I'm slowly pulling together my first properly large and complex dungeon as a sort of capstone to the Barony content that I've been collecting recently. The basic layout is here, and I currently thinking about building it out around several major set pieces.
The first of these, found in the dungeon strata, is the Mimic Hell, a torture room built by one of the demons that King Magda had imprisoned beneath his tower. Others upcoming are the Tombs of the Serpent Men, The White Ape Monastery, and the Sanctum of the Law-Eaters, but all things in their place and a time for everything under the sun.
The Mimic Hell acts as the 'boss' for the first level of the dungeon.
A bit about Mimic Hells here; basically they are something that some demons build compulsively to try to bring a tiny portion of the horror of the Material Hell into existence in the present. Their existence is a fireside horror story for most adventurers, and they are infamously cruel, trap-infested, lethal, and devoid of treasure.
This one has been hastily constructed over a couple of days, by the demon Misery, with the help of the band of thieves who have entered into its service. It is a crude maze of cheap, rotted timber boards, nailed together haphazardly, and of poor enough construction that the 'walls' don't actually prevent a determined person from passing - they can be knocked down, punched through, or pried apart without much issue.
The twisting corridors are extremely narrow, and the whole space is poorly lit in blood red by lanterns whose glass apertures have been painted with the gore of butchered Starlings.
Almost every corridor is crudely trapped. Nothing tricky or mechanical, this will mostly be punji stakes on the walls and floors, torn and jagged metal, broken glass on the floor, false surfaces that fall away, shit and oil smeared over things to make them poisonous, and possibly a few simple, torsioned pop-up spikes around the place. It should read less Indiana Jones and more SAW, Silent Hill, The Valley of Defilement.
There are also Evil Mirrors installed throughout the maze. The reflective surfaces have been transformed into extensions of the insane will of the demon, and give false images that confuse and demoralise those trying to navigate the space.
Finally, two Chaos Eaters patrol the corridors and attack all that they find.
There is no treasure in the Mimic Hell, but Misery has built it on top of the entrance to the next level, so adventurers who wish to proceed will need to navigate it to do so. Misery itself sits in the centre in the stolen and mutilated body of a Starling corporal, taunting and screaming and laughing at the PCs as they struggle through the gauntlet.
In game:
The corridors are 5ft wide and open at the top, with some that are 2.5ft wide.
The whole edifice smells of sewage, rust, and blood. The light in the maze is low and blood red, shifting shadows, jagged, backlit shapes, and bad reflections.
The Maze:
It is not actually solvable (all routes lead into dead ends), but it will take a good amount of exploration to realise this. The broad idea is that the PCs are slowly breaking their way through this horrible environment, possibly split up (because the ways are narrow), hunted by the Chaos Eaters, and under mental attack by Misery at the centre. It's designed to feel worse/more dangerous than it actually is - Misery and the Chaos Eaters are the only serious threat in the place, and it is vulnerable to Gordian Knot solutions like acrobat-ing around above the corridors, or just burning the fucking thing down. Attrition over time is a major theme.
Any wall can be torn down with an easy STR check. This will make noise, and may trigger traps or expose you to damage; see below.
Traps:
Many false surfaces designed to give way into pits of stakes and jagged metal. Save, or take d4 piercing damage.
Many walls are festooned with spikes. If you try to tear one of these down, you must save DEX or take d3 piercing damage. You can only save for this damage if the spikes are on the side of the wall that you can see.
Broken glass is scattered across the floor throughout the maze. It has no effect on an adventurer with boots on, but if someone falls on it (or if they are grappled on it) they take d2 damage. Heavy armour wearers ignore this damage entirely.
Some sections of the labyrinth feature caltrops and other pieces of twisted, sharpened metal scattered across the floor. These work through boots. An adventurer can traverse the area safely by moving at half speed, but if they choose to move faster, fall over, or are grappled on the surface, they take d3 damage. Heavy armour wearers reduce this damage to 1.
Trip wires trigger noise-makers, or simple torsion traps. Noise makers will draw the Chaos-Eaters. Torsion traps can be avoided with a DEX save, otherwise they deal d6 damage.
Taking piercing or slashing damage from any of the traps in the Mimic Hell forces a CON save - on a failure the wound is infected and pre-septic. All death and dismemberment rolls count as one worse until you can get treatment, and this penalty stacks with further failed saves.
Mirrors:
There are four Evil Mirrors in the maze. If you can see your reflection in them, Misery can see you and target you with its magic. They also give you a bad reflection; things happen slightly too early or too late, expressions are wrong; there are flashes of you and your companions dead; all the normal spooky mirror stuff. If you can see your reflection in them, your roll to hit at -1, and take +1 fear damage from all sources.
If Misery can see you in its mirrors, it can direct the Chaos Eaters to attack you at its leisure. Misery is intelligent, and will generally do this at the worst possible time. It will also enjoy setting both on you at once.
Demons are notoriously confused and fearful in the presence of mundane mirrors, and they sometimes build Evil Mirrors (with methods unknown) to inflict that same confusion and horror on humans. It is conjectured that the petty disorder shown in the glass is 'natural' to the minds of demons, as the perfect reflections of our mirrors are broadly 'natural' to us.
Dead Starlings:
About 15 of them scattered through the maze, obviously killed by traps or torn up by the Chaos Eaters. A few of them have clearly ended their own lives by falling on swords or cutting their own throats. Many of the corpses have their bowels cut open to furnish the traps around them with filth.
The bodies have good quality weapons on them, but the armour is damaged beyond use. One was carrying the Starling's standard, which is dirty and bloodstained but still intact. This will be worth money to the Baronial Agents at the surface, and its recovery will put any surviving Starlings in your service.
Chaos Eaters:
Each turn that PCs spend in the Mirror Hell, roll a d10. +1 if they are in heavy armour, +2 if they are pulling down walls, +10 if they trigger a noisemaker. On a 10 or more, one of the Chaos Eaters has found you - it attacks with surprise, bursting through a wall or out of the floor. On a 15 or more, both find you at the same time (provided that they are both still alive).
Chaos Eaters are giant (maybe 9 feet long) centipede-like vermin. Some are actually centipedes, some look like fluke worms, flat worms, millipedes, etc. They all have horrible circular mouths ringed with grinding teeth.
They have HD4, attack for d10, armour as chain, speed as a horse, disposition of ambush predators. If they hit you with their attack they will get a free grapple attempt with their long, sinuous body. If they crit you while you are grappled, they deal triple damage instead of double, as their grinding teeth attach to a limb or head and get to work.
Chaos Eaters are beings of Law, grown in their squirming billions in the future and then seeded back through the timeline to prune it of its complexities. When they attack you, you are cursed for the remainder of the combat - any hit and damage rolls above the dice average count as -1, which stacks each time you are cursed. You don't get a corresponding +1 for low rolls; this is a curse, and Law can be evenly distributed once the cosmic battle is won.
Misery:
Misery has possessed the dead and mutilated body of a Starling, and sits at the heart of the Mimic Hell, guarding the passage to the Underworld. It screams constantly and horribly. Misery will not move until it is actually discovered by one of the PCs, in which event it will try to kill them using the Starling's body. It prefers mental attacks to physical ones.
If Misery can see you, it will try to force its way into your mind and leave splinters of its own horrible intelligence in there. This magical attack works through Evil Mirrors and by normal POV. PCs can save CHAR to avoid, but they save with disadvantage if they can hear the demon screaming. It does d4 psychic damage, and gives an 1 in 6 chance that Misery controls the actions of this PC next turn, which goes up by one with each previous failure. Misery cannot truly reproduce itself this way, it can only puppet multiple bodies - there is still only a single mind.
The body that Misery puppets is a Starling veteran, HD1, clad in chain and holding a long steel needle in each hand. It is banged up/mutilated already, and has 4 HP. The needles are traditional/ceremonial weapons for demons, and not especially practical when wielded by humans - they hit for d4 and their awkwardness means that they have -1 to hit. It will drop when reduced to 0 HP, but the pieces of the body will continue to move and animate. They are incapable of attacking in this state.
Misery itself is HD6, disposition as torturer, cannot be attacked in the normal ways. It has 10 HP (which represent its mental hold on its own instantiation), and can be damaged in the following ways:
- Reducing the HP the body of the Starling soldier it has inhabited to 0: -1 HP
- Spending a turn pounding or stomping the writhing pieces of the body into slurry (you hit automatically): -1 HP.
- Pour holy water on the corpse that it puppets (only works once): -3 HP
- Spend a round forcing it to look at its own reflection in a mundane mirror: -3 HP
- Spend a round screaming at it from 5 ft away, louder than it screams. This will require at least three people, because Misery can scream really loudly. -4 HP
Basically you need to give it a bad enough panic attack that it can no longer keep its mind together. The idea is that you CAN do this by just wailing on it, but this is not efficient, and you will be vulnerable to its possession attacks the whole time. The specific weaknesses can be discovered in King Mag's library on the surface, but all adventurers know that demons hate mirrors and holy water.
Once Misery is brought to 0 HP, it will have been rendered permanently incapable of coherent thought, and thus incapable of action. It will be as though it were gone forever.
Side note: all angels and demons are banished by giving them sensory overloads/schizophrenia/enough depression that they no longer wish to act. They are intelligences after all. Individuals entities have different things that trigger them. They are also unable to act against the letter of a contract, in the classical way.
There will be a MAP here soon.
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