Dungeon Draft: October 2019

[death tribble]

You blame everyone .....and that's when the destruction began.

[Pariah]

His kind had been wiped out millennia ago, even before the calamities that had ended the former world. They were fearful tyrants that reigned in brutal, self-aggrandizing hedonism between the stars. Lords of the heavens for countless ages, their reign came to an abrupt end in little more than a decade. In the end, they scrambled, bickered, even bargained for their unnaturally long lives to be spared. Those who had served these self-styled gods for so long showed them all the mercy they themselves had been shown, which is to say none at all.

 

Though there were many who had been more powerful, he had proven the smartest, the shrewdest, and the most able to adapt. He saw the end coming, and took every step his brilliant and devious mind could devise to evade it. In the end, however, he too was captured by those who had once served him, and his rule and reign terminated. It was the end of an Age.

 

But he was even more cunning than they had anticipated. After convincing everyone that he had been killed once and for all, he placed himself into an ancient device that would keep him alive for a very, very long time--a million years, if that's what it took. One day, he would rise again and claim his rightful place as scourge of the stars and overlord of the galaxy. He would have his vengeance, and he would begin with the world that had driven his kind to extinction.

 

 

Who is in charge? The former Goa'uld System Lord known as Ba'al.

 

[Pariah]

12 minutes ago, Old Man said:

I blame everyone.

 

 

 

That's fair.

[Cancer]

31 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Are you sure you took the right meds this morning?

 

There are no right meds.  Reality is mutable, like the images reflected off the water's top in a deep-bowl toilet as it flushes sideways.

[Old Man]

Whatever you took, can I have some?

[csyphrett]

I'm going to hold for tomorrow because i don't know what I am going to pick

CES

[Cancer]

Highlight 1:  The Dark Passage to and from Earth.  About 35 meters vertically below the main entrance to the complex on the shoulder of the Face Mountain, accessible by a gently-sloped convenient passage about 600 m long as travelled on foot, is a side passage filled with impenetrable darkness.  Artificial lights of all kinds are suppressed in the side passage, which experienced spelunkers estimate to be about 30 m long.  All travelers negotiating the darkness experience at least one episode of disorientation, and while magnetic compasses cannot be read in the darkness, recording compasses and similar instruments lose all bearings for at least minutes during the passage.  

 

The darkness ends in a rougher passage of comparable width and height that slopes up to the surface, where the cave mouth is obscured from observation by several large cottonwood trees growing at the edge of a lake.  With some above ground exploration, it can be ascertained that this passage opening is near the Pecos River, within the boundaries of Bottomless Lakes State Park, not far from Roswell, New Mexico.

 

We speculate that it is this location where John Carter took shelter from hostile Apaches, and continuing on, first arrived in the subsurface caverns in Cydonia on Mars.  It is believed that other passages exist, linking points on Earth to locations on Mars, but no others yet are securely documented.  The remoteness of the location on Earth (especially in the late 19th Century) is enough to explain why no major incursions by Martians have been recorded.  Its proximity to Roswell is suggestive, however, that a team or small vehicle of Martian origin came through in 1947 and gave rise to the Roswell UFO incident.  US military security, working at fever pitch at the beginnings of the Cold War, prevent access to the artifacts needed to confirm or refute this suggestion.  The CIA explicitly disclaims knowledge of the incident, but this is widely believed to be disinformation.

 

Letting that be as it may, the state park is wide open to visitors (though long duration stays are prohibited and camps and vehicles are removed and impounded by the state), and an accessible and reliable channel exists for Earthers to visit Mars, arriving near the main surface gates to the Face Mountain arsenal.  That portion of the passage is kept empty to avoid encouraging traffic; attempts to block the passage (from either end) fail mysteriously.  Earthers who proceed downward rather than up to the surface on arrival on Mars are captured and used as experimental subjects, military training aids, or food.

 

EDIT: added a highlight name to make roster compilation easier

[Cancer]

(Digression:

 

I hope this satisfies the intended requirement for a dungeon accessible from Earth, Professor Tribble.

 

And, so far, I've got better documentation and references than anyone else!!

 

And, of course I've been to Bottomless Lakes.  You think I'd write up something I hadn't seen?)

[Old Man]

Highlight #1: The Puzzle Door (Tomb Raider)

 

 

[Old Man]

 

Having solved the puzzle door, explorers are met with...

 

Highlight #2: The Shifting Maze (Maze Runner)

 

 

 

 

[Old Man]

Out intrepid explorers will soon find that the maze is equipped with...

 

Highlight #3: Fireball Traps (The Hunger Games)

 

 

[death tribble]

The Pit

 

This was originally constructed to stop people entering the complex from the old Dwarf fortress atop Iron Crag but is now the only way in. It is in the basement of the old fortress and is 80 feet square and over 100 feet deep. The pit is covered with a retractable roof which can open to send potential victims into the spikes at the bottom. The spikes however are pointing downwards at an angle of 45 degrees and are tiered in squares so that the second set is 70 by 70 and is 5 feet below the first. The last set is 10 by 10 with a 30 foot drop to spikes 2 feet high that are pointing upward. Anything impaled at the bottom of the pit will be devoured by a slime that is washed over the bottom of the pit when needed. The sides of the pit are metal and resistant to anything being hammered into them. They also start heating up if someone starts trying to climb them.

The spikes are set to catch people trying to get out.

There is a passageway 20 feet by 20 feet 50 feet down on the west wall that can only be accessed by spells and this is the way in. It also ensures that only people that are determined can get into the complex or actually know the relevant spells. The entrance will only stay open for 5 minutes before closing unless it is stopped somehow.

The residents use magic to observe the pit once the roof is retracted or someone falls through and they can then clear the levels of bodies so that the whole thing always looks empty.

[Old Man]

How many picks are we up to?

[death tribble]

Six potentially

[csyphrett]

The man in charge of the Facility and the man in charge of building the Facility is Rick Dicker, Government Agent. He thought he was retiring but he was assigned to the most deadliest place on earth with his sidekick guardian. 

CES

[Pariah]

To keep the Stargate safe and secure for his own use, Baal has installed a number of obstacles to deter or dispatch intrepid adventurers seeking to get there. This is the first such obstacle.

 

Featured Highlight #1: The Chompers.

 

 

[Lucius]

On 9/22/2019 at 9:58 AM, death tribble said:

Here's what you'll need in your labyrinth.

 

Location, Location, Location. Where is the labyrinth? 

In Xanadu Where Alph the sacred river ran.

 

 

Who is in charge?

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

If anybody runs the place, it's the Voices - "Ancestral Voices" insist many who have visited. Kublai Khan is of course long gone, but is often assumed to have joined the Ancestral Voices.  It is not known if the tendency of those who hear, to obey, is a matter of intimidation or some enchantment at work.

 

Goals of the architect. Simply: why was the place built in the first place?

A stately pleasure dome decree.

 

 

 

Who Built it.  This isn't the patron or the project manager; those folks don't do the actual excavation or construction.  Needed here is the identity of the person who supervised the construction on the site,

Kublai Khan oversaw it personally

and the nature of the labor that went into the construction.  That latter could be legions of nameless human (or not human) slaves, hordes of fanatically devoted followers,

Why not both?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And a compliant palindromedary

[Old Man]

Explorers who solve the maze and dodge the fireballs will have to evade...

 

Highlight #4: The Laser Web (Entrapment)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Old Man]

Because triggering the laser web releases...

 

Highlight #5: The Rolling Boulder (Raider of the Lost Ark)

 

[Bazza]

9 hours ago, Pariah said:

To keep the Stargate safe and secure for his own use, Baal has installed a number of obstacles to deter or dispatch intrepid adventurers seeking to get there. This is the first such obstacle.

 

Featured Highlight #1: The Chompers.

 

 

 

I hope Baal has a randomised pattern for them. 

[death tribble]

I would like Lucius to confirm whether or not he is being serious and is participating

[Cancer]

Who built it?  Though the Arsenal Behind the Face is centuries old, it had a very specific purpose, to be the arsenal that assembled the fleet that invaded Earth.  In principle (and original concept) labor could have been "recruited" from Earth by sending raiding parties through the Dark Passage.  But, since the construction of the Arsenal started before Europeans discovered America, and because the Pecos valley was never populated by anything other than pastoral nomads (which invariably have a low population density), there was no adequately large population of Earthlings to enslave.

 

The project was set in motion by Issus, self-proclaimed (and therefore false) God of Mars (as documented in the first couple of Barsoom books by Edgar Rice Burroughs).  When the Earthling population proved to be simply too small to provide the needed labor, she sent her devotees to war to obtain the thousands of slaves needed to excavate the tunnels.  These were whatever color of Martians that had the ill fortune to be captured and failed to profess immediate faith in Issus.

 

The shops, foundries, furnaces, etc., for actual weapons production required more skilled labor than can be collected by raiding armies, as did working out the details of the design of the facility and planning for its physical maintenance and subsequent operations.  Most of these folk were native Martian hirelings, intelligent enough to recognize they could have a comfortable enough living working on the armament projects for the ambitious "goddess", and were willing to make mouth noises in acknowledgement of her divinity so they could keep their comfortable lifestyle (and life).  Others were contracted from other worlds (Jupiter, Venus, and a few itinerant specialists on the lam from interstellar authorities).  Earth contributed a couple of these (mostly as overseers of slave regiments), but since most of this phase of construction was during the Earth calendar years 1200 to 1600, there were very few Earthlings adequately skilled for other roles in the project.

 

Once the excavation was done, the requirements for brute labor diminished.  Never intended to be a palace or a site of splendor or elegance, nothing like decorations were put in place, aside from a bit of dynamiting and earthmoving to enhance the surface features so the face looked more like the Face of the Goddess.  Once enough water had been brought through, it was planned to make a major forest and gardens on and around the mountain and build an icon of Issus of hundred-kilometer proportions.  The intervention of John Carter and his friends in pulling down Issus, and the failure of the invasion of Earth a few years later (the spoils of which, had the invasion succeeded, might have propelled Issus's successors and devotees back to planetary power), aborted this stage of planned development.

[Pariah]

Any heroes smart, brave, and/or lucky enough to make it through the Chompers will next face an obstacle that will make them doubt not only their sanity, but the very laws of gravity and causality.

 

Featured Highlight #2: The Escherian Stairwell

 

[Cancer]

Highlight 2: Conservatory of the White Apes

 

Not within Face Mountain itself, but under the surrounding Cydonian Plain on which the mountain stands, in the upper levels of the Arsenal is a very large room, about 200 meters on a side and 70 meters tall.  There are shafts from its ceiling to the surface (all blocked by strong bars set in a number of places along the shafts) that open to the surface, admitting fresh air and indirect natural light.  Many structural beams run at random angles through the room, and hundreds of heavy eye bolts are set into beams and walls, intended as anchors for ropes and chains; many such lines are present, running at all angles.  There are many shrubs and vines growing from planters set from walls, beams, and heavy chains throughout the room.  Some of these plants are edible, some are poisonous, others are hazardous in other ways.  A few pools and fountains exist at a variety of levels through the room, providing water to keep everything alive.

 

Intended as a training zone for commandos who would be infiltrating Earth's jungles and dense forests, this room has always been called the Conservatory because of its dense foliage.  After the decommissioning of the Arsenal and the removal of its garrison, Martian white apes found their way in and adopted the Conservatory as their dwelling.  Though they evolved in the near-deserts of the dessicated, dying Mars, they quickly adapted to greenery and the three-dimensional lifestyle afforded by the ersatz jungle.  Now there are scores of them living there, in a loose tribal sort of arrangement that humans have not parsed out.  Eager to supplement their vegetable diet with whatever meat they can get, the apes are eagerly anthropophagous, and are skilled in assembling attack parties numbering upwards of a dozen, which converge quickly and violently from all directions (including, of course, directions not in the horizontal plane) upon intruders who get incorporated into the apes' meal of the day.  They cleverly use the sight-line obstructions of both architecture and foliage to gain surprise, bursting into their victims' sight only when literally within ape-arm's length.  This combination of music and scene (it's a still image) is almost appropriate.

[death tribble]

We will take the weekend off and I will compile an update showing who has picked what in that time.