Short One With Maps

 A Mournful Dungeon Object

A finely wrought cage of bright metal, intensely warm to the touch and pulsing with life. Within sings a desperate vision. Just the length of a fingerbone, it weighs heavy on the heart. Once glimpsed, never forgotten. The door it opens is one you dread to find.

-Author unknown. Discarded beer mat.

Hello! Thanks for stopping by. These sketches are warmup studies of a shape I’ve been thinking about, inspired by this light housing I saw in Detroit a few weeks ago. I find it super interesting, so many facets and angles. This is the sort of thing my brain is drawn to, but it’s often difficult for me to conjure these kinds of details out of thin air. Someday I’d love to take the time to draw large scale highly detailed artificial and manufactured landscapes. I’m reminded again that I need to draw from observation more and work on building a cohesive reference library. Sometimes it helps to use a random sketch as a mournful dungeon object when you need a writing prompt. I’m short on time as always, so here are the maps!

Week 31: One last sneaky little room off of Level 7 and then we are on to Level 8! This is another side area off of the main shaft, so I guess I need to figure out what makes this area necessary. Put that one in the Things To Fix file. I’m definitely feeling further off the rails in the second half of this dungeon. I’ve stopped tracking connections and consistently forget to look at the rudimentary theme/outline notes I’ve made at the beginning of each month. Reminding myself it is a rough draft and a writing exercise. After a couple levels of caves and forests, this area is still open air, but fleshy organic matter and living rock covers hints of something manufactured by intelligent beings. Gross and weird is the vibe here and any incursion is promptly greeted with a physical challenge by a chosen warrior of the mosquito-like folk who protect this place.

Week 32: I guess this is a pretty major spoiler, but I think it’s important at this point to know that whatever this new continent is, this hope of a generation, it has previously existed elsewhere, and has absorbed pieces of those places and some of the creatures and things that it has encountered there. As I’ve said, I think a lot about the ways the dungeon changes the characters as they explore it. How has it already changed the creatures who have been here much longer and know it only as home? I had a good time stretching rooms and passages here to make them twist and wind, overlapping each other in interesting ways. Lots of elevation changes and some tunnels and rooms have transparent membrane walls from which you can see other areas. A dungeon made for breaking, perhaps.

Week 33: This whole section of the dungeon has been engineered by something, for something, or at least adapted to a new shape and purpose. More signs of advanced technology will be found here, but it was not created by the people who tend it and protect it. If the party finds its way through this territory, a surprising traveler will greet them eagerly and offer any assistance possible. The current occupants will provide formidable resistance and are prepared to endure a serious siege. Any adventuring party making it this far should make a nice challenge for them and a smart party may be victorious. After reading some of my previous entries, it seems impossible for anyone to get here at all. Can’t wait to test it.

Week 34: This is definitely a relatively organized operation. What is it doing here? Flying drones patrol ornately decorated tunnels that seem to undulate and breath. Fountains of black ichor and pools of crystal glitter in the dim bioluminescence. Oh, and if you thought mosquito people were creepy and gross, wait until you meet their children. Thousands of larvae crawl across a huge chrome tower that may conceal powerful secrets. I feel pretty strongly that players should be rewarded with XP for discovering secrets and exploring/mapping the dungeon, but that will need to be a future post. Finally, because I couldn’t write a megadungeon without an interdimensional goblin pawnbroker, there’s one of those here too.

This post has been converted from a previous Substack post and dated accordingly. Please let me know if it seems like something got lost or if you find any major formatting issues.

Thanks for reading! Please share and subscribe. As of this post, I have completed my September entries and am more than 75% done with the #Dungeon23 challenge! I will likely finish it a few weeks late, but the end is in sight!

Andy