Day One of this thing, dungeon23. Done on a fake leather couch beside a snoring dog.
A stairwell down into CTV9.
These notes from my journal:
A pair of sand-giant sisters have uncovered CTV9's uppermost entrance—though they simply set-up an opportunistic 'home' near enough to traveling routes to waylay occasional passerbies, access to the buried building may've either driven them to dig it out further and remain nearby, pay the PC's to enter, or something has spooked them off. However, using their nascent earth-sculpting abilities, they've dug out a trench around the entrance to the place—a solid box of hard metal with a thick door of an ancient make.
No problem opening it—the giants have done that work.
The must is the first thing noticeable—like cracking open a long-sealed casement, the mold is practically decadent piled in crowns along the steps' edges and the dust is an inch thick, absorbing whatever light is cast on it so that the descending steps seem the grey ramp into death, devoid of contrast.
The first floor is the spectral hall, in which things that hardly need to touch the ground exist—spectres, wisps, an eerie colorless community that seems to float through the rooms like the air were water. What is lightest after all, rises. The lightest smells and the lightest bodies. The opening of the door triggers a rush of air that draws a regular torrent of heat from below that gradually lowers in temperature but maintains in current, making discovery of a path down the simple work of licking a finger and holding it up.
That is, if one is intending to go down.
Cool. An entrance and an initial sensation. Now, as we move forward, I'd like to establish some scene and characteristic of each level, so that each feels distinguished and each threshold is in some way preserved. What is preventing denizens from going up? And what is preventing them from going down?
Given the PC's have entered for whatever reason, what does the change in pH and air quality do to the societies of undisturbed things? Some surely believe it is a sign to foment rebellion, to climb from their enslavement, free, to cast off the mantle of their masters. Some undoubedly withdraw, like anemones, fearful of the light. Others perish. Others grow hungry as those they fed upon perish, and are forced out and up in search of new nourishment. Others still are undisturbed, sedate in their perpetual slumber.
These are the pressures and possibilities from below.
Then, above, the rings. I will post a small write-up from the short section of campaign I ran below about the rings, and more in further posts. However: is it possible that there are those sensitive enough to this region (below the sand) to determine that something has changed? Perhaps the lateral tunnels that lead through Old Yurth, because of the change, see a shift in populations?—and this triggers investigations? Are there any nearby digs? I don't think so. The sand dragon however (I've misplaced her name) holds some sense of the disturbance. Her familiarity to the perturbations of the ground, to mapping the underground landscape have undoubtedly given her an awareness of this disturbance. So too, the hags of the Rimmed Eye have located the immense outer bulk of this building in their burrowing—I'm off in my mind exploring the interior of this thing, but these exterior pressures could serve to set PC's off, thinking that the only dangers lie below them.
Within the multiple downward shafts of the building, various insects / predators have lain their longstanding traps to grab falling or flying travlers. Yes, assuredly levels might be skipped, but to what effect?
As I said before, bold items I'll continue to post small write-ups on as time permits. Since my friend Wayne asked about the rings after reading the small blip of history I posted last, I'll put that below.
But, day one of dungeon making, done.
Turns out I draw a terrible set of stairs.
The Rings
Four rings circle the planet of Yurth, caked in galactic debris. Each ring can block the Quiet Sun from the right perspective and leave swaths of the land in shade. Creatures spend their day following the rings, named after the Gods who inhabit them—Nephew, Pilot, House and Hold—as the sun-dwelling creatures will often stay on one edge and those with more sensitive compositions might follow them through the day, keeping close to the safety of the clime. The bands on the ground vary in length, House by far the largest at merely nearly a mile in width, while Pilot’s band, furthest from the planet, a simple three-hundred yards or so. Between them are Nephew, and Hold, coming in towards Yurth, and the distances of theirs are similar, about a half mile, though Hold’s has a band at center of marbled make-up, and astronomers have studied the ring and noted the transparency that stretches down its center like a valley of aquamarine through which the sun casts a delicious sea-like haze.
The rings pass at different speeds also. Pilot furthest and fastest at a joggers pace on hard ground; House, a long steady sloping shifting across the sands—one might settle in its beginning shade and rest for an hour or longer before the sun is once again on their face. The clerics of House of course favor protective and healing magics, while Hold, similar offers those and more—spells of structure, binding and building. Nephew, though often associated with a darker power we will investigate in a moment, is often provider of communicative magicks, the electric work of society and green growth, though the God holds no part in the hearts of The Druids who’ve found something far more terrestrial and old than the Rings.
Pilot is last and generally considered the leader of the gods, and rings—Pilot’s priests hold veto power in council, in any tie breaking, as the distant ring is thought to have the greatest vantage into the goings-on of the world. Magicks that Pilot makes provision for include scrying, boosts of morale, anything to do with guidance, urgency, or the way ahead.
I said we would speak of a darker power, and at the heart of the power of the rings, a crack must be admitted called Engine. Engine is the fifth God who inhabits the core of Yurth, imagined as a pool of bubbling magma in a room of metal and cord. Engine is in fact the oldest of the five and believed thrown down, though no remnant of a fifth ring outside the speculative constellations of some wilder desert astronomers suggest there ever was a fifth ring. But many claim that there are priests of an uncounted power who pose as everyday citizens, not wearing their holy hands in public—the bracer of power all members of the clergy wear—that they have access to unwieldy and often cruel magics not unlike those of the wizards and warlocks, magics toying with the edge of life and death.
But the great altars which sit in each town and city, where all tithing is made are monumental structures, and no fifth altar has been found anywhere, so the likelihood is more the starved whisper of those who spur chaos for reasons intentional or not
The truth is these gods are not in fact gods. To the people of Yaddack they present as such because this is the best means of conveying the relationship necessary for symbiosis—these rings are each... institutions. Comprised of thousands of alien beings, these are the four starships that fled from the great scattering millennia ago, and which found solace in our distant galaxy, collecting material as they have from other planets along the way, hiding and lurking in the cloudy debris cover that the asteroid belt so perfectly provides. By tithing, we provide them resource to power their ships, rebuild the many damaged and worn-out parts, and after long, they will leave, because just as any life is not forever, nor is our sun's, and their ability to measure that far surpasses our own. To the point that their day of departure is marked on a calendar, a grand calendar, only three years from today.
And Engine? Engine is very real, and no god either.
The sun is dying; perhaps 10,000 years remain of its fatigued light. The eclipse is the best opportunity to move out from underneath the likely watchful eye of I-ZO, think these 'gods' of the rings. And that’s what they plan to do.
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