|
Hey all,
So I am running my group through a kingmaker inspired adventure and they found a scroll fragment that details the summoning of a Void Lord (its an oriental themed game) now I would like the Void Lord to be summoned in a dungeon of some kind but im having difficulty thinking up a good one. I thought about using Rappan Athuk since it would make a fair amount of sense or possibly an upscaled version of temple of elemental evil. Any suggestions for a good dungeon to use? (any editions welcome)
I don't know if I'm going to be much help since I'm homebrewing my own megadungeon at the moment, but a couple I'm tapping for inspiration are Castle Greyhawk and the Caves of Chaos from Keep on the Borderlands.
What's a Void Lord? Could you just make up a dungeon around it, or the summoners bringing it there? Something like
Eons past a cabal of nine sorcerers ascended to crest of an ancient caldera. Here they delved deep into the earth with arcane power not known since. At the heart of a dorman volcano they summoned a Lord of Void to serve the cabal as their pawn and an agent of retribution. Unfortunately there was one thing they'd not calculated in their plans.
The earth itself.
Their spells and bindings triggered a massive eruption. All of the tunnels and chambers the nine had wrought were obliterated in the pyroclastic blast. In the end nothing remained but the memory of the cabal written in the towers of the summoners. Yet centuries later something rose from the hardening magma once more.
The Lord of Void.
Since his rebirth the Void Lord has been slowly re-creating the prison in which he was bound. Only through the careful reconstruction of every last tunnel, chamber and step can he be free upon the world. In the age since the caldera's last gasp mortalkind has settled the crater and now-fertile vale beyond. They are completely unaware of the dangers deep below their feet.
When the blast collapsed and re-made the previous dungeon wrought by the ancient cabal new lava tubes and tunnels were made. For a time primitive creatures began infesting these seeking warmth and shelter. The far side of the caldera from the mortal city has been marked verboten and is now referred to as Helfire's Gate.
But where the creatures above have met the Lord of Void below, now a new age has begun to dawn. The Void Lord has begun amassing a horde to serve him in his quest. Other factions of the Gate oppose him for their own selfish desires or seek to exploit the power he represents. In the realms of mortalkind whispers have begun as agents of these factions worm their way into the city and the civilized lands seeking the resources they need.
And of course there are some denizens of Hellfire's Gate who know or care nothing for the Lord of Void. The dungeons, tunnels and realms below the caldera's crust are little more than an endless night for their predations.
For the past 2 decades brave souls, adventurers and opportunists have sought their fortunes crossing Lake Crucibile to ply their fortunes at the Gate. the high walls of the caldera are riddled with crevices and caverns leading into the under-tunnels and no one faction yet has enough power to control them all. But there is a sense from those few who've returned from Helfires Gate that something powerful is coming; a dark malevolence that will only be stopped by courage, by force and perhaps only by the sacrifice of life itself.
The dungeon then is several smaller dungeons, each about say, 20 rooms across two or three levels, descending down say about 100 feet beneath a crater lake. At that point it suddenly becomes a uniform labyrinth of hundreds of rooms descending another 3 levels and heated by magma piped around through arcane constructions. These are the current lair of the Void Lord and his minions.
The upper reaches are a good, random testing ground for characters levels 1-10. The Void Lord levels are for upper level PCs. As the game progresses, unless the party does something to stop it, they should slowly see progress by the Void Lord and his minions turning sections of the upper reaches into outposts of their own until, once the last of the smaller dungeons is consumed an arcane binding on the Void Lord breaks and he can dominate all the lands.
No worries. Like I said; I'm kind of in "megadungeon desgin mode" anyway. If you need more detailed stuff like wandering monster charts, individual dungeon area ideas or what not either post here or PM me; I'm happy to help.
Frankly a lot of good inspiration for me just comes from surfing online for random generators and such. If you get in a jam hit Bing or Google and find pics of video game dungeons and such. Between that, random generators and lurking on the boards that's how I came up with most of the stuff I'm currently developing.
Happy gaming Teriaki!
|
Here's an 8 level dudgeon (spanning character levels 1-8) to use either wholesale or as inspiration: Jacob's Tower