chance of dealing 0 damage.
Like for Like: Brenton gains d6 HP per enemy he slays. As he kills, he paints himself in the gore of his enemies, and drinks their blood. Once he is coated this way (after his first kill in a given combat) his allies become immune to the effects of game-player until they return to camp. After each combat of this type, Brenton must lie comatose for 24 hours. Brenton is never wounded in battle. If he is ever reduced to 0 hit points, it represents his luck running out in a single catastrophic failing - he is killed instantly as a sling stone finds his throat, or a lucky sword-thrust severs his spine. He is immune to critical hits (but not to Vorpal attacks).
If he ever runs out of Imperial combat drugs, he loses access to the benefits of Arrow Catcher and Like for Like. The Flare Children have access to 22 doses, and they are stockpiled for Brenton's exclusive use. He goes through 2 doses a day, whether or not he is fighting.
After killing five or more enemies in a single combat Brenton begins exhibiting behaviour that is actively manic and suicidal - he will cease to listen to counsel, he will charge fortifications alone, etc.
The Morrigan
The wartime leadership and strategic direction of the flare children. Three women of middle age, apparently sisters, though they look nothing alike, who have been fighting the forever war for decades. Their names are Renna, Ristant, and Brita-Sen, but everyone in the flare children army calls them 'sister', or 'captain'.
Renna is a tall woman, with long black hair and a thin, smiling face. She was a game hunter once, long, long ago, and still keeps hounds and fights with a longbow. She coordinates the scouting and intelligence of the flare children, and is by far the most ruthless and least sentimental of the three.
HD2, light knife and heavy longbow, unarmoured.
Keeps (and sleeps in a heap with) four great bitch hounds, which are well trained and fanatically protective of her. Each has HD2, a heavy bite, armour as leather, tracks unerringly by scent, and is twice as fast as a human.
If Renna is ever slain, the flare children will cease to receive up-to-date intelligence about the movements of the approaching Imperial army group. The time it takes for that army to arrive is also reduced by a week, as Renna's harassing and irregular warfare is disrupted.
Ristant the Justice, judge and counsel-giver. Wears a featureless steel mask that represents impartiality. Muscled and heavyset. Her voice is steady, kind, and full of love for life and its beauty. She presides over disputes within the ranks of the flare children, and is famously wise. Ristant is also known throughout the Imperial territory for her writings - she travels the land cataloguing the crimes of the White City, and prepares her famous 'judgements', in which she demonstrates, with pithy and straight forward language, the tautological and inconsistent character of the Imperial ideological project. The judgements are widely read by flare children across the empire.
HD3, heavy sword, musket, plate armour.
If Ristant is slain, the influx of flare children recruits into Rope 23 is cut in half.
Brita-Sen, the calculator. An ex-citizen, and still wears the uniform of the City to this day. Once a natural game player, and celebrated for her production of a series of 'strong' or 'final' postures that still influence play in the City proper today. She describes her succession from the Empire in terms of an awakening, as though from a nightmare. It took her several decades to prove herself to the flare children, and she has never once wavered in her campaign against the city.
'There is nothing there.'
HD2, medium spear, light knife, heavy arbalest, light fabric armour.
Brita-Sen howls like a fury in combat. Her voice is unnaturally loud. All game-players must test morale every turn they spend in combat with her, even if they would normally be immune.
If she is ever slain the Imperial Red Team will leave in the night, searching for better prospects.
The Imperial Red Team
A team of 14 Imperial agents, long ago given the task, by this or that City Pragmatist, of destroying the Empire. They have faithfully followed this instruction since that day, and have proven to be a powerful addition to the flare children army. There used to be two hundred of them. Strange, tall, inscrutable soldiers, with blank, pale faces and black eyes. They speak little, are scrupulously polite, and spend their time playing a strange, tight, constrained version of the image game between themselves - apparently mostly using maps and fluid modelling. They are not trusted by the flare children but they have been instrumental to the strategic success of this ragtag army until now, and the Morrigan have come to rely on them.
HD2, gigantic sword, silenced pistol, silenced blunderbuss, plate armour. The silencers are single use and very valuable. They have access to 14 pistol silencers and 4 blunderbuss silencers, in addition to those currently fitted to their weapons.
The Red Team are themselves game players, and as such immune to the effects of the image game. When they operate alone, they win surprise against soldiers and citizens of the White City on a 5 in 6. When infiltrating against these enemies, they roll all stealth (and similar) checks at +2.
They will never betray the flare children for any reason, and will fight in their cause literally to the last man or woman, but will leave immediately if Brita-Sen is slain.
The Imperial Army
Citizens Demon
The Citizens Demon are three future minds inhabiting Imperial war puppets. They sing as they fight, great patriotic ululations. They are built from dull, poisonous metal. They are fanatics, and they say that they have seen the future, where the City stands alone, and all of this strife has been wiped away.
HD2, Guillotine Swords, armour as plate (weapon attacks deal minimum damage max), Invisible Poisons.Guillotine Swords are as gigantic swords that automatically crit prone opponents. They are too heavy to be used by humans.
Invisible Poisons: any human within 15ft of one of the Citizens Demon takes 1 radiant damage per turn, which stacks between the three of them. Any location they visit is similarly poisoned, and anyone sleeping in that place must test CON or take d3 radiant damage on waking. They have lead apartments of their own constructed in the barracks, which protects the soldiers from the taint. They are generally deployed without support for this reason.
Their constructed bodies do not heal, and must be repaired. Each Citizens Demon heals a single point of damage per day if they can make it back to the Barracks.
Officer-Chief Prymn, the Republican
There are many officers and NCOs among the Imperial soldiers of Rope 23, but Prymn is their elected chief. She was chosen for tutoring by the city pragmatists at a young age, and, if she survives this posting, expects to join their ranks on her return to the capital.
She has stats as an Imperial Soldier, except that she has HD6 and her sword attacks are Vorpal.
Prymn is very tall, nearly 8ft. She has enormous pale eyes, and is invisible to anyone she can lock eyes with - she can only do this to one person per round, but that person can only attack her if they look away and make themselves effectively blind. The effect is something like a visual hallucination, and is accompanied by headaches and a weird buzzing in the head.
Soldiers under her direct personal command (up to 20 of them) deal 3x crit damage in combat instead of 2x.
The meat of her body, and her blood, are deadly poison. Anyone consuming either must save CON or die, suffering 2d8 poison damage on a success.
If she ever finds herself in melee with the Red Team she kills d3 of them per turn, without needing to roll - simply narrate how she tears them to pieces.
Prymn has been using the telegraphic equipment inside the barracks to coordinate with the incoming Imperial army group. If she is slain, or the equipment is destroyed, that arrival will be delayed by one further week.
The Citizens
The Lantern Bearers
A strange troupe of citizens who wear fabric and paper masks, and sally out from the apartments at night to hunt the Snake-Men in the worker districts. Their preferred methods are to slip across the various no man's lands and barricades by stealth, enter into homes and communal halls, and slit the throats of sleeping defenders. They use cold-white chemical lanterns to illuminate their work, which is how they go their name. Once they've killed everyone they get to work with cleavers and saws and dismember the bodies for meat, which they then take back to the Apartments for distribution. In the aftermath, the Snake-Men will discover a room soaked in blood, but no bodies anywhere. The Lantern Bearers have become a horror story or bogeyman in the worker districts, and some believe that they cannot be slain with mortal weapons.
HD 1+1, medium cleavers, light knives, light armour, combat drugs as Citizens.
The Lantern Bearers get +2 to stealth and ambush rolls. While fighting under the light of the chemical lanterns they deal fear damage equal to their physical damage, and get +1 to hit and to damage rolls per Lantern-Bearer attacking the same target.
For every successful sortie they kill 2d6 people and delay the starvation of the Citizen Apartments by a single day. They attempt this every night, with a 3 in 6 chance of success. A failure on this roll indicates that their infiltration was unsuccessful, or that they are stopped by a patrol in the street. They are more likely to run than to stand and fight, and will only be conclusively beaten if confronted by elite troops or the PCs.
When individual Lantern-Bearers are slain their masks are taken back by the survivors, so that a new citizen can take their place. There are 14 of them. If they are ever slain to a man they will not return.
Truth-Teller Cresca
Cresca is the leader of the local Victim Cult. He claims that no one alive knows more about the House of the Snake than he does, and he might be right. He guards the entryway, hidden among the Citizen Apartments, to the long forgotten underworld that is called the House of the Basilisk, and is one of only two people in the city who knows of its existence. Cresca is a tall, strong, fat man who wears the bronze armour of the ancient truth-tellers. He has at his shoulder the royal authority of the King of Snakes.
Stats as Archimime with HD3. In addition, Cresca can ask the following questions, with the listed effects (he can only ask one per turn). He can do this in combat, but will not be able to do this and attack in the same term. All of the following involve a contested CHAR check - Cresca rolls CHAR with a +6.
- What is your name? Make a contested CHAR roll. One a failure, replace your name with 'nameless' on your character sheet, as you realise that you do not have one. This deals 2d6 CHAR damage, but also renders you immune to curses, the Anathema, and makes you invisible and untargetable to angels, demons, and entities.
- What is your purpose? Make a contested CHAR roll. On a failure, you lose any sense of drive or purpose - more accurately, you realise that you never possessed any. You permanently lose access to one of your templates, determined randomly.
- Why do you persist in your struggles? Make a contested CHAR roll. On a failure, you realise that you cannot answer in any way that makes sense. Resolve an attack on yourself with whatever weapon you are carrying - this attack hits automatically, but you should still roll to-hit to see if it crits.
The Workers
Bahk and Proconsul, Berserks
A husband and wife whose two children were killed in the early days of the fighting, and who have since sworn to die in battle. They have forked their tongues and made promises to the old sleeping Demon King Basilisk, their eternal service in exchange for the death of their enemies. Now they lead the resistance in the beleaguered south eastern district, where they oversee attempts to undermine the southern walls of the barracks.
The mining works serve to weaken the walls, but they also draw soldiers out from the relative safety of the barracks, where they can be overwhelmed and slain by the workers and flare children.
HD3, talons (as medium), iron skin (as chain).
Bahk and Proconsul fight together, and are always in the front lines when the soldiers counterattack the mine works. Both are fearless, and make two attacks with their talons, or once against each enemy in range, whichever is higher. They can also talk to snakes, and command their loyalty.
If they are slain their bodies will revive as Basilisk Men (see the Underworld section below) after a day and a night, and slaughter anyone that they encounter.
Penan and Tyr
A brother and sister whose extended family were killed in the early days of the conflict, and who now coordinate the local insurrectionist forces on the western side of the river. Both have received Imperial militia training, and were on track to become citizens before the flare children arrived, and they now put that training to good use organising and overseeing the barricades and patrols. They work well with the Morrigan, and plan to join the flare children if they survive the current fight.
Penan and Tyr have stats as Insurrectionists, but each has 2HD.
If they are slain then the barricades become noticeably less well organised and effective - in addition to any other effects determined by the DM, they are no longer able to stop the nightly raids of the Lantern Bearers, who will now operate with impunity unless slain.
Pastburg the Younger
Actually very old - he was called this to differentiate him from his father around 60 years ago. Pastburg is a holy man, a demon-speaker, one of the ancient clergy of Demon King Basilisk. He believes himself to be the last in the world, and he is probably right.
King Basilisk kills the weak and the strong alike, he is a king of strife and butchery. Pastburg knows the location of the entrance down into the underworld, and he knows the words that will awaken the King, but he will not share either with the PCs unless he absolutely trusts them, which will not come easily. He will also warn you: King Basilisk and his demon army will ravage the world and kill all that they encounter, not just the approaching army group.
Stats as commoner. If he dies be will revive as a Basilisk Man (see the Underworld section below) after a day and a night, and slaughter anyone that he encounters.
The Imperial Army Group
The Imperial Army group is currently d4+2 weeks from arriving at Rope 23. The timeframe for their arrival can be adjusted by action in the city, as explained above.
The army group is composed of sixty four thousand Imperial Soldiers with supplies and baggage train, fourteen thousand Imperial Militia, three thousand Espatiers in four great balloon craft, eight great drone engines, and six hundred bombards.
When they arrive they will spend three days bombing Rope 23 to rubble, and then switch on the battle drone and advance with the soldiers, slaughtering anyone still alive in the ruins.
THE HOUSE OF THE BASILISK
The entrance is hidden among the citizen apartments - it has been bricked over with the flooring of one of the towers, in local white stone.
Beneath the floor is an antechamber of lead and iron, with a hole in the roof that you drop down into. Leading from the antechamber is passage carved into living stone, and descending down into blackness. Inscribed above the door frame, in the ancient tongue of the Snake Men, is the following:
Turn back!
Turn back if your skin is warm and your breast swells with love and gentle feeling; this place is not for you. Turn back if you love the sun and the wind; this place is not for you. Turn back if you harbour ambitions in war, governance, or poetry; this place is not for you.
Turn back!
This place is for the dead and the cold and the mad and the forgotten. This place is for dust-eaters and clay-eaters. This place is for birds and this place is for spirits.
Turn back!
If you descend down into the rock tunnel, you will find that it terminates after 200ft in a small room with a pit in its centre. It is unnaturally cold - you will see your breath - not at all like the arid flatlands air above.
The pit drops down 500 feet. It is marked with ancient handholds which will allow an adventurer access - automatic for a skilled climber, a STR test to one without that specialism. Climbing back up incurs the same tests and additionally d3 fatigue.
At the bottom of the pit you will find the House of the Basilisk.
The House is a lightless, black-clay labyrinth of small rooms and passages. The floors are thick with bird shit, and every so often you will find birds roosting quietly in the corners of the rooms. You don't traverse the labyrinth like a traditional dungeon - you spend time penetrating into it to see if you can locate the various Great Houses within.
Each time you penetrate further, roll on the table below to see what you find. Every time you roll on this table you advance one 'room'.
Each of the great houses has a score that ticks down as you penetrate into the labyrinth. When this score hits zero, the great house is the next thing that you encounter. After you locate specific great houses for the first time, its score is halved on further any further excursions, as you begin to get your bearings.
Backtracking through the labyrinth requires an INT check for every five rooms you have penetrated. If all of these checks succeed, you remember the way out. If any of these checks are failed, you lose your way. Move five rooms closer and take another INT check at -2, repeating the process. It is completely possible to lose your way badly enough that you will never emerge.
Taking adventurer precautions like chalk on the walls or balls of string mitigates this, but the guardians of the houses will not like this, as described below. They also don't like light, which is forbidden in the halls.
Time passes strangely beneath the earth. For every Great House that you enter and rest in, a day passes on the surface.
All Great Houses will offer food and lodging for their guests. You don't sleep down here (everything is sort of half asleep anyway), but you can rest and doze on divans and cushions. For each Great House that you pass through without eating, you incur 1 fatigue - you can sustain yourself on rations from the surface, or the food of the underworld that will be offered when you rest. For each underworld meal that you eat, you gain 10ft of darkvision (resets when you exit the underworld), and roll the INT checks to find your way back out at -1. If you give food from the surface to and of the dead down here you will awaken their memories of life, and set them immediately to trying to find the exit. All dead know that they should not eat food from the surface, but none of them can resist.
Smuggling surface food in, or underworld food out, is against the laws of this place - the guardians will attempt to prevent it. If you do mange to sneak underworld food out, you will discover that it turns to precious gems on the surface. Each is worth 200s per ration of food transmuted this way.
Traversing the House of the Basilisk
Roll to discover what you find as you penetrate further in. Add +1 to this roll per Great House you have so far encountered. The next room:
- 1 - 10: Lightless, tiny clay rooms and twisting passages, all alike. The soft cooing of birds in the blackness, and coughing and soft weeping from further in.
- 11: You come across a single Clay-Eater, sitting against the clay walls in the darkness. They do not remember how to talk, but will follow you, attempting to make the right noises with their mouth. They will also attempt to grab and hold exposed skin for your warmth. Harmless, and lapses back into torpor quickly. If you feed them food from the surface they will start to remember who they are, and run weeping in the direction that they believe holds the exit.
- 12: A room packed tightly full of birds of all sizes and kinds. If you wish to walk across the floor here you will need to crush some. They put up no resistance, and make no sound as they die. On a 1 in 6 the room contains a single huge terror bird, absolutely docile, facing the wall.
- 13: 2d6 Clay-Eaters, huddled together in the centre of a small boxy space, whispering nonsense in the blackness in urgent voices. They ignore you completely.
- 14: Two bloody human heads and one decapitated body. Each head is trying to convince the body that it belongs to them and not to the other. The body cannot hear them, and beats at the clay walls with its gory fists.
- 15: 4 Clay-Eaters playing a board game with their fingers in the dust. They are oddly cheerful, and will invite you to play. At stake is a still-warm headless bird.
- 16: 3d10 silent, staring Clay-Eaters jammed so tightly into the tunnels that passing them is not possible. You could kill them and walk over their bodies, you might also convince them to lie down and allow this, otherwise you will need to backtrack - subtract 1 from the 'scores' of the Great Houses inside of adding it.
- 17: You encounter one of the minor guardians of the House, a Cockerel Man. If you are carrying light or marking the walls he will screech in rage and run off into the warrens around you, returning in the next room with d6 of his fellows to punish you. If you are not breaking any rules he will instead step aside and giggle as he tells you of your likely fate in the underworld.
- 18: Three Cockerel Men killing time by ordering 2d6 Clay-Eaters to perform meaningless tasks: currently recounting the alphabet backwards, and walking in arbitrarily straight lines. The Cockerel Men are noticeably cruel and punitive, and the Clay-Eaters are absolutely submissive. None of them remember much of the alphabet. If you are breaking the rules the guardians will attack you, otherwise they will demand that you join in with the Clay-Eaters. They are threatening, bullying, and overbearing, but they will not actually press the issue if you refuse them.
- 19: A Basilisk Man, one of the ancient demons of the earth. Unlike the Cockerel Men, Basilisks are stern, fair minded, honourable, and largely merciful. If you are breaking the rules they will explain this, and give you a chance to make good. If you persist in flouting the authority of the Kings of the Underworld, they will fight you to the death.
- 20: A pair of Basilisk Men, with the same mien as above. They are lovers as well as police partners, and are currently in the midst of a vicious little spat. They each take any show of kindness or leniency in the other as an excuse to expound to you, the party, about how standards down here are slipping badly. Both are easy to enrage, but will never actually harm one another - if they get really heated they will agree that pulping some idiot adventurers might be a good way to let off some steam.
- 21: A royal hunting party, 2d2 Basilisk Men and d6 Cockerel Men. They will be carry the flag of one or another of the Great Kings, and will consider you prey, to be hunted without mercy and carried home to the kitchens.
- 22: A Great Hero from an elder age. She was trapped down here centuries ago, and still searches for the exit with a calm presence of mind and great elan. If you can bring her there she will join you in whatever struggle you wish. She is a great lover and a reciter of poetry, and is armed with ancient bronze panoply and spear. She is a D Template Old Hero. A second result of 22 will be her lover, another D Template Old Hero. A third will be their lover, etc.
- 23: A royal war party: 2d6 Basilisk Men in full regalia, off to fight in ritual combat against another party of the same type. They won't care about you unless you're breaking the rules - they'll even invite you to come and watch the fight. They have played these roles a hundred thousand times before.
- 24: A great storage pit - a room bigger than you can see the edges of, it must stretch on for miles. It is packed completely with a carpet of whimpering, whispering Clay-Eaters. Bands of Cockerel Men walk across the surface stamping down on faces and limbs, and breaking them with iron clubs, such that more of the volume can be made use of. This room takes an hour to cross. The Cockerel Men will watch you in hostile silence as you do so.
- 25: A incubator room. Built with iron walls, unlike every other surface in this place. It contains 2d6 Firefly eggs. All Fireflies that hatch in this room will instinctively know the shortest route out of the underworld. They will also immediately begin the work of falling in true love with one another (or with you, if they like the cut of your jib!).
- 26: Royal Procession. Either King Basilisk, accompanied by 2d10 Basilisk Men and 2d10 Cockerel Men, Queen Moon, without her great hounds, or King Sun, alone. They will be on official courting business. See below for details.
Clay-Eater
The miserable dead, who cannot truly die. Something about this place sustains them in a nightmare of dust and clay and darkness. Many of them have been here for thousands of years, and now have little semblance of sanity or even sentient thought. If you dismember them, the individual pieces will wriggle and crawl around until found by the Basilisk Men and sewn back together.
Cockerel Men
Lesser inhabitants of the underworld, short, thin men with the heads and talons of cocks. They are cruel, stupid, and vindictive, but also very strong. They carry spiked iron cudgels, and enjoy bullying and harassing those too weak to fight back.
HD4, Iron Club (as heavy) + peck (as light), unarmoured but 2DR against mundane weapons. Movement as human, disposition: downtrodden, beleaguered, underpaid, put-upon. If they ever get to the surface and see a sunrise all of this changes: they are immediately filled with an immense joy and wonder, and a great love for all people, which is a shame, because if they're on the surface there's a good chance they are there to bring about the end of the world.
Like everyone else down here, you can't really kill them permanently, though you can cut them to pieces to render them a non threat. This is not true outside the underworld.
Basilisk Men
Demon retainers of the King of the Underworld. Stern, giant-statured men and women, who carry great bronze swords, and whose gaze turns those who challenge them to stone. Also called the breakers of champions.
HD8, Bronze Sword (2d8), heavy armour and 3DR against mundane weapons, petrifying gaze.
Their petrifying gaze stuns you for as long as they can maintain eye contact. If this is for more than about about seconds, your muscles begin to freeze up permanently: test CON, with a -1 for each additional ten seconds, or be frozen rigid and effectively slain.
Like everyone else down here, you can't really kill them permanently, though you can cut them to pieces to render them a non threat. This is not true outside the underworld.
The Great Houses
Each of the Great Houses is a self-contained manse of fantastic size, with a functioning kitchen, sleeping quarters, guest houses, gardens, great halls, and other niceties. Each is larger than the next. Their layouts are dreamlike and semifluid - it is hard not to lose your way through them without an escort.
All Great Houses are sacred ground, and no violence is to be done there, but you or by your hosts and their forces. Duels and other contests are an exception. If they deem it necessary the Lords of the Houses may have you thrown across their thresholds such that you can be killed by the guards.
The Great House of the Labourers (depth d6+1)
The Great House of the Labourers is reserved for those pious men and women who worked the fields and the land, and who never harboured ill-feeling for their betters. Unlike the miserable Clay-Eaters, they rest in comfortable apartments and cushioned dormitories, and stoke the burners and wait the tables of the other Great Houses. There are hundreds of thousands of them, and their House stretches off in all directions. You think that it would take you a lifetime to fully map its rooms.
They have stats as commoners, but they cannot truly die. If you begin dismembering people they will run to find the guardians and bring their vengeance down on you.
Light is permitted in the great houses, and the Labourers here will feed you and let you rest among them. You will be given a single ration apiece - mostly bread, or hard but tasty fruit. There is no lord of this house.
The Great House of the Warriors (depth d6+3)
The Great House of the Warriors was built for the great immortal armies of the House of the Snake. The dead here live in luxurious appointments as befits their noble profession, and practice their skill at arms with the heroes who venture down into the depths.
They have stats as men at arms (HD 1+1), and will challenge you to non-lethal contests of skill. If they win they will take your arms from you, and if you win you can have your pick of theirs. The arms of the underworld are +1 bronze weapons: spears, knives, bows, and heavy hacking heavy swords. If you do this more than twice the dead will laughingly declare you and your companions of superior skill, and stop giving away the arms of the Underworld.
When they feed you it will be with two rations apiece - the warriors are permitted meat in addition to their bread, fruit, and wine. There is no Lord of this house.
The Great House of Brother Snake (depth d10+5)
The luxurious palace of Brother Snake, the King of the World. It is a lightless, abandoned ruin, smashed to pieces and looted of its valuables.
There is no hospitality, and no inhabitants in the palace. Birds roost silently in the empty rooms.
In the great forecourt lies the body of a giant man (at least ten feet tall), nude, and gorily dismembered. The head is missing, and a great bronze crown is laid on the earth where it would lie. There is far too much blood, even for a corpse this size. The meat is in a state of perfect preservation, and will never rot.
PCs encountering the corpse for the first time take 2d8 fear damage. If they touch or otherwise disturb the body they are cursed for the rest of their lives to take double damage from all sources.
The Great House of the Noble Demons (depth d10+10)
The Great House of the so-called Noble Demons; the Basilisk Men, their Cockerel Men retainers, and the great heroes who have ventured beneath the earth and who enjoy their hospitality.
A richly appointed and raucous house. The demons and heroes are fond of strong drink, and of violent games, and will challenge you to death bouts, knowing full well that, while they cannot die down here, you certainly can. If you refuse you will be ridiculed and loudly jeered at, but not harmed - no one would really expect you to take a fight like this at such disadvantage, and these are tests and provocations.
If you accept, the demons will sober up a bit and explain to you what the stakes are. If you are determined to go through with it, then one of the Basilisk Men will fight you to the death. If they win, your meat is prize enough. If you win, the Basilisk Man will accompany you back to the service and serve you for a year - they will also endure the relentless and very rude teasing of their comrades.
If one of you defeats a Basilisk Man this way, then the others will cease to extend challenges. None of them want to spend a year in service to anyone but their lord.
You will be served 5 rations apiece, in great good cheer: bloody meats, strong wine, rare fruits, sugar and sweetbread. They even have sparkling water, somehow. There is no Lord of this house.
The Great House of the King of the Underworld (depth d20+10)
The rich and beautiful House of King Basilisk, where he sleeps and waits for the end of the world.
A palace so large you would never find its edges. The King sits in state on his throne of bone. He is sleeping, and waiting for the end of the world. On a 1 in 20 he is actually up and about, sleepwalking and sleep-courting Queen Moon, which he shouldn't really be doing, but his dreams are full of lust and they torture his mind.
He can only REALLY be woken up with the ancient phrase that Pastburg the Younger knows, a meaningless set of sounds whose meaning has been lost to time.
His house, which is full of demons in elaborate court dress, will receive you in lavish style, but if they suspect you are trying to wake him they will all immediately attempt to kill you to prevent this. They like their idle days down here just fine - they don't want to campaign above to extinguish all life. If you are in his throne room, this means that you will have to fight through 4d6 Basilisk Men to get close enough to whisper the words into his great ear.
If you don't try to wake him they will each provide you with 10 rations apiece: rare birds, strange jellies and confits, the tears of heroes, the eggs of extinct animals, towering, impossible pastries, the best pasta you've ever eaten, etc.
If you wake the King...
He will begin to martial his forces and begin preparation for the destruction of the surface world. The muster will take three days and three nights, during which time he will also put aside his longings for Queen Moon, with the heaviest possible heart. He is, at the end of things, a man who believes in duty.
If he is informed of the death of his brother he will halt the preparations for d6 days to mourn and brood and wail and weep.
The Demon Army of King Basilisk is composed of ten thousand Basilisk Men and ten thousand Cockerel Men. The dead cannot follow him to the surface, and will remain below. If he emerges into the city he and his troops will begin to kill everything living in the vicinity, and to poison the land such that it will never again support life.
If they encounter the Imperial Army Group they will fight them and most likely be destroyed, at enormous cost to the Imperial troops.
If King Basilisk is slain, the dream of his underworld will fall to pieces, the dead will die, the Houses fall, etc.
King Basilisk
A large and very handsome man with a long, oiled black beard and moustaches, and heavy bronze armour and jewellery. He smells strongly of blood.
Once awakened, he will never blink nor close his eyes again. If you meet his gaze you are slain with no save. He will warn you of this - he has no great wish to destroy you as long as you remain beneath the earth.
Stats as Cthonian Princeling, without the Bow of Intention.
The Great House of Queen Moon (depth d20+20)
The Great House of Queen Moon, out from which she sallies nightly to chase after her lover, King Sun. From the outside the house looks like a cyclopean box of solid steel, with a single black door sized for a giant.
As you arrive there will be a 1 in 20 chance that King Basilisk will be posted up at the door with a royal procession, hoping to catch her on her way out; hoping to compliment her; hoping to catch her eye, to see the corner of her mouth move; to watch her body move, the hear her voice.
If he is there he will not let you enter under any circumstances. You will need to kill him or turn back.
Queen Moon and her Sun-Catching Hounds
Queen Moon is a giant woman with a fey and terrible face. Such is her beauty that to look upon her is to love her - save CHAR to avoid this fate. Those who do not love her must save CHAR to attack her - if they fail, the are seized with terror and horror and cannot bring themselves the strike.
She wears silver, and her face and hands are stained with blood. In her hands are the great hunter's bow with which she will pierce the heart of her quarry, and the shackles she will bind him with if she catches him. She holds a glamour - if the PCs are stupid enough to try her, she will reveal her true nature.
Her great bow hits for 2d10 and is additionally Vorpal in her hands.
She does not care at all about the fate of the world, King Basilisk, the approaching army group, the struggles of the House of the Snake, or the PCs - all she cares about is capturing King Sun. If you can help her in this, she will grant you any boon you wish.
She is only in her house during the day, and she is the only one in it. From the outside it is a gigantic steel box. Inside, a great, empty, vaulted room, and a throne of iron. She will offer you food and drink herself - hunted 'game', the meat of great heroes that she slays with her terrible bow, cooked on spits on a rude fire that burns piles of bones. You may take up to ten rations of meat - she cares not how much. If you bring it to the surface it remains what it is: the meat of humans. Her hounds, each 20 feet tall, sit about her throne, gnawing on scraps.
The Sun-Catching Hounds are Medraut, Judas, Brutus, and Griffith.
They are, in fact, First Humans, which Queen Moon has somehow cut out from their armour and domesticated(?). Beneath their panoply they look more like scaleless and featherless dinosaurs than people, except for the hands, feet, teeth, and eyes.They have 20HD, and fight with their hands: as +3 gigantic weapons, x2 per turn. Armour is as leather, and being within 20ft of them subjects you to 1 radiant damage per turn. This goes up to d3 radiant damage if in melee distance.
They move by crawling on their long, long limbs, and can cover ground about five times faster than a human can this way. Their dispositions are as hungry but well trained dogs.
If the hounds were ever bought to the surface they would sink into the earth due to their great weight and density.
The Great House of the Laughing Lord Sun (depth: 2d20 +20)
The Great House of the Laughing Lord Sun, where he comes to rest during the night, and to hide from Moon's endless pursuit. Does he love the Queen? Does he tease her? Does he fear her? Impossible to say.
The House is a perfectly circular mirrored pool into which the Lord steps each night. Should he be present when he returns he will invite you inside - he is an impeccable host. There are thousands and thousands of giants corpses and skeletons heaped beside the pool. All of them look like King Sun and Queen Moon.
Every so often these corpse piles seem to softly shift of their own accord. If you disturb them in any way you will be attacked by d3 of the carrion that writhe within - see the Royal Maggot entry below. Every time you do so, you provoke another d3 maggots.
If you do join the Lord in his pool, you will find yourself in a vast, subterranean nothingness which houses a table set for two. He apologises for the oversight - he was not expecting guests. The food he provides is simple fare - warmly-baked bread, good fruit, clean water, golden oil. If taken out of the underworld it remains what it is: good and simple food and drink.
He knows all about the situation on the surface, but it doesn't interest him. He likes singing and dancing, and will laugh happily in you display skill in either. He does not give favours to mortals - he has seen how those stories end.
Any who enter the pool emerge with their features mirrored on their bodies. This is very upsetting for people who know you, but has no further effects. In addition, any who have eaten the food of Lord Sun cannot thereafter be blinded without physically cutting out the eyes.
The Laughing Lord Sun
Such is his beauty that to look upon him is to love him - save CHAR to avoid this fate.
He is a tall man dressed in simple linen. He holds nothing. He is youthful and old at once. Upon his brow is a burning mock-sun; its light cures all illness.
He wears a glamour - if the PCs are stupid enough to insult him in his home, he will reveal his true nature.
Royal Maggot
A fat, pale worm about size of a horse. The Royal Maggots can speak, and will attempt to confuse and bluff you with kind words, protestations, and apologies as they devour you whole.
HD8, grinder-mouth as gigantic weapon + a free grapple with its whipping worm body, armour as leather. Speed: as human, disposition: horror hunger, good sense of (pitch black) humour.
If the Moon catches the Sun...
He will escape from her in time for the dawn.
If she slays him, he will revive in time for the dawn.
If you helped her to accomplish either of these things she will still owe you a boon. She keeps to her word.
Grudge these immortals not their terrible passions.
