After rolling up my Five Parsecs crew yesterday, I did a bit of scratch building and planning for my crew’s figures. Originally I was going to have that be today’s blog post, but I didn’t really get as much done on it as I’d like to. Plus, I figured it would be good to start some more plates spinning so I have more things to work on/write about throughout the year. So in the spirit of my failed #dungeon23 attempt, I’m going to start another dungeon! This one will be a heck of a lot simpler. I’m using a map from donjon’s dungeon generator, and I’ll be filling it with monsters from original Dungeons & Dragons. To start out, I’m using Marcia B.’s Fantastic Medieval Campaigns along with Monster & Treasure Assortment Sets One-Three: Levels One-Nine. I very well might use other books and resources down the road, but that’s where I’m starting.
Monster & Treasure Assortment suggests the DM place several special monsters and their treasures before filling the rest of the dungeon with monsters and treasures from the chart. I’ll be following this guide and picking a couple of monsters to anchor the dungeon before filling in the rest with random ones and connecting the dots when all is said and done. Here’s my map, and away we go!
I went digging through some old magazines to find a weird monster to kick off this project, and I found what I was looking for in Issue 14 of Different Worlds from September 1981. In this issue, She-Ra co-creator Larry DiTillio breaks down several of the monsters and magic items from 1981’s Clash of the Titans in an article titled “Come, Clash With The Titans.” My eye was caught by the Astral Vulture, which can “draw the spirit from a victim while that victim is asleep.” I’ve never seen this movie, but check out this clip of the vulture in all its Harryhausen glory.
This will be the conceit of the dungeon; an astral vulture has spirited our heroes away to its underworld lair and imprisoned them for some unknown reason. Other monsters can be either local underworld denizens or other prisoners. Now they must escape. Since this is the vulture’s lair, I think it will be somewhat of a wandering monster. I’ll say that the corner rooms, 1, 4, 107, and 108 all have open chutes to the surface of whatever abyssal landscape holds the vulture’s prison-lair. Each of these rooms has a 1-4 chance of containing the vulture when entered, and we’ll reroll this chance 1/turn (every 10 minutes of in-game time). I’ll add more detail to each of these later, but it gets us started.
I’m going to take another monster from “Come, Clash With The Titans” in order to guard the stairs leading downwards outside room 79: the Dioskilos, or two headed dog. DiTillio describes the Dioskilos as “your straight-ahead, kill-it-or-die type nasty.” We’ll definitely want to put some treasure to go with this monster, and I’m going to take one from this article; the Helm of Athena. I haven’t decided how much of the Greek flavor to keep, so let’s call this a Helm of Invisibility for now. It was worn by another unfortunate soul who tried to escape past the DiTillio, but the creature’s sense of smell and hearing were too sharp to evade. The door leading to the stairs is trapped, but we’ll tackle that another time.
There’s only one other staircase on the map, outside room 24 (if there’s another one that I’ve missed, then it means the vulture has overlooked it as well and it goes unguarded). This one is right by one of the corner rooms, and leads off of a hallway rather than a room. Let’s just fill that staircase with Yellow Mold and call it done with. There may be some kind of horrible infected ecosystem down that staircase, but that’s for another day.
After all that, here’s our key so far:
Room 1: A shaft leading to the surface. 1-4 chance of encountering the astral vulture, rerolled each turn.
Room 4: A shaft leading to the surface. 1-4 chance of encountering the astral vulture, rerolled each turn.
Room 107: A shaft leading to the surface. 1-4 chance of encountering the astral vulture, rerolled each turn.
Room 108: A shaft leading to the surface. 1-4 chance of encountering the astral vulture, rerolled each turn.
Room 79: A Dioskilos guards the trapped door leading to the stairs. An adventurer wearing a Helm of Invisibility lies dead on the floor. Stairs lead down.
Stairs outside Room 24: Infested with Yellow Mold. Stairs lead down.