Into the Tomb Lands, Level 2: The Deep Drop (Patreon)

This is the second level of my #Dungeon23 project for 2023. You can find an updated Index with all the levels available to date here.

Background:

Any of this information can be gained by talking to the Cae family from Interstitial A: The Long Quiet.

The Deep Drop was originally a lift-shaft for the construction and equipping of Level 1: The Tomb of the Guardian. That work ended thousands of years ago, and the Deep Drop was sealed, but the chains that allowed transport up and down the shaft remained in place. As centuries passed, various entities from the lower levels of the tomb Lands decided to build their own tombs as close to the Tomb of the Guardian as possible, and broke into the old access shaft to do so. While many tombs were created, and in some cases even furnished, various factions prevented any from ever being used as tombs.

Different areas have functioned as prisons, secret lairs, warehouses, and even dwellings over the eons, but never tombs. Some of the groups using these False Tombs were tied to trade along the River Dōrophoreō, and thus were equipped with Skystones. PCs can learn from Caeseril (in Area 3 of The Long Quiet) that a Skystone can still be found here... somewhere. She does not, however, know where.

1. The Deep Drop Shaft

The Deep Drop Shaft itself is a roughly hewn shaft with a square cross-section 15 feet x 15 feet. The top of the shaft is accessed from Area 13: The Ladder Down in Level 1: The Tomb of the Guardian (which is locked with an extraordinary lock, though the key is in Area 13 of level 1). Unlocking the trapdoor at the bottom of the ladder reveals the shaft, stretching down what seems to be an infinite distance.

The shaft is filled with numerous chains of an apparently-indestructible metal, which are anchored to the top of the shaft with apparently-irremovable bolts. Even 30-40 feet, there is an old wooden platform Entering the shaft from the top requires climbing from the bottom of the Ladder Down onto one of the chains, none of which are closer than 2-feet from it. This is a Moderate climb check.

Once on a chain, climbing is an Easy check, but moving from any chain to one of the doorways in the shaft is always Moderate. Any failed check that results in falling sends a character plummeting into the depths, but they never hit a bottom Instead, they are battered against chains and old nets and rotting platforms until they hit something that slows them enough to grab on. The falling character makes a Climb skill check or Agility-based saving throw, taking 10 feet worth of falling damage if they make a Legendary success, with an additional 10 feet worth of damage for every step worse than that they do (Spectacular-Difficult-Moderate-Typical-Easy-Trivial). If a character is knocked unconscious by falling damage, they awaken hours later, thousands of feet down the shaft, tangled in old netting and dangling from a spiked chain.

2. The First Landing

Fifty feet below the Ladder Down is the first landing. The landing leads to a 5 foot x 5 foot room, which is tilted slightly toward the shaft, and covered in slick grease which has dust sprinkled over it to appear as stone. It makes the transfer from a chain to the landing Difficult, rather than moderate. Even if someone makes it onto the landing, just standing in the room is a Moderate task.

Across from the entrance to the shaft is a thick stone door, locked with a Moderate lock.

3. The Barred Passage

Down a short passage from the First landing is a portcullis blocking the passage. Lifting or bypassing it is a Spectacular task. However, a lever can be seen 5 feet away through the bars, currently leaning towards the portcullis. Pushing the level away from the bars is a Moderate task. Doing so causes dust to sift down from the top of the portcullis, and a loud grinding and groaning to come from the ceiling of the bars. The mechanism is designed to open the portcullis, but has not been used or maintained in centuries. However, it makes lifting the bars (or greasing the mechanism or someone otherwise repairing it) a Moderate task, after which the bars lift and the lever works normally.

4. The Paper Chase

The door to Area 4 is not locked. The 10 x 15 room contains numerous tables with hundreds of folios of loose papers. When this area was used as secret storage by the Deadfall, a smuggling group in the Free City of Flotsam, this is where they kept their ledgers.

The room also contains An Ill Wind, an air elemental guardian, which has been trapped in this room for centuries. An Ill Wind attacks as soon as the door opens, politely explaining that, if killed, it gets to go home, and it is required to defend the rooms. If anyone talks to it, An Ill Wind shares all it knows about the Deadfall, though it notes its information is out of date. If PCs need a break while fighting it, An Ill Wind happily grants a temporary truce, as long as the PCs promise they'll get back to killing it as soon as they can.

Any fight with An Ill Wind blows the loose folio papers all around the room. However, if they are searched, there's a map of the rooms leading off The First Landing, a warning of the trapped alcove in Area 5, and a map of the rooms off Area 8. There are also 4 minor treasures in the form of rare spells, magic scrolls, or both.

5. Cold Storage

This 10 x 15 room has two stone columns in the center of it, which are skillfully clad in fine marble tile that, while extremely heavy if pulled off and piled up, are nevertheless as valuable as a major treasure.

Two 5x5 alcoves sit on one side of the room. These were used as long-term storage by the Deadfall smuggling company. Each has a pile of semiprecious nonperishable goods (leathers and furs from strange creatures, sugared beetle innards, pink salt with a sharp flavor from various minerals, wineskins sealed with green wax and filled with blue honeywine, large attractive quartz crystals, and so on) collectively worth a moderate treasure.

The alcove farthest from the door has those materials stacked with a very tipsy fragile bottle of explosive oil/Greek fire on top. If it is disturbed without the bottle being secured, it falls, breaks, ruins the goods in that alcove, and does moderate damage to anyone nearby. Securing the bottle is easy if a PC knows about it (such as from finding the warning in Area 4). Finding it with a search for traps is Moderate, and a critical failure of the search sets off the bottle. Spotting it with casual Perception is a Difficult task.

6. The Sluiceway

The door to Area 6 has ancient runes noting it is dangerous, and not to be opened. The lower foot or so of the stone door and the landing in the shaft are covered in damp moss. The stone door was not designed to ever be opened again, and requires a Difficult engineering of thievery check to bypass or a few hours worth of typical Strength, Dungeoneering, or Digging check to crack open.

Either way, if the door is opened, exactly 18,000 gallons of water come rushing out of the hallway behind it. Realizing this is a risk is a Difficult trapfinding check before any work has been done on the door, or a Moderate check if some effort has begun to prepare to open it.

Anyone on the landing must make a Difficult reflex/dexterity/avoidance check, or take damage as if they had fallen 30 feet as the water slams into them, and gets sprayed off the landing and is immediately falling into the Deep. Anyone in the space in the shaft directly in front of the landing must make a Moderate check to avoid this fate, and anyone else in the shaft at the same level as the doorway or lower must make an Easy save/check.

If the PCs somehow get into the hallways without opening the door, in addition to finding it full to the ceiling with water, the find a Moderate water element swimming back an forth in the liquid in clear agitation. This is Undertow, a water elemental left to guard the hall and its (long ruined) contents. He essentially is in the same situation as An Ill Wind (Area 4).

Once clear, it becomes obvious water flows into this hall from a crack in the back wall at a rate of one gallon per minute. The crack is actually a crack in the fabric of reality, rather than just the rock, and leads to the Elemental Plane of Water. The pressure from it is so great the water cannot be held back by anything less than a giant stone door... like what sealed this hallway off from the Shaft.

7. The Leak

When this end of Area 6 The Sluiceway was originally being carved from the rock, it was discovered there was a dimensional rift in the rock that lead to the Elemental Plane of Water. The pressure is too great to be sealed with anything short of a vault door (and even then, the door to Area 6 leaks enough water for moist moss to grow at the bottom of it).

The water produced from the crack at the back of this hall is pure, clean, and refreshing. It comes from an eddy of especially refreshing water within the elemental Plane of Water. Any water magic or healing magic cast within 10 feet of this leak gains a significant bonus (such as rolling any random result twice and taking the best result, or in a level-based game being cast at a higher level than the spellcaster casting it)

8. The Blood Door

The stone door fit to this doorway is not locked, and is covered in simple, eye-catching runes. An Easy Magic Lore check reveals the runes are designed to make it easy for a spellcaster able to scry on or teleport to a place to focus such magics on this door.

The door is also stained by thousands of splashed of blood, and while none are recent, they show centuries of constant re-staining.

9. The Right Corner

Up the stairs to the right of the Fighting Floor (area 11) is an old, weak portal to the Fey Realm. If a creature with martial arts training or carrying a weapon beyond a dagger, club, or staff (even if sheathed) stands in Area 11 for more than five minutes without any fighting going on in that room, a belligerent winter/unseelie fey is summoned to this chamber, and charges down the stairs, demanding it be killed so it can return to its home.

Each successive creature summoned from this room in the same 24-hour period is slightly tougher than the previous one.

10. The Left Corner

Up the stairs to the left of the Fighting Floor (area 11) is an old, weak portal to the Infernal Realms. If a creature with spellcasting training or carrying a magic rod, staff, or wand (even if sheathed) stands in Area 11 for more than ten minutes without any fighting going on in that room, a belligerent fiend is summoned to this chamber, and charges down the stairs, demanding creature in Area 11 agree to sell it their soul, and attacking if they refuse.

Each successive summoning from this room in the same 24-hour period summons one more creature than the previous one. If six creatures were previously summoned, it instead summons a fiend tougher than the previous six combined, and then one more of those fiends each successive summoning, and so on.

11. The Fighting Floor

This 15-foot cubical room room was never finished for its original tomb function, and the walls and 15-foot high ceiling are unfinished stone. The floor has been finished, with complex tiles showing dimensional relationships between different planes of existence, physicals, 4th-dimensional space (especially tesseracts). When carefully studied, it is discovered the lines and diagrams slowly shift, making them impossible to copy down. The floor counts as a library on teleportation, summoning, and planar travel for purposes of studying such topics. Although such study is likely to be interrupted (see Areas 9 and 10).

For every multiple of 4 creatures that enters this room, it expands all its dimensions by 5 feet (becoming a 20' cube, then a 25' cube, and so on). When the number of creatures in it is reduced, it shirnks back to its previous size. No matter how large the room gets, it does not take up anymore space within the Deep Drop itself.

When the original plan to make this a tomb for an Elemental Archduke was abandoned eons ago, it was instead turned into a dimensional area. It hasn't been used in centuries, but if the PCs engage in more than 2 fights in this chamber, unbeknownst to them, their exploits begin to be broadcast as entertainment in the Free City of Flotsam, and may earn them notoriety if they visit that place.

12. The Green Room

This room is painted in mixed scenes of fairy forests on the three columns and ceiling, and vast emerald caverns of demons and green flame on the walls and floor. When a creature enters it, a table of food and drink and comfortable seating for that creature appears. Any food or drink removed from here disappears, but it produces enough common food and drink to allow anyone staying here to be nourished endlessly.

If a summoned creature is slain in The Fighting Floor (Area 11), and the creature that dealt the killing blow enters the Green Room within 24 hours, the seating that appears for them also contains a bag of coins with a value equal to half a typical treasure value for the creature killed.

13. Tomb For Sale

Mourne Pitch (see below, or Area 19): "The lovely entranceway both offers a lovely mood-setting vista for visitors to the tomb, and plenty of space for funerary gifts, guardian demons, and the mummified remains of the servants killed when you die. The finishes presented here are just some of the more popular options, and a closer could show many more possibilities when signing a contract. Neither demons nor killing and mummification are included in the price of the tomb, but there are executive packages that add them for a price, determined at market ratees when a contract is signed."

There is no door preventing access to this chamber, and when any living creature moves through the doorway from the shaft, illusionary flames burst to life from ornate torches, lighting the entranceway. The floor, walls, and ceiling have several different treatments, including polishing the basalt of the natural rock the tomb is carved from, lime-painted sections with illustrations that show heroic moments, and which adjust the faces of the heroes depicted to match whoever is looking at it, and faux-marble painted onto polished concrete and brass tinted to look golden.

Mourne, a floating magic construct appears from deeper in the tomb if anything living stays in Area 13 for more than 5 minutes. It offers a tour of this tomb, for sale at the very reasonable price of (five times the value of a major treasure for characters of the level of the PCs) of whoever is present. (Each area gives a short version of Mourne's pitch for that part of the tomb.) Mourne is programmed with thousands of phrases and facts about this specific tomb, but is not truly sapient. Also, if it ever manages to sell the tomb it says it will summon a closer to finish the contracts... but no closer ever arrives, because the hair-brained scheme to sell this tomb was abandoned centuries ago. But Mourne has no sense of time, and no knowledge of the business built around it collapsing.

For more about Mourne, see Area 19.

14. Envy Alcoves

Mourne Pitch: They say you can't take it with you, but that doesn't mean you can't still gain satisfaction from your material possessions, These fine alcoves are finished to match the entranceway at no additional cost, and are ready-fit with shelves, hooks, and level floorspace for chests, allowing your funerary offerings to be not just stored, but displayed in style! Even better, anything placed within an alcove is augmented by illusion to seem five times as numerous or, if the space is fully filled, five times as valuable! Your legend will grow as your material wealth appears to, ensuring your enemies will curse your good life for years after your death.

The magic of the alcoves functions as advertised, still. The first alcove on the left appears to have six ancient gold pieces. In truth, there's just one gold piece (though it's worth as much as a platinum piece to the right collector), and a single Gold Bug, a small venomous scarab that looks like a P when stationary, but bites and poisons anyone who tries to pick it up. It is currently in torpor, waiting for a flesh-and-blood hand to reach for it.

15. In-Law Tomb

Mourne Pitch: Of course you want ALL your family to be interred as befits their station, but that doesn't mean you want them all to lie next to you for eternity. This In-Law tomb is just as large and secure as the family vaults lower down, but  is separated in both distance and by extensive prayers from the main tomb area. We can't guarantee those prayers will place a disfavored relative in a different afterlife than you, but it's worth a try!

This tomb is not, in fact, as secure or large as the Family Vaults, and has clearly been painted to appear gilt and clad in marble, but isn't. The prayer efforts were real, but offended several gods of death and burial. An annoyed, minor psychopomp has sat in here for centuries, waiting to harangue anyone who dares to try to dictate where an in-law's soul's final resting place is. The psychopomp is pretty grumpy at this pint, and while it doesn't initially directly harm PCs who open the door, it does harass them and insist they swear to not try to get their in-laws (current or future) sent to hell before it leaves. If attacked, it defends itself.