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In the Dungeon that is not a Dungeon thread the idea came up of a series of WWI style trenches fueled by war magic.
Either as an active battlefield, or an abandoned dungeon complex, this idea is kinda awesome, so I wanted to see what people might break out in the Pathfinder War to end all Wars.
If i ran this as a campaign setting, I would break out the firearms from Ultimate Combat.
But As for Deployment, Permanent Symbols of Mirroring. Like Mirror image for all.
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Maybe as the trenches were being dug, the soldiers unleashed some great underground terror that decimated both sides before it went back into hiding, leaving everything intact but the soldiers all dead, so the nations involved sued for peace.
Now the adventurers are sent to no man's land to figure out what happened.
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Perhaps the silent ancient battlefield is still haunted by the spirits of the dead soldiers or crawling with the restless dead from some ancient great war? One idea is that long after the spell weavers fell from the field and the war ended, the restless dead still stalk the front, unable to enjoy the current peace time.
Also, if you can translate it, maybe some spells have become "living Spells" which is a template in one of the 3.5 Monster Manuals.
So you could have a battlefield littered with relics, magic weapons and maybe plenty of undead (Skeletal soldiers, and ghosts) and strange magical anomalies.
Maybe even have an RP encounter where you convince the undead commanders and generals that the war is ended and they can pass on.
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to be honest, one idea that really grabbed me was an area that's under permanent cloudkill, save for trenches roofed with wind walls. The idea of having the possibility of jumping the dungeon walls, if you dare brave the hazards of the open ground, appeals to me on a gamist level. I guess you could get the same effect with undetonated mines, and fields of fire from still-active defenses.
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I actually thought on that, and wrote up a bit of a dungeon like that.
the trenches were inhabited by a combination of creatures that had taken up residence, these being creatures attracted to death and decay, nukkavee, fungal monsters, etc. and the dead themselves, mostly zombies corpses that are reanimated by the magical pollution. I had the image of gasmasked zombies firing on the players from trenches and using cover, they are not "Smart" but they are using the style of warfare that's been drilled into them in life by sargents, commmanders, and trying to survive.
enchanted ammunition being lobbed by cannons and truestrike moters, a cloudkill rune set to go off wherever the cannonball landed and thus poison the trenches. for example, and areas enchnated with wind wall to keep out the gas.
Peppermill Cannon a multibarrel cannon simmilar to a gatling gun used as a trap facing down one of the trenches. makes a burst attack in a line like a lightning bolt before self distructing to keep it out of enemy hands.
magically animated artillery occasionally dropping shells as a trap.
and of course the ultimate killing machine to keep them from "going over the top" and bypassing the dungeon. the "Iron juggernaught" a WW1 style tank still looking for enemies and packing enough firepower to punch through a city wall. the wizard who created it died, and took the secrets of it's animation to the grave.
the iron juggernaught is basicly a cannon golem with a lot more armor and four cannons.
sounds nice. I like the flair with the undead soldiers.
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thanks, I kinda seperated them into a few types.
Hollow Legion: they aren't intelligent troops, but these zombies have innate training to take advantage of, so they are proficent with their weapons but have no feats, they attack en-masse from range. those that died in bunkers know enough not to charge out of them, and fire from cover.
like all zombies Hollow Legion can only move OR attack. but when facing a firing squad that is still dangerious, not to mention their armored coats (scale mail armor sewen into jackets, low max dex, but that doesn;t matter for zombies) or breastplates.
Barbed men: soldiers that died in the barbed wire, they drag it around with them when they reanimate. giving them a nasty attack on top of their usual zombie slam, it also can cause disease, what with the barbs having partly rusted in the muck, dirt, and zombie.
if you make this into a ghoul, I'm thinking barbed wire whip?
of course you have ghouls, everywhere you have large battlefields ghouls come to feast on the dead and dying, these needent be connected to the battle or the Hollow Legion, but some might be.
not to mention things like grenades and toxic weapons deployed, those would attract all sorts of nasty creatures in additon to the normal wildlife.
even a biligerant army officer might return as a skeleton champion, still directing attacks on empty enemy positions.
another excuse for undead are men sworn to their banner, the banner was never captured, and untill it is, the undead soldiers remain at their posts defending their position from everything, awaiting orders from a long dead monarch. like many ghosts they don't even realize they are dead.
Dot.
Yep, put the Thing in the trenches and the ghosts of the dead, and you have a situation a lot more exciting than standard trench warfare. Which was dull, then you had a burst of activity and bravery, and probably died.
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I'm drawn back to the battlefields in the game The Darkness... it had sort of a WW1 hell or somthing, most of the game was forgettable, but slogging my way through those trenches and the ruined town fighting undead german soldiers and hell-versions of horrors of the battlefield, meeting undead brits stiched back togeather after every assault by their medic.
the british undead made the biggest impact on me, the one moment of calm in the entire battle was being in their fortified town listening to these undead talking about "back home" and how "we're told to capture the hill... but there's always another hill after it." duty killed them, and duty still bound them to that spot. it was sad actually hearing them talk about "going home when the war was over" and working to reinforce their positions.
anyways I rant.
but they along with the book "all quiet on the western front" talking about inspired me to come up with a heck of a lot of WW1 dungeon stuff... never used mind you
You could have the trenches surrounding something.
A city under siege, but all the people died of starvation waiting for relief. Or the people of the city went mad and committed suicide in a ritual designed to curse the besiegers, causing the undead problem in the first place.
The undead trenches could have grown to completely surround the country they're supposed to be defending, trapping the living inside. Only now the living are sliding into barbarism as imports of iron (or something else important not found in country) have stopped and the dead have cut down all the trees to build the trenches.
Dot?
It means marking the thread for future reference. The thread shows up with a dot beside it because you have posted in it.
all the people died of starvation
So we'd have Ghouls, Ghosts, likely some leftover Zombie soldiers... You wouldn't even need a curse.
A battlefield full of bloody skeletons (or other mindless regenerating creature) who are constantly in conflict. They fight, they regenerate, they fight more, repeat. This battle has raged for decades. Rumor has it that powerful artifacts still lie in the mire, but none have survived the eternal struggle to retrieve whatever may lie within.
Edit: perhaps the entire place was magically sealed keeping the evil contained since it could not be destroyed. A big dome of force or whatever. The PC's have discovered/been given a way to get in. Perhaps by a benefactor with a hidden agenda.
Edit2 : to maintain the barrier requires some sort of sacrafice.
...and of course the ultimate killing machine to keep them from "going over the top" and bypassing the dungeon. the "Iron juggernaught" a WW1 style tank still looking for enemies and packing enough firepower to punch through a city wall. the wizard who created it died, and took the secrets of it's animation to the grave.
the iron juggernaught is basicly a cannon golem with a lot more armor and four cannons.
The clockwork goliath can serve this function too.
If you include counter trenching (digging trenches toward the opponent's earthworks to make charging easier - which likely continued under undead hands), then you end up with a maze of tunnels, trencehes, bunkers, and observation post/platforms that are all interconnected. The land inbetween could be full of roaming constructs like the clockwork goliath waiting for someone to pop up. Specific locations could even have haunts keyed to the events of whatever conflict was fought there.
A "respawning" or regenerating home base would add to the sense of futility and endlessness of it all.
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ghosts are one of the many nasty respawning undead, unless they are laid to rest, stabbing them to re-death only dissolves them forcing them to wait X amount of time before returning to their haunt. some form of hybrid undead might work well.
Mines placed in underground tunnels, but never exploded might make a nasty collapse trap.
Juju zombies might work well as another undead.
taking what Son and Tiny said into account, a bombed out city in the center of the maze of trenches sounds grand, placing the artifacts in the town gives you a place to do boss fights and the like. it also gives a chance for some house to house fighting which can be a nasty dungeon in it's own right.
somehow I have the image of a bombed out chapel as the one safe place for the living, huddled masses, hiding in the fortified temple with ample supplies surrounded by war every day and night.
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Ghost are an interesting option, because they can be of any alignment. If you have living survivors, you might have a good or neutral ghost serving as a protector, one the living may even be afraid of.
I am reminded of the intro to the AD&D Forgotten Realms product, Lords of Darkness. It tells of a paladin of Torm riding into a village in the dark of night banging on his sheild to warn them of an approaching horde of goblins and such. He then turns back toward the horde as the villagers rush to set up defenses. The battle lasts through the night with the goblins fleeing as dawn breaks. It is at this time that the villagers get a good look at their savior. Old wounds mark the paladin's body, dead flesh sagging from bones. As he witnesses the looks of horror, he mounts his skeletal horse and rides away.
If someone cast Cursed Earth on the field, anyone who dies gets subjected to a post-mortem draft.
There is a world war 1 horror movie called Deathwatch .
It does a haunt very well.
You want fat rats that feed off the dead, flies, sucking mud, bloated corpses - dugouts, bunkers and block houses, you need to simulate artillery and barbed wire.
If the party have to go over the top into no mans land, the environment has to try and kill them, craters and torn up ground mud that will you sink into the bottoms of craters where permanent fog, or cloud kill spells have settled, the rotting bodies of dragons and other war beasts their blood poising the earth, permanent entangle and black tenticals spells.
For those that are interested in trench layouts, check out the Landships website. The site mostly deals with WWI tanks, but the have a good gallery of WWI trench schematics and bunkers.