The Total Theatre of the Petty King - The Basement

 

First floor here. Second and third floors here.

The Basement. Click to make it clearer!

The entrance into the basement is via the stairwell in the Scullery on the first floor, or either of the rubbish chutes. Any adventurer staring into these black apertures will feel the malice within, and know that they are portals down into something nightmarish. The Basement level counts as dungeon depth 2 throughout.

The air in this place is close, warm, wet, and violently, gaggingly foul. All rolls to hit while down here are made at -1, and you are exposed to a random disease (not the Anathema). It is utterly dark.

Unlike the manor house above, the lower levels are actively teeming with hostile life. For every fifteen minutes you are exploring down here, roll on the following table. 

• 1 - 6: silence, blackness, filth, a sense of suffocation. Your light wavers and flickers. 
• 7 - 14: Something moving stealthily, close by, then more than one thing. Further rolls on this table are at +2.
• 15-16: 2d4 Verminous Things crawl from the darkness and attack you, vicious and totally silent.
• 17-18: Your torchlight falls across 3d10 Hunter Maggots who have picked up your scent and begun to tail you through the filth. 
• 19: d2 Corroded Iron Manikins slowly stand up in the muck. They are unarmed, and will try to bludgeon you to death with their hands.
• 20: d10 Violent Corpses run at you out of the blackness. They have found you now. Further rolls on this table are at +3. 
• 21+: 2d10 Violent Corpses run at you out of the blackness. Everything ends in horror. Everyone takes d4 fear damage, and further rolls on this table are at +4. 

Room Key

1. Basement. An enormous stone-floored storage space supported by vaulted arches. The floor is covered in about two centimetres of filthy, stinking water, brown/red in colouration. There are hundreds of crates stacked down here, with various ruined goods inside them. Many have been smashed open, and debris floats among the filth. The two X-marked squares on the map show where the chutes empty from the first floor. At these zones are large mounds of putrefying food waste, mixing in with the foulness of the floor. 
2. Kennels. Locked. Stone walls with wooden kennelling built into the walls. Whatever is left of Magda's Menagerie will be here, and in this place they will fight to the death. The tunnel to the West leads out onto the grounds. 
3. Machine Shop. Heavy iron tables covered in tools for grinding, crimping, cutting, and hammering. There are a pair of heavy Bolt Cutters here (2 slots). Gears of difference sizes  and heavy chains festoon the walls, and filthy water laps at the table legs. 
4. Control Room. Bare stone walls, and an iron control panel. There are three switches labelled KENNEL (open/closed, currently open), FOUNTAIN (on/off, currently off), and OBSERVATORY (open/closed, currently open). KENNEL controls a portcullis that seals off the tunnel to the grounds. FOUNTAIN activates the fountain in the Games Room on level one. The petroleum that it pumps out will be contaminated with the same disease as the Basement. OBSERVATORY opens and shuts the aperture that the telescope in the Observatory looks out of. 
5. Cell A. Locked. Inside are 28 dead bodies, jammed together and putrefying into one another. Opening this door inflicts d4 fear damage on the one who opens it. 
6. Cell B. Locked. Inside are 24 dead bodies, jammed together and putrefying into one another. Opening this door inflicts d4 fear damage on the one who opens it. 
7. Cell C. Locked. Inside are 30 dead bodies, jammed together and putrefying into one another. Opening this door inflicts d4 fear damage on the one who opens it. 
8. Changing Room. Ankle deep filth and bloody water. Beneath the scum you can make out the fine mosaic flooring: young and vigorous bodies playing and combat sports. The frescoes on the walls and ceiling continue the theme. Contains 4 Verminous Things, who will attack you if you enter. 
9. Changing Room. Ankle deep filth and bloody water. Beneath the scum you can make out the fine mosaic flooring: an artist and a poet engaging in a series of song duels, while their anthropomorphised souls embrace one another. The frescoes on the walls and ceiling continue the theme. Empty. 
10. Bathing. A large, tiled bath that takes up the entire centre of the room. The floor is flooded with filthy, bloody water, and the bath area itself is stuffed with 108 dead bodies, jammed together and putrefying into one another. The mosaic floors are impossible to see behind the muck, but the wall and ceiling frescoes seem to show a classical 'chaos scene'. Every minute spent in this room inflicts 1 fear damage. 
11. Hot Room. Would have once operated as a sauna, and still includes several cast iron ovens and rotting wooden benches. There are 48 bodies sprawled across the tiles, in various stages of decay. Filthy water covers the floor, which, alongside the walls and ceiling, are unadorned. Every minute spent in this room inflicts 1 fear damage. 
12. Cold Plunge. A deep, tiled pool. The floor is flooded with filthy, bloody water, and the pool area itself is stuffed with 210 dead bodies, jammed together and putrefying into one another. The mosaic floors are impossible to see behind the muck, but the wall and ceiling frescoes show a sunset on the western sea, saturated in red, gold, and burnished yellow. Every minute spent in this room inflicts 1 fear damage. Additionally contains 8 Verminous Things, who will attack you if you enter. 
13. Ovens. The two great iron furnaces that once heated the water for the baths. Filthy water covers the floor. The room is unadorned, save for a tiny painting on wooden board, that shows a great city burning. Curiously devoid of corpses.
14. Acid Tanks. The three secret doors that lead to this room are simple wooden panels, painted to resemble the stonework and easy to lift away. The room itself contains four large glass tanks full of acid, all of which are red and cloudy. The room itself is unadorned. 

BESTIARY

Violent Corpse. Not undead. There is something terrible and forbidden and suppressed and hideously secret that needs to be expressed, and the Violent Corpses are how that thing is able to express itself. It has to be understood, so it will inflict the Corpses on humans, who will feel something of the horror that they represent. Basically a dead body clumsily animated by a barely-conscious confusion of terror, helplessness, and rage. A single Violent Corpse might incorporate pieces from many different bodies. Most of them are rotten and nearly falling apart. Many of these ones have bound themselves with wire, which is often the only thing holding them together.

HD1(d4), unarmed (1 in 5 will carry spools of steel wire to wrap you in), unarmoured, speed: sprinting human, disposition: psychotic need to express the pain that the gestalt thing puppetting them experienced in life. Otherwise completely mindless. 

Steel wire attacks at -2, but if you are hit with it you lose the use of a random limb (roll a d6, leg, leg, arm, arm, torso, head) until you can untangle it outside of combat, or cut it away with Bolt Cutters or similar. If the wire wraps around your torso, you take 1 damage per turn until it is removed. If it is wrapped around your head/neck, you take 2 damage and 2 fatigue per turn until it is removed. All effects stack. 

Corroded Iron Manikin. As Iron Manikin from the upper levels, but deals a single point of damage to itself if it scores a crit, and has armour as chain instead of as plate.

Hunter Maggot. See here.