Chapter Five: Killer Dungeon
Having tended to your great kingdoms for several months you find yourselves growing antsy about the lack of adventures, loot, princesses, dragons, and monsters to kill. You all meet up at your old pub and start to talk about old times until you can’t resist it anymore and go looking for an adventure. You soon find a trail of inscrutable rumors that lead you to a far off land where a Kingdom known as Eastmark has been completely swallowed by a rogue dungeon by the name of “The Terminator”. The tales bards have spun lead you to believe that all those ‘eaten’ by the dungeon may yet be freed if you complete your quest within the week before they’re digested by the dungeon and it moves on to another kingdom, naturally, this would mean saving a princess. The dungeon, it is said, can only be killed by finding its ‘heart’ and stabbing it with the sword of Sebarath.
If no one has the sword of Sebarath from the previous adventure you can allow them to go on a minor side quest to retrieve it.
The Three Witches
Before you can reach the fabled maw and entry of the Dungeon “Terminator” you stumble into the camp of three witches: one fat, one small, and one tall. They all snicker and cast dire portents about you growing old, fat, and arthritic all of which are obvious lies, you all having been smart enough to drink from the Holy Grail, right?
If the PCs don’t have the sword of Sebarath the witches hand it to them. It’s a longsword +2 which glows bright blue and once per day can blow through solid stone for +1d6 damage.
The Entry to The Dungeon
The morning mists part before you on a desolate field where a thriving kingdom once stood. A shiver runs down your spine as you see a tall beam sticking out of the ground where a pub like your own once stood. Someone’s leg juts up at an odd angle, and then you spot the entry to the Dungeon known as “Terminator”. It appears to be a wide gaping maw looking up at the sky with non-existent eyes. Its long teeth are made of solid stone and between each row of razor-sharp incisors is a smooth stairway leading down and within invitingly.
Anyone foolish enough to enter is eaten in short order. RR 20 to escape or evade. Damage 4d6 per round if eaten until trapped with the other occupants of the kingdom (out of the game).
After the first few non-important henchmen die, the witches return with a new warning.
You see the witches drifting over the moors toward you with some concern. “Not that way, you fools, you must attack it and somehow anger it into revealing its true entry.”
Anyone may attack the front of the beast without entering within, but doing so is extremely risky as the mouth can thrash around and eat people.
Dungeon Mouth RR 17 HP 40 Damage 4d6 and if killed eaten and trapped within RR 22 to break out. Speed: 3 (one area) Gold: 0 XP: 0
Using ranged attacks and magic on the mouth deals damage to it, but at 0 hp the mouth simply collapses and then regenerates at full hp in 1 round and laughs.
You should let the PCs try all manner of stuff on the mouth. They must perform at least 5 of the following tasks to get the beast angry enough to fully surface and present its true entry:
Set fire to it, laugh at it or otherwise taunt it, use frost on it, use acid on it, strike it for at least 15 damage in one blow, spit on it, kick it, call it a son of a piece of rock or similar, blow it’s mouth to pieces, seduce it, bluff it, trick it, give it a riddle it can’t solve, or pay it 1,000 gp or more.
The Angered Beast
With a huge roar the ground shifts and with a massive earthquake the beast surfaces, momentarily exposing its soft underbelly and thus a way inside.
The dungeon resembles a huge crocodile made of stone and cannot be killed in this form no matter how hard the PCs try and what they do to it. Smashing into its soft underbelly requires at least 10 points of damage and a RR 14 speed check to get inside before the beast tries to step on you. RR 15 or take 2d6 crushing damage.
The Dungeon
Once again you should doodle out a little map and assign the encounter areas as you see fit. The tunnels are narrow, uncomfortable, and hot and moist as if the PCs are inside a living breathing beast.
Encounter 1 The Corridor
As you walk down a very long corridor the beast that is the dungeon shakes with mirth and the back walls closes in until you can see nothing. The front of the cave starts to narrow and contract until you are being crushed between the walls.
Hacking madly away at the walls for at least 25 damage in 2 rounds will prevent automatic death (1/2 hp first round, all other hp second round). Teleporting, causing the beast to sneeze, or other tricks may also work.
Encounter 2 Endless Fall Corridor
As you merrily march down a tight passage the floor suddenly opens up without warning into a million foot pit into molten magma. Everyone screams and falls.
RR 16 Acrobatics may grab a ledge or part of the wall. RR 16 may climb out of the wall, flying and teleporting are naturally useful, and being immune to magma may help but the fall still deals 6d6 damage.
Encounter 3 Diamond Room
You wander through a huge maze of shifting corridors and passages until you get lucky and find a room full of diamonds growing out of the walls.
If the diamonds are snapped off more grow back in their place. Any henchmen of the PCs immediately start cackling and filling their packs with the loot unless a PC rolls RR 17 intimidation or similar to order them not to. The diamonds appear to be real, but further probing may reveal they have a magical aura. 3 minutes after taken the diamonds turn to molten acid dealing 2d6 damage each to anyone who took them and melting their gear. Naturally, people who took loads of diamonds take a lot of damage.
Encounter 4 Magma Storm
As you bumble around a series of passages you feel a fell wind on your face and a red glow approaches from up the corridor. Next second a wall of magma is rushing towards you!
The magma is real and quite lethal. Even if it is avoided the dungeon will start spitting walls of acid, frost, and whatever else it can think of until the PCs hack into the wall and carve a passage to the beast’s lungs. There they must carve flying discusses and fling themselves into its esophagus before they hit the stomach acid and down those passages they find Encounter Area 5 if they hadn’t already in which case they go to the next highest number and so forth.
Encounter 5 The Beast’s Stomach
Tunneling through the belly of the beast you reach a large waste chamber where you find the remnants of a hundred kingdoms groaning and lying in the dust of destroyed empires. Magical lights in the shape of the beast’s eyeballs swivel around and watch your progress as you comfort the survivors. Behind you the route you took seals up.
The survivors aren’t terribly helpful. They just tell the PCs every day a load of them are vaporized as they are consumed by the terrible dungeon beast. There appears to be no way out of the beast’s waste chamber and the vaporizing beam randomly hits people as they wander and lie about. Hacking their way out is the only way for the PCs to free themselves.
Hacking HP 15 per round to make progress. Must strike 3 consecutive rounds to escape or re-seals up.
If the PCs manage to hack an escape route everyone cheers and starts running away. It is likely no one will make it out alive unless the PCs can find the heart and stab it with the sword.
The beast shudders as you strike through it’s waste chamber walls and the people scream in victory and flee in droves, probably only to fall in the stomach again and come straight back here. You must find the heart and stab it with the sword before it’s too late and the beast decides no one’s worth the trouble anymore and kills you all.
Encounter 6 The Crunch Room
On your way to the heart you pass through a chamber full of goblins shoveling gold into a giant furnace which, apparently, powers the creature in some way.
The goblins have no objection to the PCs stealing as much gold as they can carry and smashing the furnace which causes the beast to howl with fury and leap up onto land, it sha
kes all the corridors and rooms as it lurches for the PCs homeland intending to eat it all and lay it completely to waste and ruin. If they don’t arrive in time their favourite pub and their castles may lie in ruins.
Encounter 7 The Sneeze
You burst past the lungs and see the heart of the beast lying on a pedestal, ripe for the stabbing. Before you can reach it with your lightning reflexes the beast sneezes and you fly topsy turvy out of its mouth and land on the ground in a heap.
The PCs see the beast storming off over the countryside, smashing down forests, and heading for their home kingdom while trailing out magma blood from all the wounds it’s sustained in battle with them. They must somehow catch up and cut through its underbelly, then find their way back to the heart again.
Encounter 8 Magma Men
You come back to the chamber with the heart and before you can reach it a dozen magma men materialize before you and shoot beams of fire at you. An energy bubble springs to existence before the heart blocking any teleportation within and the magma men bar entry to the heart stone.
Magma Man RR 19 HP 15 Damage 1d6+7 See Invisible Speed: 3 Gold: 50 XP: 1,000 each. There are 10 of them. A hit sets the PC on fire 1d6 damage per round unless you spend a whole round to roll out the flames. Frost deals x2 damage to the magma men and they melt non-magical weapons which hit them.
Encounter 9 The Heart
You finally stand before the heart and raise the sword on high to strike the death blow.
If the PCs haven’t fought the magma men yet proceed to Encounter 8, otherwise they can stab the heart and the beast flings them and the survivors of the massacred kingdoms out onto the ground. It’s just reached the PCs own kingdom and everyone is running around and screaming and shooting at it.
It appears the beast isn’t dead yet. Without the heart it is now vulnerable to normal damage, but it’s enraged and ripping apart your home kingdom with a vengeance.
Dungeon Beast (colossal) RR 20 HP 60 Damage 3d6 Speed: 5 Gold: 10,000 XP: 7,000 Eat Whole as per the Old Dragon in the Challenger Book.
There should be a huge battle, the Sword of Sebarath hits on RR 15 and deals x2 damage against the beast. If the PCs slay the beast they are the heroes of the survivors and of their kingdom who names a pub, babies, and several streets after them; and the king even personally throws a feast in their honor and bestows knighthood or some similar privileges on them.
Any surviving PCs gain 3,000 xp apiece for their heroic efforts and being foolish enough to go after the Dungeon Terminator in the first place.