Into the Tomb Lands, Encounters 15 & 16 (Patreon)

Encounters 15 & 16 of my "Into the Tomb Lands" #Dungeon23 project is up. It's still free for all to see at the original post at https://www.patreon.com/posts/76655396, but I decided to start posting each room by itself for Patreons, for people who just want to read the new content without having to scroll through everything that's already up there.

(But I forgot to do this for 15, yesterday. It's... it's STILL been a heck of a week.)

15. The 5-foot wide rough-hewn, uneven stone stairs leading up to the First Landing are irregular, unusually tall (nearly a foot up on each step) and narrow (each run a little less that five inches deep). Moving up them at half speed is easy enough, but there is risk of falling if going faster, though a character can always safely use climbing instead.

The stairwell is open on the side near the Silty Pool, and the First Landing is open on all sides that don't have stairs. It's five ft. x 5 ft., and very slightly angled so anything that flows or rolls gets dumped off of it onto the Runnoff (Area 12). The ground of the First Landing is covered in ancient red ochre pigment illustrating the runs on the Rune Wall in Area 19. A typical torch or hooded lantern can't illustrate these runes from the First Landing, but a bullseye lantern or more powerful light could.

16. A Slick Slope separates the top of the Fungal Ladder from the flat area of the Mushroom Grove (Area 17). It's wet and soft like the Runoff (area 12), but it a solid piece of a vast single fungus rather than packed silt, and can't easily be dug through. The fungus can be gouged out, but fills itself in within minutes. It's too wet to burn by anything bust high-powered magics or vast amounts of fuel, and won't hold any weight if pitons or grappling hooks are stuck into it. It's actually easier to reach area 17 by lowering yourself down from areas 20 or 21.

A grappling hook thrown around the righthand corner of the area with the Crawer's Cave (Area 18) might hook on the rock wall and allow characters to climb up the Slick Slope, but it would definitely awaken the crawler, which would be likely to come attack.

From here the ceiling of the cavern is 60 feet up.