Two Rooms, Two Monsters - Chem Pit Burial

Me and Loch recently put together a d666 for genning up monsters. In the flurry of activity that followed, I also ended up chatting briefly with Weird Writer about one and two monster dungeons. This was the inevitable result - it's good sometimes to write up a small dungeon quickly, just to flex the muscles. 

If you would do as I do, write up a quick dungeon with d2 monsters in it, and d4+1 rooms. 

Without further ado:

Chem Pit Burial

No one knows when or how the tradition of chemical burial began. The tombs seem to appear at random across the centuries, emerging in preexisting mourning traditions like an ideational cancer. The pits themselves are in fixed locations, scattered mostly over the southern steppe country (though there are exceptions), and the large ones have hundreds of pits and mausoleums dug into them radially, from a thousand different periods and civilisations. All lead down into the centre of the earth, and all of them are profoundly poisonous to humans. Many are additionally encrusted with strange extremophiles and other chthonic life. The location at the lip of hell is the only thing that the tombs have in common.

This one is unusually small, and very old. Geological activity has cracked the heavy stone ceiling - like many of the truly ancient steppe tombs, it was never constructed with a door. The black, jagged opening reeks of sulphur. 

1. The Tomb

A circular stone room, about 20 ft in diameter, with a circular shaft in its centre. The stone ceiling is only 5ft high, and most humans will be rolling to hit at disadvantage in here. It reeks strongly of ammonia, sulphur, petrol - smell is useless in here. It is dark, except for what light comes in at the narrow crack in the ceiling. It is also unstable - any kind of explosion has a 2 in 6 chance of collapsing the tomb and burying those inside. 

The walls are richly painted with bright red and yellow pigments. The images depict strange, multi-limbed humanoids who seem to be engaged in iconic relations and struggles with one another: debates, wherein one is victorious and the other defeated; combats with the same result; flirtations and seductions; the composition of histories and plays. All of these mosaics show the victor or composer figure illumined with rays of light that come from below. 

It is clear that the floor was once painted too, and a quick study will show that the image was once something like a geometrical labyrinth, but the design has been ruined by tracks that look like mould and crude oil, black and viscous.

The tomb is host to a fruiting corpse, which usually rests against the wall at the furthest point from the light that comes in from the crack in the ceiling. 

In the centre of the room is a 10ft wide circular shaft that drops 10ft downwards. Its walls and floor are painted a uniform, bloody red. Arrayed around its edges are 4 clay urns of curious design. If opened or smashed, each contains:

1. 4d6 Ancient, painted clay coins each worth 100s to a collector. They are submerged in about 20cm of thick black petroleum, which is infected with a random disease.
2. A beautifully made bronze kris knife. Functional as a light slashing weapon, and also worth 1000s to a collector. 
3. Two full dog skeletons. A search will reveal that the neck vertebrae have been crushed.
4. Corpse dust that chokes the room. Not good to breathe. If this happens more than once, save CON each instance past the first, or lose 1 CON permanently.
5. Acid, kept from dissolving the jar with a thin layer of black glass. If you smashed the urn, take d6 acid damage, with a DEX save for half.
6. A small amulet made from the brightly coloured material that accretes at the mouth of the chem pit. It has been carved into the likeness of a smiling human face, and has a hole winnowed into it; it was probably once attached to a leather thong. It is intensely poisonous, and will deadly poison any liquid it is placed inside, dissolving slightly each time (10 uses).

In the bottom of this smaller, interior shaft, near the centre, is the chem pit itself: a jagged, natural opening whose mouth is clogged in luridly bright growths and strange flora.  

2. The Chem Pit

Descends around 15 ft before the walls grow too close together for a human to fit. Covered in brightly coloured growths and clusters of small plants that look like anemones. 

The walls are poisonous - for each turn that you spend touching them with bare skin, save CON or take d6 damage. 

Once you are fully inside the Pit, every turn you spend breathing the gasses that seep up from below gives you +1 CHAR and -1 INT and WIS. This lasts 24 hours, at which point you must save WIS - on a failure, the change is permanent.

Any character who has gained at least 1 point of CHAR this way can perceive the prehuman shadow that lurks in the pit.

BESTIARY

Fruiting Corpse

HD6, bronze kris d6 x4, armour: unarmored, but takes half damage from all sources except fire and explosives, speed: creeps along at half walking speed, disposition: friendly, garrulous, gurgling, but incapable of communication or understanding.

The Corpse is a coagulated mass of burial shroud, biological matter, mould, and a distributed, alien nervous system that has grown from spores that drifted up long ago from the deep hot biosphere at the centre of the planet. It still believes itself to be the original inhabitant of the tomb, one of the incalculably ancient, four-armed humans, and considers death in this place to be a great honour; an honour it will attempt to bestow upon all who enter. 

Drops its four kris knives if slain, each worth 1000s to a collector. 

Prehuman Shadow

HD2, maddening shout, possession, unarmoured but immune to physical damage (may be dispersed by light, see shadow body below), speed: five times human speed in shadows, disposition: skittish, defensive, voyeuristic, murderous. 

Maddening Shout: can SCREAM each turn if it does nothing else - this does d6 fear damage to those who hear it, and deafens them on a failed CON save. It will only do this if it thinks it has been discovered. 

Possession: if in contact with a corpse, it can spend a turn inhabiting the body, after which it can use it as its own. It can also do this with living bodies, but must succeed on a contested CHAR check (it rolls at -1 as it is completely insane and has no real willpower). The Shadow will be ejected from whatever it is piloting if the body touches Holy Water, or if a lantern or other strong light source is shone into the eyes at point blank range.

Shadow Body: The Shadow is invisible to those who have not gained at least one point of CHAR in the pit. It cannot move into light, and will always try to avoid being 'surrounded' by light by retreating down into the chem pit. If strong light (a lantern or torch will work fine) on it directly, or if you splash it with Holy Water, it takes d8 damage, and will flee from you.

This is the mind of the corpse above. It was supposed to journey down into the centre of the earth after death but its fear of the unknown stopped it from descending millennia ago. It is now quite insane, and usually barely conscious, but interlopers in the tomb above will rouse it. With a body of its own it will be able to descend in confidence. It is terrified of the Fruiting Corpse - it knows that corpse is its body, but it also feels the new mind inside, which it senses is a bad copy of itself, and fears as you would fear a Twin Peaks doppelgänger. 

If the players can kill the Fruiting Corpse, they can offer its body to the Shadow, who will possess it and use it to descend into the earth. If one of the players is possessed instead, the Shadow will try to crawl them down into the pit forever. It doesn't mind breaking a few limbs/ribs/skulls to squeeze them through.