The Danzuishanese Maze - Floor Five: Ancients

Nirrum and I both enjoy stories

At least one of us can tell which ones are true.

We are now nearing the end of the Danzuishanese Maze as I ran it the first time. This floor took up two sessions and the next floor took up half of one. For that reason I'm not going to post up the Sixth floor, and save its secrets for another day.

We also have two new tracks for this one, as it took quite a long time to write.



Listen to this for a moment, and allow yourself to relax. As we enter the Maze again.

Fifth Floor - The Ancients

This room Is cold and coated in frost. It is an ellipse, 900ft long and 200ft wide (\frac{x^2}{a^2}+\frac{y^2}{b^2}=1).

Thank you, Desmos.
Staying in this room for more than an hour without heat or travelling gear requires constitution saves to avoid freezing. The check is 9+the number of hours spent in the room. Creatures with resistance or immunity to cold automatically succeed on this save.
The majority of the room is a slow slope toward the centre, where a river runs through the room starting at (h=\frac{z_0.866}{-4.5}) and collecting in two pools, both 400ft from either end, one slightly south-west, the other slightly north east, creating a radial symmetry to the room as the river flows under the central mound and exits the room on the south east side
A Set of standing stones creates a ring around the middle. Running between the stones, creating the pattern of a Seven-pointed star, is a single strand of thick red-dyed wool thread.


The First thing done in this room was the Paladin sliding down the hill on a shield.

• Cutting the thread undoes the seal in the room and unleashes a frost salamander from the far door.
• Unwinding the thread from its anchor at the north corner frees a level 2 Fighter Eladrin. She is winter seasoned, and upset at her imprisonment and the loss of her people. Her name is Graven and she wields a pair of Dha (shortswords).
• Meditating in the middle of the standing circle for more than a minute puts a player under the effects of *sanctuary* indefinitely. Until the sanctuary ends (such as from making an attack), the character can cast druidcraft at will
• walking seven times clockwise and seven times counterclockwise around the standing stones summons an old
  
   Human Archdruid who floats for a moment, smiles, then vanishes into ash wordlessly as soon as he touches the ground, leaving behind a *staff of the woodlands*. Each time a player walks around the circle entirely, a light shines at the tip of one of the standing stones.

Alas, They simply cut the cord. I wanted this circle to be a few things, to have multiple stories depending on how you interacted with it.

The other end of the room has a thin humanoid figure that is 4'9. Its face is only made of a mouth, it has long, stringy lavender hair, it is pale and wears no clothing. Its ribcage is impossibly small. It has two extremely gangly arms with only three fingers but two thumbs and a central micro thumb at the base of its palm. When the players approach it opens the mouth, the mouth continues to open and the skin around the mouth continues to fold back while the body retracts into this impossible opening jaw. Eventually all that is left is a flat half-disc composed of the roof and floor of a massive mouth on either side. It falls to the floor. If the party touches it, it bites them. It has the stats of a maw demon.

Have you ever seen a man eat his own head? The idea of something opening its mouth wide enough to consume itself has always been funny to me, and I like the jumping bean Idea.

 Behind it is a large metal door, beside which is a glowing blue circle made of some rubbery material. Pressing this circle opens the metal door, which slides upward with a hiss, closing after 18 seconds.

I included a large mirror inside of a square room and two buttons, one of which was green and the other of which glowed purple to creatures with darkvision, that is to say, infrared. Instead of just having a door I made it an elevator to increase tension and drama. Never describe it as an elevator, just what an elevator feels like

This brings us to my favourite song on the playlist



Room 2 is a large temple. Statues around this 30ft tall room resemble a mantis with each shoulder producing two arms that seem to be able to come together to mimic one arm. Each statue holds a pick like polearm to the throat of the next statue in sequence. There are five in total.
The Image of Garl Glittergold, God of the Gnomes, is lovingly carved and painted into the wall opposite the previous room. Leaving a gold piece or any treasure in front of Garl Glittergold and walking away causes the wall to fade out to reveal a basket with 4630gp worth of various sizes of topaz inside it. To the left and right are two corridors. Both are twisted in the same direction, such that the floor begins to rise to the right. Walking down this hallway causes one to feel the pull of gravity change to match the orientation of the floor. It twists 270 degrees before splitting into two even hallways. At the end of each hallway, a right-turn leads to a room. A hole in the ceiling leads up to floors 4 and 2.

They still never investigated the shaft going up, but the cleric decided it was a good idea to give an offering to Garl in the form of ten coins. He was rewarded handsomely for his respect

• If the players take the right corridor and then another right, they come to a chamber with a painted-on dark overcast sky and painted on stone walls over plaster. The paintings are poorly done. This chamber is entirely empty but about twelve seconds after someone enters the room, an Armanite appears, raging and looking for a kill.
  
  So, funny story. They entered this room in initiative order, and I described a tiny crack in the air in the middle of the room that smelled like sulphur. On the second round, the cleric cast dispel magic and rolled like, a 22 versus the DC of 18 that the spell was cast at, thus, preventing the entire thing from happeneing
  
• Taking the right corridor then the left leads down a snaky hallway to a small river. At first it appears to be water, but anyone who smells the water before tasting it finds out that it is white vinegar (7% by volume, suitable for pickling). The river runs through aqua and teal walls that appear to be made of cracked ceramic. The diffuse light comes only from the ceiling for once. The channel is 5ft wide and creates a winding path that leads to a 10ft waterfall (of vinegar) and then into a deep pool (90ft wide), within which is a gargantuan (dojo/weather) Loach (statted as a plesiosaurus with double to-hit, damage, and health; and an ac and Intelligence of 16, as well as immunity to acid damage). The loach speaks Giant loach. It will attempt to eat any creature that attacks it or does not move after entering the pool. The Vinegar does 1d4 acid damage to any creature that tries to breath in it. If talked to, the loach says that it will reveal a secret to anyone who defeats the Identically statted Loach detailed below. At the bottom of the pool covered by gravel is a grate that leads to floor 6-1. If the party completes its request it tells them that if they find the mark of the loach in another room, that splashing it with vinegar or salt will reveal a secret room with treasure inside. (Floor 7)
  
  
  I never did write floor 7. They encountered this loach and asked his name, I told them it was Richard Burton and that his Brother's name was Sharyar. The druid stayed in this room actually and rolled a new character, leaving this one to record Richard Burton's stories.
  
• Taking the left corridor and then a right leads to a spiralling water slide coated in soapy water that smells of jasmine. At the bottom of the slide is a 60ft drop into a pool with a hostile and Vibrant red dojo loach with blue spots along its length, and six giant sharks, each Capable of fly 60ft if they are chasing after a creature. The Loach recites "Tales from One Thousand and One Nights," In giant loach, but does not communicate otherwise. the bottom of the pool of soapy water (which does 1 poison damage to any creature that tries to breath in it) is covered in mud but the mud hides Joffrey, a sentient greatsword, who is pinned against the grate leading to Sixth Floor (2).(dungeon masters guide to magical items homebrew)
  • Joffrey

Weapon (greatsword), uncommon (requires attunement)
While you wield this weapon, as an action you can direct the sword to fly you up to 30 feet in a direction of your choice. The sword can carry the weight of one Medium or smaller creature. You can use Joffrey to fly for up to one hour, all at once or in several shorter flights, each using a minimum of 1 minute from the duration. If you are flying when the duration expires, you descend at a rate of 30 feet per round until you land. Joffrey regains the 1 hour of flight capability when you take a long rest.

• Thrown Weapon 40/120
• Sentience. This is a sentient item of a chaotic neutral alignment, with an intelligence of 10, wisdom of 11, and a charisma of 9. The weapon communicates telepathically with its wielder when held. It has no senses, it cannot see, hear, smell or find its way on its own. If let go the weapon can fly but is guaranteed to get lost.
• Personality. Joffrey speaks like a confused old man. It likes being referred to as Jeff. It is almost always confused because it lacks a way to sense the world outside the sword. Due to this it is also quite curious and often asks many questions to its wielder about what is going on and where they are. If it’s wielder has been exploring, adventuring, and learning new things, being told of these occurrences excites and brings joy to the weapon. If its questions are ignored for 2 weeks or more, the weapon weeps for itself
  
  So it turns out that the sharks were far far more deadly than Sharyar. Flying, 3d10 bite damage is a powerful combination it seems. I also realize I didnt' write the size of the room. I made it 120ft to accomodate the combatants. They found Joffrey and got him out. Joffrey is from a homebrew I found on /r/unearthedarcana, and I was quite pleased with it. My favourite out of that is the Charity weapon described on the first floor. They exited through this path, communicating telepathically that this was the way to go. 

• Taking the left corridor and then a left leads to a Massive goblin filled castle ruled by Skull lord who wishes to escape, but won't describe how he got there. Each of the three heads introduces themselves as "Clarence, Haxushi, and Kalikor" from right to left. If they ever need to escape danger or if they think it will benefit them, they will betray the party. A door behind them leads to the Sixth floor(3).
  
  Somehow, They got the impression that clarence wasn't evil. These  goblins got to come along with the party as did the skull lord. The Lich at this point was extremely well fed, having consumed the souls of all things the party encountered so both of them tolerated eachother for the...I'd say two hours they remained in the maze after this. I very much expected both undead to have a reason to attack the party long beforehand.
  
  The Fifth floor only contained three rooms that the party saw. Don't panic though, in the near future, I'll be livestreaming my worldbuilding and worldbuilding process and part of that will be the Danzuishanese Maze, as I plan to vastly expand how it can be played, changing up the forumla of your average random dungeon. The next floor and the vision of a couple of later floors is not without inspiration either
  
  
  
  
  But long story short, the party took the next possible exit, and earned their badges as Maze-hunters. They then bought not one but two castles within the city with their exorbitant spare change. This brings them up in time to the beginning of a new era on Snarl.

This blog post is going to mark the beginning of another gap until both my current parties reach the year 5854, whence I'll be taking a massive break from DMing and streaming my worldbuilding, asking others for help, and looking to the people watching for suggestions and content. The Danzuishanese maze revitalized part of my imagination but the amount of work I do in between sessions has me thoroughly drained for now. This mostly means that I just need to take a break and do what I do best. Worldbuild and lorecraft to make up for the amount of holes my improvisation leaves.

Dal rahi aleeg kem'i,
   Nirrum the Mad

The Danzuishanese Maze - Floor 4: Duality and representation

Both Nirrum and I think in terms of perspective

Neither of us are particularly efficient at communicating those perspectives

The  maze so far has been following a very carefully designed pattern. In general, each floor has an antechamber, and then a hub-room with branching paths from the hub, The Third breaks this a bit by not having an antechamber, but the Fourth Returns to form. That said, this floor has the distinction of having effects from a previous floor affect it. It also has a different Track, Technically two.

Start with this one, the other one is..... far more artful and subtle, but necessary to grasp the context of the room.



Not only that, we get to see a flawless victory for the party, and learn the True Identity of Gary "The Beast" Lasereyes. It's very exciting I assure you.

Fourth Floor - Duality and Representation

The first area of the 4th floor is a crescent that reconnects to both entrances to this floor from above. The crescent looks above a massive (2 mile wide, one mile high) sandy field lit by what appears to be a painted on moon on the cieling, spreading bright light for 10ft around a gargantuan and sleek silvery golem with interlocking metal plates and dim light for 20 beyond. The golem is shaped not unlike a massive slim dragonborn or abishai, with longer arms and 8 eyes. It sits on an appropriately sized throne made out of a darker material but with similar styling. When the players leave the crescent or make it to the center of the cresecent it stands up, bows and reaches towards the players, palm up, reaching for a sort of handshake. It does not appear to be threatening. It has the stats of an ancient black dragon, but does not have a fly speed unless it gets back to its chair, which attaches to it and becomes its wings.

I actually reduced the size of this room drastically, because I realized that while I had envisioned it to be so large, that it was impossible to portray on a mat during combat, not to mention impossible to get the good ending. The golem was using a fairly low Thai boxing stance, hammering in their sophistication and understanding of the situation. Originally it didn't have wings, but y'know, I'm lazy and just ran through the Monster manual for a statblock, then decided that making the chair into wings was cool.

There is no way down from the crescent save a 30ft drop
100 ft behind the dragonborn-like colossus, an similarly sized gargantuan Monkey (Rhesus Macaque) awaits (Statted as a Goristro with its strength and dexterity swapped, No gore attack, and climb speed equal to its walk speed, which is now 50ft). It is entirely biological but can cast scorching ray from its eyes at 5th level. Charisma is its ability score for this. It sits in the darkness, back on to the party.
When the construct leaves its chair, the monkey looks over. When the Construct bows, the Monkey turns quickly, when it reaches out to the players, the monkey charges it, howling. It fights the construct and attempts to throw it away from the party.

That's him, your honor. Gary "The Beast" Lasereyes

• Neither the construct nor the monkey are hostile to the players and will put themselves in danger to protect the party from any sort of threat.
  • If the Kraken's door was not the entry and the players open up the Kraken's door and the kraken is still alive, the kraken breaks through the wall and into the area. Whichever combatant is winning rushes the Kraken. If the Kraken attempts to attack the players, both Combatants will attack it with unrelenting rage. When the kraken is sufficiently dead, both creatures return to threat assessment modes of behaviour, and if the party intervenes, they will become non-hostile to eachother on successful dc18 animal handling checks (made with advantage if the party has food or is able to give food to the construct to give to the monkey) and DC 18 persuasion checks, (made with advantage if the monkey is already somehow calm, or if the construct is offered any amount of money). The monkey does not want the construct near the party, and checks to calm the monkey are made with disadvantage if the party approaches the robot physically. Five successes before five failures, once a day, can endear the two to eachother, should the party stay with them for that time or find a way out of the maze for them. The robot counts as a sentient creature for the purposes of earning the title of Maze hunter.
    
    So fun fact, Remember how the Paladin Aggro'd the Kraken on the previous floor? Yeah. The bardlock ran to this other door which was thankfully not a full mile away after the fight started. The cleric came in at the last minute to grant guidance or enhance ability, which made the last roll meet the DC Exactly. It was a win or lose moment, save or die, and they came out on top. The party watched these two being fight for them and managed to mend their relationship, a temporary state
    
• Neither one will attack the players, even if provoked, though they will both attempt to reposition such that the players are not a threat, moving out of their range if possible.
  
  The monkey grabbed the cleric and held him close.He fought it for a bit but like, When Gary wants something, he takes it. The primal instinct and very instilled urge to protect was highlighted here, both creatures stood to gain from the party. Peaceful and organized social structures are beneficial to both the manufactured, artifical bonds of intelligent beings as well as to the Bonds of primitive beasts. https://ncase.me/trust/ is a good resource to learn about why this came about and what it means for two creatures to pursue this course of action.

• When one is dead, if the players helped, they will give to the party an item. The construct will give a Daern's instant fortress, making it on the spot with hundreds of tiny fingers and arms reaching out to pick up its own scrap metal. The monkey sniffs around for a bit and procures a Manual of bodily health, ready to use.
  
  The books are extremely rare on my setting. Rather, they're almost always on cooldown.Daern's instant fortress is always a favourite.This scene paints value in both created work and found objects. Value is value no matter its source, and socially speaking, those who grant you that value are a positive thing to have around.
  
• Both are gargantuan and trapped within the room and think highly of the party unless magically made hostile. The Construct is unable to think in terms simple enough for telepathy to work, while the monkey is a monkey.
  
  Communication barriers of such sorts revolve around the problem of density of information, a word can only convey so much meaning, and depending on how that meaning is organized it can have so many other interpretations. The Robot's information density far exceeds what we are are capable of communicating in our current context, while the monkey had the opposite problem, an inability to encode much in a meaningful way at all. Despite this, Speak with animals is a spell. The Druid had it on hand of course, and tamed and named Gary, bribing him with food and trees.
  
• The construct is made of mundane materials, the monkey is made of meat.
  
  I guess it's important that I give that other song now.... Enjoy.
  
  
  
  This song has a music video that I can't find anymore and it was an important part of my youth, as it was something my cousins had shown me, and anything they did was automatically cool.
  As you can see I have extremely complex and sophisticated sources of inspiration myself. Clearly, the pinnacle of culture.

At the far end of the field of sand is a single gate That is only large enough for a small character to fit through, and only if squeezing. The guide says the party needs to turn back and find another way forward, unless a way in is figured out.

I had forgotten the cleric had wind walk, and the druid had polymorph. They left the robot behind, which is a shame, that guy was an expert businessman in my mind and a legendary accountant. This is also where they learned that the monkey had eye beams, He had them to fight the robot as it flew around the room but the kraken came in on like, turn two of that fight, swearing to kill the Paladin. The party tried to tunnel through the wall of the maze with the robot punching the wall like a Shaolin monk. Gary, not wanting to be outdone, used his laser eyes.


The other side of the small corridor Has Six gates on the walls of a narrow room with an octagonal pendentive. A square shaft leading from the second floor to the fifth passes through here on the way to floor 5 room 2.

They never did try the pit, even when they smelled mayonnaise they had left behind in the dungeon previously coming from above. Each Door in this room is a different method of storytelling. An open gate beckons to adventure, a glass window offers you a view, A stained glass window will shine its story on you while a carving can be felt. A puppet show implies someone on the other side, while a mirror shows someone their own story. A hidden door of course is a story that's told whether you see it or not, it still happens and it's a journey you might yet take anyway. Part of this room had the feeling of some of the citadel from half-life 2, and I would have included some hallways if it fit the design.

From left to right:

• Door 1 is a gothic iron double gate that is 5 feet across. Through its bars the party can view a room that contains an empty brass braizer, covered in charcoal dust. Bags of charcoal and dried sage, mugwort and lavender, all clearly labelled in infernal. functionally there is over 250g worth of such material here.
  
  Useful, two characters got their familiars back.
  
• Door two is a sliding glass door, through which the party can see a writing mass of rot grubs consuming a corpse, The corpse has a wand of fireball with 2 charges remaining
  
  The Paladin is immune to disease, which it turns out, rot grubs are.The door in question is actually the glass sliding door at my mother's house. No metaphor there, It's just what I think of when I think of sliding glass doors. I wonder how they would have reacted if I described the white plastic trim?
  
• Door 3 is a Stained glass window with a hidden handle that can only be seen on a dc 13 investigation check. It depicts the birth of Bahamut and Tiamat from Io. Behind
  
  This Is where I forgot to finish a sentence and I needed to make something up on the fly, I think it was a demon. and a carving of some kind that they chipped
  
• Between doors 3 and 4 is a spinning false wall that makes an audible click if door 6 is opened, this leads down to floor 5
  
  AHA, Egress!
  
• Door 4 is a rice paper sliding door with stained wooden rods. if the party approaches it, a shadow puppet play begins, depicting the story of Garg and Moonslicer, followed by Ooghie, followed by Los Tiburon, Followed by Phantom the manatee. If opened, the party faces a green abishai. Behind the green abishai is a rack of 6 +1 scimitars, and a bottle of clear liquid that produces very small bubbles if shaken (moonshine).
  
   A very important facet of this dungeon was to give the party too much treasure, as I expect them to give it away as quest rewards or sell it so they can buy property in one of the major cities. A green Abishai, and green dragons, represent poison. Not just physical poison but metaphoric, mental poison. Like Grima wormtongue, they corrupt with their words, and if this is implied to be the storyteller, what does that mean about the purity of the stories told?
  
• Door 5 is a wooden door that is carved to show the line of succession of some human kingdom (sweden, specifically) with each figure shown in its most flattering context. A wight waits on the other side of the door sitting on a low-level treasure hoard
  
  This is actually a Skyrim reference. Skyrim, despite its flaws, remains my favourite game of all time, even now, nearly eight years after its release.
  
• Door 6 is a large mirror with an obvious handle. The door swings inward through a small frame. Behind this door is an elf man, who is staring forlornly at a skeleton of another elf, long dead. The elf perks up when the players enter and ask if they're there to save him. If they say yes, he picks up a large pack and follows. This creature is an adult oblex
  
  See, I've timed this post to come out after the session where they find this out. They took this guy with them! On the next floor, the bardlock noticed that he was a shapeshifter but failed the nature roll. They're wary but not aware. The oblex's pack contains the rest of itself.

Kotsi: Paȑ ra'ke ar
   Piralysarraha Nirrum 

The Danzuishanese Maze - Floor 3: Dark Waters

Both Nirrum and I can swim

But only one of us can fly.
The entrance to the third floor will always reveal a pitch black space that sounds like the ocean. Hell of an opening isn't it? Dramatic. The Marleys were dead, to begin with. Really sets the mind into question mode. Welcome to the third installment, third floor, and third session of the Danzuishanese Maze as I ran it. Here



Put this on, right click and hit loop, you'll need it.

This room really felt like the real beginning of the maze. One might note that this follows the theme of hub and spoke designs for each floor. In here, I was able to portray a sense of vastness, and for a brief moment, hopelessness. Just a touch of frustration until they figured it out. This floor takes themes from Bloodborne, less so from Lovecraft, but plays them counterpoint to my own artistic voice. Juxtaposition, disjointed and staggered stories, lines of thought and ways of thinking. This is where they learned that instincts can pay off, while they also taught me a valuable lesson. I'll get to that.

Third Floor-Dark Water

Created Sunday 31 March 2019
The entrance to the third floor will always reveal a pitch black space that sounds like the ocean. If light is shone in to the room, turbulent but black waters are visible, 15ft below.

The Entrance to the room appears to be mounted on a floating rock above this ocean, on top of which is a small Island with the skeleton of a human maze hunter carrying an Adamantine spear. He has a small bag of 25g on him. One of the coins is a mimic, and will attempt to attack anyone who picks it up during their next long rest. The room is 1000ft wide and the entrance is in the centre of it. 70ft above the entrance is another floating island upon which rests a door.
The room is windy, with rapidly changing directions. The Water is cold, and for each round spent in the water, a creature must make a dc13 con save or take 1d4 cold damage. A creature that is Resistant or immune to frost or one that is capable of breathing underwater has advantage on this save. The water is 100ft deep, and at the bottom of it there is a large fork of Metal, which, if hit, rings at about 30hz for an amount of minutes equal to the damage dealt to it.
Ringing the bell causes the waters to become Tolerable to swim in for that amount of time, but also spawns a swarm of quippers every minute that attack people in the water. They disappear when the ringing stops, but the water gets cold again. The fork will break if more than 30 damage is dealt to it at once.

A literal ocean in the maze. The room is not lit and it is too wide for darkvision to see the edges. Vast. Turbulent. This room screams into the mind of the player that they are small and vulnerable. I ran this for level 9s, they still struggled, they still feared. They also had a mermaid in the party and one of them turned into an octopus. The other summoned an aquatic mount. It was a good time. They never did ring the bell or even look at the top of their own island, let along discover the floating one.

There are five doors at the edges of the room, each one a perfectly square door that is 5ft high and 3ft above the level of the water, an athletics check DC 10 is needed to pull oneself up toward the thin threshold which can be stood upon *barely*

• The door above the island is a 12 foot tall double door that is only 2 feet wide. When opened it reveals a domed blue and green room with the customary mosaic pendentive. Within this room is a massive skeleton which appears to be made of glass. It has too many ribs and its skull is cracked open. Inside of the glass appears to be some cerulean blue substance (extremely similar to horseshoe crab blood). If the party approaches the skeleton, a Death Knight with a Frostbrand Flyssa (longsword) attacks. It is wearing Armor that functions as Dwarven plate but looks to be made out of Red, glittering Resin trimmed in dark green. The symbol of a Kingfisher in flight sits on the right breast of the armor, it is made for someone just over 6ft tall and humanoid.
  
  The kingfisher dives from above the water to catch fish. Frostbrand represents the cold, and the death knight represents the dark. A very surface level and basic bitch comparison, but I didn't have the energy to type out the prog metal concept album that I felt should be behind the door instead.
  
• One of the doors on the side of the room has a seven pointed star on it, and the doorway is covered in markings, Each of which read "Xanaran's" in some language. Upon entering this room, one finds themselves within the Awl Inn Xanaran's, Xundrin Ry'lendar is currently talking with Soleanna Vexus. The Awl inn item is sold here for 75k gold pieces.
  
  A bar? In the maze? It leads outside the maze technically, sort of an interuniversal bar, but you can only exit the way you came in. Inside, are two very powerful characters. A 14th level assassin and equal level cleric. A single turn Deleter build and an extremely powerful healer. Alcoholism ensues, and they rested here for a day, paying a solid 100g each. I found the Awl inn in a homebrew items list for DnD 5e a long time ago, and I loved it, almost as much as the charity weapon, which turns into a chair.
  
• One of the doors has a Triskellion carved in jade and leads to A 60ft round room with two liches in it. Both liches are at half health, clutching their phylacteries, and only have their first level spells left. They jealously guard piles of chalk, salt, and diamonds. Each lich offers the party the other liches treasure if they kill the other one. Both Liches have Imprisonment ready to use the second they are not being focused on. Neither of them have a spellbook. Both are using Staves of Withering which are out of charges, The liches have, evenly divided, 30000g in Diamonds.
  
  I did not expect what happened to happen in this room. One of the Liches was killed as they took up the bargain, but one of the players tried to steal the Survivor's Phylactery. The survivor was imprisoned and the other players have out of game gripes with this one so they just... didn't save him. In game, stealing from someone you're trying to save gets you bad endings. No one cared to save him in or out. That guy is now on his tenth character, while others are on their first or second. The lich waited to see what their reaction was and everyone just shrugged,  for the rest of the dungeon they kept asking the lich if he wanted the soul of something before they killed it. This vile creature, steeped in isolation and greed was baffled that they were feeding him of their own will. Did they not know what a lich was? Little did the lich know, his kind were plentiful and swiftly dealt with if they stepped out of line in this world.
  
• One of the doors seems to be covered with kelp has a hallway that is 100 feet long, 50 feet tall, and 10ft wide. Within it is a Chapel to Blibdoolpoolp filled with rotten lobsters and 200gp in pearls. There is also an eye on a necklace, three sticks of incense, and a crown made of shells and kelp sized for a small character. Three sea hags use their lair actions and coven spells to slowly hunt and haunt anyone who takes from this treasure pile, making them blind at inopportune moments and generally shagging up their day
  
  But one of the players can see them, so they just died. Oh hey, free loot. Blipdoolpoolp is the god of Kuo-toa, loosely based on the deep ones from Shadows over Innsmouth in design from what I can tell.
  
• One of the doors is plain and leads to a room That contains a Kraken within it. The Kraken is crammed into a room that is far too small for it. Its eye lines up with the door but it cannot move, nor escape. Thus it can only use its lightning storm action and legendary action. In front of the Kraken is the skeleton of a Githyanki with a gith silver sword. He is pressed up against a door which leads down to floor 4, if rolled aside.
  
  So the paladin tried to blackmail the kraken, see floor four.
  
• One of the doors is made of silver and leads to another vaulted cieling room, this time with squared ribbing. It is a chapel to the Silver Flame, and has a font of holy water. However, The fountain hides a secret entrance to the 4th Floor which can be found by offering a prayer to any good-aligned god while within. Light streams from the windows, but behind them is only stone.
  
  They went this way after the cleric's first instinct was to offer a prayer. This was rewarded with a way forward, and praise.

 Alagan sho brekmiku kaovi'a wanlo
-Nirrum the mad

Example Dungeon: The Danzuishanese Maze, Floor 2, Orientation.

Nirrum and I both have excellent Balance

That said, we both have abyssmal spatial reasoning and short-term memory.

The Danzuishanese maze holds more secrets yet my friends! This floor has a problem with it, in that I did not telegraph the options well enough. The hub room is irrelevant, the position of any of the doors isn't. The red herring extra doors did not help either. If I had enough energy, I might have put more behind each. That said, they explored every option on this floor, even if they didn't find all secrets.


As of this floor, I'm still on this track, hell I designed most of Danzuishan with this track in mind.

Second Floor-Orientation

The second floor's entrance will always bring the party to a massive, open, and empty domed room with an unremarkable apex. There is nothing in the first room. On the walls, at 15 ft up, there are three doors, each a different color, each in their own frame. The doors are not real, and their destruction reveals nothing behind them save more wall. If a door is somehow fragmented or pulled off the wall it attempts to reform wherever the largest piece is. Placing the door anywhere other than it originally was opens up a new room the doors function identically, and can serve as multiple entrances to the same room from different locations. Infinite loops are possible though occupying the same space at the same time just shunts one object out of the way

Of course they're going to play with the doors. It was not necessary for me to change their colors, and I should have had some more rooms than this, but that said, multiple doors proved useful.

• Placing the door on the floor opens up an identical but upside down version of the room with the lair of a sleeping adult white dragon. The dragon sleeps on a pile of silver worth 7000gp, and over two hundred gems worth 10gp each, with five diamonds worth 1000gp each. In the room there is a frightened elf cleric of pelor who immediately spots the party and looks up at them in fear, and then back to the dragon, hoping it won't wait. He has been here for two years and has avoided the dragon waking by remaining very quiet. There is no other visible entrance to the room but at the very bottom, there is a way to Floor 3 if one lifts the round ornament covering the oculus hole.
  
  Their first rescue! They loved this guy. One cast of silence and flight later and he's out. They explored the rest of the room before killing the dragon, shooting him from above. It was too big to fit out the door so it relied on its breath weapon. The maze is very tough and does not take damage easily, and any damage it takes, it tends to repair. Note that the dome here is upside down, this keeps the spatial theme of the floor but also hints that the maze constructs itself in strange ways. They left through this exit to the Third floor, Dark water.
• Placing the door on the wall at floor level Reveals one of 1d4 rooms, selected at random each time the door is opened
  • 1) A small closet in which seventeen swarms of Necro-ants have build a colony out of what appears to be bones and dust.
    
    Fuckin ANTS. The players in mine found this third, and they assumed this was the insect floor. The closet is small and tells a very simple story. These ants feed on the dead, and make the best of the space they're in. If they had used speak with animals here, I would have made the entire colony sapient as a reference to Aunt Hilary, from Godel Escher Bach.
  • 2) a round, sandstone room that is 90ft long and contains pillars laid out in a 5ft grid. Between the pillars of which slides a Flail snail. 4 shadows lurk at the corner of the room waiting for something to attack the snail.
    
    One of my players has truesight after paying out the ass for a replacement eye. They spotted the Shadows first, then recovered the snail and its shell. The shell makes an antimagic shield and after a while, turns into a slightly less powerful but still useful shield that gives advantage against magic.
  • 3) A team of Mazehunters, Two level 5 fighters with adamantine greatswords and a Cleric of Bahamut with an adamantine mace, all Copper Dragonborn, Fighting a Devourer and a Glabrezu and losing. They are in a long, square corridor that ends in a shaft which goes to Floor 5, it drops 400ft and lands in room 2, passing through floor 4 on the way.
    • The maze hunters, if saved, thank the adventurers and walk straight through a solid wall to leave. They explain that they could not use the door that the party came in, and that they're in their own "bubble" for the maze.
    • The Glabrezu and devourer die permanently if they are killed here, the Glabrezu will beg for their life and can even be "rescued" and brought outside the maze
      
      The Maze Hunters brought these along with them but they attacked. Once picked up in a Maze hunter's instance, you can't see other instances unless your instance collapses. They never realized what this pit was for, even when they found it from below later. They saved the maze hunters and went their separate ways.
  • 4) A Room With four gargantuan stone boulders draped in reed cloth ropes. Hard sunlight comes from an occulus at the top of the brown-walled stone room, creating stark shadows. On each boulder sits a creature. Each creature is vaguely humanoid in shape but are all abberations in classification. One is made out of translucent calcite and has extremely long arms that reach halfway down the rock and terminate in a bifurcated tentacle. One is covered in Triangular cat-like ears which follow the noisiest person in the room as they walk, turning to hear them as best they can. The third is made entirely of grey fuzz with droplets of clear liquid on the end of particularly long bits of fuzz. The fourth appears to just be a tiefling-shaped coconut. In the centre sits a thick wooden pillar, carved in a way that it is reminiscent of a very surprised human. Placed in the human's hands, Embeded in the wood is a +2 Lance. 
    • Interacting with the Calcite creature reveals that he is an illusion, and casts fireball on his location at 7th level
    • attempting to interact with the ear-creature reveals the ears as *extremely hard teeth* though they flatten at the touch and the being remains passive and impervious to damage, divination magic does not work on the creature though it reacts favourably to fish, attempting to follow the sound of living fish, picking them up with its mitten-like eartooth hands and placing it on its skin where they are ground into mulch
    • The Grey Mold creature acts like a sundew plant. A creature must succeed a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be absorbed within the creature. Creatures attempting to help the first creature physically must make the same saving throw. Absorbed creatures are restrained and can use an action on their turn to try and remake the saving throw. Absorbed creatures take 10d6 Acid Damage at the start of the creature's turn, and if they are reduced to 0hp they leave no corpse. If the grey mold comes into contact with any fire *at all* It explodes dealing 1d4 damage to everyone in a 5ft radius
    • Interacting with the coconut tiefling causes them to shatter like glass and for 10 insect swarms of green centipedes to come pouring out
    • Interacting with all four beings causes the lance to darken as it begins to sweat *snake venom* from its tip, causing it to do an additional 1d4 poison damage when used to make a melee weapon attack. The Expression on the statue changes to look relieved.
      
      They loved this room, Interacted with everything, and even took the tooth creature with them, naming it Augustus, The teeth cat. When the statue was relieved, they left an extremely well painted picture of Barstomun Strongbeard from Xanaran's Bar and Inn behind. I'll get into the rules for Xanaran's in another post. Hell, they even got the lance. One of them almost died to the Grey mold creature, which was inspired by Sundew plants. Not one of these things in the room were what they seemed. 

• Placing a door elsewhere on the dome causes the room to Lose Gravity until the door is placed elsewhere, The room on the other side of the room is in darkness but placing inside the room reveals it to be a long corridor lined with teeth, not unlike the throat of a lamprey, Creatures that enter inside the room are quickly swallowed and die. The lamprey room has 4700hp, which, if exhausted, kills the creature, the other end of it contains a hatch that leads to floor 3. When the room is at half health it vomits a Massive pool of acid, filling the first room up to a depth of 4 feet, seemingly ignoring the antigravity effects. Creatures standing in the acid take 1d6 damage at the end of each turn they spend there. The acid does not interact with gold very strongly and has no magical properties, the acid is unable to travel into other rooms. The acid, if collected, is hydrochloric acid, mixed with some proteins and enzymes, but is much more concentrated than human stomach acid. The only magical property it posesses is a strange immunity to magic that affects gravity. The magic is so weak that it does not bypass magical defenses.
  
  They never did kill this thing, though I recall them doing quite a bit of damage. They almost used one door that they just held aloft to kill the dragon with acid, but thought better of it.

More to come soon as we enter dark waters!

Kao ra'u mish'a: Mu ra'ti namish'ke. 
-Nirrum dal Kaolok,

Example Dungeon: The Danzuishanese Maze - an introduction (Edited)

Nirrum the has a vague idea of how the Maze Works.
I, on the other hand, am pretty sure that place is bonkers.

Do you ever just space out and listen to music and imagine worlds around it? Have you ever heard half a story and filled in the rest? Went on a journey on an idea and just envisioned the trip that followed?  Yeah, That's this.

The Danzuishanese maze was an exploration in allegory, metaphor, and general representation for me. Themes that others may understand immediately, others are esoteric and might carry meaning only for myself. I managed six floors of the maze before I ran into burnout from other factors, and each runs along a small theme. Unlike other mazes, backtracking is seldom if ever necessary, it is a puzzle, not an odyssey, as mentioned further down. I built this in order to stuff a lot of bizzare ideas, a lot of treasure, and to remove the idea of metagaming from my players. People who've been playing for a long time know what a Goristro is and what to expect from it. *No one* knew what Gary "The Beast" Lasereyes was capable of. The puzzles weren't puzzles but things to play with, things to experiment with, and I'm pleased to say that past the first floor, the players got nearly all of them, and each time their bizzare choices and often their first guesses were rewarded, despite them being entirely shots in the dark. The next series of blog posts is going to examine the design philosophy and thought process behind each of these six floors, as well as where they fail.

To start with, the maze had a critical path but there was no telegraphing for it, this was partially by design, as it was meant to be experienced, and over seven sessions they covered six floors and a majority of the rooms I had inserted. While the party was satisfied with the maze and its progression, I was not at points, as the rooms dragged on after their initial description. The theming and grandeur was spoiled by them being removed from the experience by trying to figure out the next step. This wouldn't happen in a videogame but this is the medium I'm working with. Some of the rooms were envisioned from a third person perspective, frequently omniscient, but details of that third person perspective are lost on people entering the room. Sometimes I'd have to re-envision parts of the dungeon on the fly an I will discuss that as we go.

Inside the blue Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey [1060 x 960] from r/ArchitecturePorn

The Blue Mosque was definitely the largest influence on the design of the maze's interior. The "default" space of the maze, any given room without description, was built with this blue-green-white and very rare purple flecked design, though the intent of the blue mosque far outpaces the mottled randomness of the maze. Domes, Pendentives, Muqarnas, Mosaic. I was also inspired by snippets of Ayreon's "Into the electric castle"  Album



So with that in mind, let us head into the Maze ourselves.

The Maze of Shang Lai: Entrance

The Maze's entrance is that of a vined lake trout, a fictional fish that looks more like a carp than a trout. Bulbous, stylized, and carved entirely out of jade-like stone. The open mouth of the carp peeks out of the water and offers entrance down a long staircase to a well fitted wooden door. Everyone going into the maze between opening and closing the door experiences the same maze. The door Forces itself closed after half an hour of being left open, because not splitting the party in this maze is a great idea.
Built in 2672 by Shang Lai, a grumpy white dragonborn, The Danzuishanese Maze is the truest testament to the school of the Irrevocable death.

Manaharamu has not yet been able to replicate this void-netting technique despite centuries of trying. The maze yet stands as Danzuishan's chief source of exports. The entrance is a massive blue-green copper-adamantide in the shape of a rather bulbous and stylized trout. It sits in the middle of the river in the center of vehi, sitting lower than every single building nearby, its mouth open, exending a platform in the shape of a wide tongue, bifurcated slightly at the tip out into the water. The water never seems to rise up high enough to flood the entrance, which is simply open to a large staircase
Mechanization of the maze-hunting process is impossible, as it has a tendency to change and contain terrifying new creatures
Outside of the Maze there is a sign directing people to go to the Office of the maze hunters to gain information on the plane they've found themselves on.

The maze is not a puzzle, It is an oddessy. Experienced Maze-runners have been known to get lost for months. Its domed rooms are of hugely varied size, though many feature vaulted pendentives, often as Muqarnas. The ceilings seem to be made of adamantine, but damage done to them never seems to last after the maze shifts.
The colors of the maze tend to be blue green, The lighting is a diffuse white light which *seems* to come from the domed roofs.
Creatures cannot be banished from the maze, they will always act as if this is their home plane while within the maze. Plane shift does not work, as usual, neither does the spell teleport or gate, though misty step and dimension door work fine, because I don't want people fuckin' escaping, but I'm ok with them being cool and moving around.

Danzuishanese Maze - First Floor

Here, put this on, this description follows the path of the intended party 

 Immediately they are greeted with an extremely foul smell as they enter a short square room with a dead gargantuan shark with irregular purple striping on a greenish back and a brown belly. Characters must make a constitution saving throw for every minute they spend in the room or be poisoned for 1d4 hours. If the characters have eaten in the past two hours and fail their save, they lose the food they have eaten and would not gain the benefit of having eaten it. 2n+1 nilbogs clad in pale masks and thick white cloaks made of cords with bells hanging on the end erupt from behind the shark if the players talk. They only speak goblin. The goblins will always move to be within 5 feet of eachother
Behind them is a curtain-gate made entirely out of silver armbands worth 1gp each, for a total of 300gp. But behind the gate, held impossibly by the extremely sparse curtain, the next room is entirely flooded.

This room was made as an introduction. WELCOME TO FUCKVILLE. Why is the shark dead? Why those colors? What are these bizzare things that look better when we hit them? When I ran this, I actually ran the old nilbog, where you could only kill them if you healed them. 
Breaking the gate floods both rooms, without reducing the water level in the flooded one. Moving it aside does not have this effect. Things that move into or out of the water come out wet, as if the arm bands are simply providing a new surface of the water, blowing on it or splashing it creates waves which want to move downward after they begin with their normal circular propagation. Effects that control or shape water will work on this room, though the water will eventually melt ice and if the mechanism fills the room with water after being emptied, it will fill with new, warm water.
Players that cannot breathe underwater cannot breathe here, the bull is just special.

That fuckin Aurochs infuriated the party. It took over an hour for them to accept that the thing wasn't going to die despite their best efforts. This room was inspired by this video


The square, 14ft tall, 30ftx40ft Room contains an aurochs bull, seemingly able to breathe under the water, munching on some sea grass. The water is impossibly clear but tinted green by the walls. In the corners of the room, are four White statues that glow at the base as if in intense moonlight. The statues depict Muscular hobgoblins, pointing as if running toward something. The Statues, upon investigation are set on circlular diases, with clearly marked gauge marks, indicating numbers from 1-400, with 400 being oriented toward the center of the room, with 1 and 399 on either side. The statues can rotate to point in the direction of these numbers and they do so with very little resistance, On each statue, because of the walls, only a range from 350 through 400 to 50 can be selected. the total values the statues align to is 1600.

I wanted some sort of puzzle to really hammer in the odyssey. Bizzare underlighting, slight fog, warm water, a very sensory experience that also poked at the brain to explore this place a little.

• When they Point at any Given Wall An opening appears
  • Opposite the entrance reveals an empty but domed room with red walls, and black trim, making the light within it dim. A mummy lord with 13 health waits here. It has not established its lair, but does have 500 gold worth of small golden cylinders around it, and two 100gp rings on its fingers.
    
    They never found this room, it was intended to introduce them to the abundance of treasure they could find, as well as set the tone for some of the strange circumstances they might find.
  • Right of the entrance is a pair of gargantuan genderless but obviously nearly human legs made of sandstone that are slowly fading away. Stuck into it is a rapier. The name on the Rapier reads "Lazarus Honore Dorian Tibeaux" with "The Old Chariot" on the other side of the blade. It functions as a "charity sword"
    • Nirrum's note: A convenient ozymadias reference, or the result of Elder Dramuut getting cut in half by the bag-in-a-bag trick? Who can say?
      
      Nor this room. This laid out both Allegory and a connection to other parts of the campaign and hinted at how powerful the maze is. Tibeaux lost his sword to two bags of holding in exchange for half of a sandstone god. The other half didn't last long.
  • left of the entrance is the interior of a small wooden hut, the outside of which is bounded by the blueish green stone of the maze, streaked with black (should the players attempt to tunnel through). The person inside is a very lanky old halfling woman. She is a druid of the 4th level and has goodberry pie in the oven currently. She offers the pie to the players if they can help her escape the maze and it not only heals 5hp but acts as a single cast of "lesser restoration" if eaten, there are 12 pieces total and it takes an action to consume one. The pie is tart but also sweet.
    
    She's still in there, their first NPC they could have saved. It takes 3 sapients to become a maze-hunter. She exmplifies many of the lessons I bake into my campaigns, as well as my pies. Make do with what you have, accept what you have not.
    
  • If pointed at the entrance, the entrance is replaced with a stairway downward. Creatures still in the previous room can see in but creatures in the room can't see them, and only see them emerging from the new doorway as if it were a watery illusion, the stairway
    down goes to Floor 2
    
    They got this but went another route. Spooky, innit?
    
  • If pointed at a creature, that creature gains the ability to breathe underwater for 1 minute.
    
    They actually got this! I was so excited,  I was hoping they'd explore more.
• When they are oriented for a total value of 200, the room drains and the Aurochs begins to suffocate. If the previous room is flooded, it flees to there. The rest of the mechanism's operations change then
  • If all statues point (as best they can) to any one of the four walls, An opening reveals itself on that wall
    • Opposite the entrance reveals a room with 25 hostile bodhaks that move out of the way of the party until everyone is in the room
      
      They figured out that the bodhaks in this room couldn't come into their version of the maze. This actually implies they came into the maze from a separate instance, and were not warped in
      
    • To the left of the entrance there is is a small platform and a 60ft drop with no ladder. This brings the party to Floor 2
      
      They took this one down, All excited to move to the next floor
      
    • To the right is a dark corridor with seemingly no end (It is 3 miles long). The air is always clear in this hallway and smells of old glue or paper. This brings the party to A large octagonal room with a stunning mosaic on the cieling, within is an abandoned village built for something that could have been no more than three feet tall. The construction appears to be out of mangrove wood. A blind Oni sits against one wall.
      
      Who lived here, why is it so small, how did this get here? Did the Oni have something to do with this?
      
      • Within the village there is spice snake jerky and Kimchi, which is extremely spicy but edible, there is enough for 4 medium creatures
        
        Florida and Korea both in mind, 4 rations in case they took a long time.
        
      • The oni asks for a single participant duel of anyone. Anyone who even remotely interferes is cursed to have disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws for 1 day and 1 hour. Attacks to hit the Oni have disadvantage unless the player is also blind. If the oni dies, he leaves behind is glaive, a Black guan-dao with jade-like inlay. The Guan-dao is magical and can be used as an arcane focus.
        • The oni will do nothing if they leave him alone
        • If they sleep without watch, they wake up to the oni sitting on a dead horse with no flesh on its head and long fangs.
          
          This went entirely as planned. They got the glaive but they didn't see the knuckleavee. The Oni subverted the sense of sight, making vision equal to blindness and blindness equal to vision in function.  This is also how I seed treasure in my world.
          
    • If pointed to the entrance, Nothing happens
      
      They got this as well. What a disappointment
      
  • If pointed at a creature, that creature gains +2 to damage with weapon attacks and only takes half of all damage for two hours
    
    They didn't get this one, which is a shame. Hobgoblins have big muscle energy.
• When they are aligned to a value of 1400, the room fills up.
  
  They did this several times trying to kill the bull, poor thing, it just wants to eat sea grass alone. He'd probably succeed if he wasn't such a raging asshole.

The Aurochs is Indestructible and ornery. It will charge the nearest creature every round unless charmed.

This was the introduction to the maze and was purposely fucky. This was there to break the assumption that you can guess what comes next. An idea that was purposely re-established and subverted again, More coming in floor 2!


L'A
-Nirrum the mad

Travelling, an Abridged system

Nirrum Travels often.

I, on the other significantly less functional hand, cannot travel much anymore

Beautiful view, Isn't it? I took this photo when half of my treacherous limbs still worked. This is what adventuring should look like. Constant reminders of the grandeur of the land, the smallness of the person, and the wideness of the adventure itself.

Far in the backgrounds of each of these two pictures, you can see where I took the other one.

   Unfortunately, This is now how Adventuring feels in tabletop.

   In Tabletop Adventures, Travel is mindnumbingly repetetive. The DM is torn between trying to negotiate the dissonance between such beauty and the attention span of someone who needs to listen to them describe it. A person can see a hundred rocks in the time it takes to describe one. It takes just a small fraction of the time to imbibe the views in person than it takes to even construct a rough facsimile with words. A great bard might take three pages to describe the qualia of a single breath. A Better one might only need a few sentences.

   Travel is, thus, one of the hardest things to DM. Intuitively, one expects to describe some semblance of path, hope the PCs follow it, hope they engage with the environment, hope they actually remember to bring rations, to gather firewood, to have a tinderbox, to *succeed*  in the like what, five rolls they're gonna need to make. What happens if they fail? Do they die? Exhaustion? What does it take to avoid exhaustion checks? To come back from them? What did they matter? Are you going to force a random encounter? Predictability ruins drama.
   So then, I suggest truncating travel. You know only a few things about the travel that's about to take place. Most importantly, you know it has a start, and thereafter there is a destination where it will end.  The Intent of this section is to cover the distance between a decision to travel and it's destination. Once your players decide to head out, no part of this travel should give them cause to change their story, elsewise, you've reached the end of your travel and the beginning of another chapter.

    Actors:

The actors of any given scene are perhaps the most influential aspect, while being the least important to plan around. Groups can be taken as one, but keys must be taken individually.

    

The Citizens - Xenophobic, Afraid

Damien - trying to survive

The party :

Branwen - Worshipper of the raven queen, Rogue

Four Ythree - The strangest lich

Trizane Finrae - A Fiery Sorcerer

Ferd - Fallen aasimar blood hunter

Brandy - Tiefling Brewer and blood hunter

Fargrim - Dwarf Cleric of Pelor

Arthur - Warlock of the Citadel

Aldrin - Paladin, Exiled heir of Quire

This section is one of those that reminds you what people are there for. Despite its role-call-esque nature, it serves the purpose of creating exigency. It describes things the cast will have to deal with among themselves, which works particularly in your favour if you intend to use any description to cause *drama* at any point in the journey

The setting:

    The layout of the setting is really a table of contents for each section within. This is actually where you set your rising and falling actions in order. Describe in a sentence the simplest version of your setting. "Dark tunnels into catacombs" as an example

A section and its heading

    Describe here at the beginning of your notes, the reason for this place being in the story, being part of the adventure at all. This is often not described to your audience or players. This is for you, to keep your mind on the task.

The Path: THIS is where you put all of that description. What does the ground look like, What color (or types) are the rocks? What does it sound like, what does it *smell* like? Is there any particular qualia that one might feel simply being in the path, The oppressive quiet, the claustrophobic walls, the endless feeling of an infinity just out of view. Here is where you take the picture in your mind and you tell your audience what senses and qualia it should invoke.  They'll often do the work. The grandeur of the rugged and jagged coast is obscured by the sea-scented fog. Conglomerate stone stands purple against the green of the moss and trees and the tawny brown of the pathway carved along the Staggering cliffs. In the distance, a single light by the tower to the north marks the homeward path. The sagging sun casts ghostly rays, erasing the distant city, reminding you of the coming cold of night.

The same sun that shone cold a week previous brings the bright bask of summer. A sense of pride as you gaze toward the tower, this time from the north side, how high the hills have been, and how sweet the landbreeze drifts in the warm wind. The Scent of flowing sap, juniper and fir waking from their wintry slumber brings peace to your tired body as you head to the next tower, across the summery highlands, the trees low, or absent in the presence of exposed rock, and the view grand.

This is all you need to describe the entire scene until someone asks you to elaborate on any part of it, then you can describe the smooth pebbles that seem to make each rock, the abundance of berries, the calls of birds. But allow those feelings to die. Distill what you need to say about the setting and then bring out only the salient points when the actors need to know about them. The only times that needs to be brought up is when the setting suddenly matters again, when your microscope dials in a little further to zoom in on another fractal branch of this entire system, such as combat, camp, clues or Conversation.

This can also be an excellent point to have Events happen. Sometimes Sequence demands consequence, and players can be Driven to travel by the path itself.For example:
  Nearly immediately upon entering The tunnel, there is a massive rumble which stops briefly before the party is blinded, as the tunnel behind them lights up, as their eyes adjust they see as the citadel behind them crumbles into the newly formed blackwater crater, boulders crash down the hill, unsupported by ancient stone. It is a lovely sunny day. A loud BANG deafens everyone until they can get magical healing. People begin screaming, though no one can hear them. Two Kholirahi ships fall into the crater and the airships withdraw rapidly. It is a crater about half a mile deep and seems to have had the epicenter of the event just below surface level. Two airships break off, one headed south, the other headed east.

The deafness was a great tool later down the tunnel, it made the party stick together, learn sign language, and really allowed the cleric to shine, while also taxing his much-needed spell slots.


Win Condition:

    This is the end of travel, this is what *stops travel*, and it is really the crux of this formula. This is a single sentence, or one for each method by which the troupe ceases travelling.  "Make it through the black door. Get to the Next Tower. Get to the next tunnel." Each sentence should mark the beginning of a new chapter, even if that chapter immediately involves more travel. The Key is that characters will have an opportunity to make decisions again when they win at travelling. A chance to explore an area can include the necessity to move on, so you can easily apply this idea to bubbles of exploration such as towns or even dungeons provided the understanding is that the content within is entirely transient.

Treasure: 

   Do I even need to explain? The rewards for searching, the benefit to the story or to the purse. In a game, this is the reward for exploring, the reward for engaging with the setting. I recommend against rewarding the end of travel, I recommend for rewarding those who allow the setting to be more special.  You want your characters to believe in their agency,  and believe that exercising it will lead to their reward (and it will, just not in the way they think). They will truly be rewarded with a better experience, and not the trinkets, treasures, and secrets that you sprinkle around to deliver it to them. This is more part of the setting than it is of the challenges.

Twists:

    Alas, no journey means anything without Drama. In IPV6, strings of Zeros can, once an address, be represented by two colons. 1134:1134:0000:0000:0000:0000:3457:3435 becomes 1134:1134::3457:3435. Those Zeroes are travel without drama, stories that did not need to be told, and an expression of the pointlessness of keeping them there. To make travel have a point, there must be a Twist.

    "One Kholirahi Elite follows them into the tunnels and Enjoys the chase, stealing away people if he can."

   "A monkey attempts to steal their food"
   "The path before them has collapsed into the sea"
   "The Spirit of the mountain has questioned their worthiness, and seeks to challenge them"

 

The most important part about twists is that they're not encounters or events themselves, but a literary reminder to you, the gamemaker to account for their existence as you describe the world and the events that occur during travel. This is a great opportunity to remember to telegraph threats  which get addressed in the next Part

Enemies and Encounters:

   Most of the time, this is just filled with grunts, and I recommend every travel have at least one sign of creatures that the party can interact with, but really this is simply a list you can choose from to add to any of the twists above. A twist is addressed and dealt with in an encounter or event, and this really marks the so called "end" of travel, there should often be a section break after this, a chance for the party to recoup energy as you repeat the formula. 

  This section can be as simple as

• 8 Giant crabs in a river
• 9 stirges
• 1 Hobgoblin skeleton wielding a Hobgoblin Kastane (1d8 slashing) And a lance (1d12) and Riding a Zombie Warg

Or as complex as
    At one point a week in, the pathway stops above a 384 foot drop into a cold and shallow river. The pathway on the other side is largely covered with a large pile of loose gravel. Landing on the gravel requires an acrobatics check with a DC of 10 to not fall backwards into the ravine. For an added problem, the cieling is covered in 20 darkmantles who attack if there are sudden movements.

• the river contains fish which can be collected with rod or net with a DC 11 check, advantage if any bait at all is used. there are 1d60 fish in the river and they replenish after a week
• The wall of the crevice contains a large slab of Labradorite, which if mined is worth 100 gold/lb
• Darkmantles are edible if eaten (5lb)
• if they descend into the chasm, the temperature seems to drop a solid 10c

One way or another, in this part in your notes, you zoom your microscope in and you prepare to describe a challenge they face and the way their setting affects that challenge.



After this, you describe how their setting changes, even if their travel isn't finished, the setting must change shortly after an encounter, otherwise, what was even the point of the last challenge? This is an important pacing measure that I feel holds true for all adventures. The setting can be as simple as a change in elevation, a shift in the type of Plants around, a change in the rock of the tunnel they're heading through, so long as it's Different enough.

Setting:

• The path
• Win Condition
• Treasure

Twists:

•  Enemies
• Encounters

Then change the setting and repeat. 

This is a technique I'm still working on, but it works well in the moments I've used it.

As always, Shor Hiar'u L'a
   -Nirrum the Mad

Manar Lyssar'ke: My first attempt at a Constructed Language

Nirrum speaks Fluent Manar
I, on the other hand, am not done inventing it

Language shapes our world in ways that we don't understand too well until we delve into its history, its context and the differences between two languages or dialects. When making my world, I had come up with many words that were just... made up. Made up places, made up names, and made up similar-sounding names to dodge potential copyright claims. If you look at my map on one of my older posts it still says Khaliras when it should say Kholira. As any creator, especially fans of webcomics go, if something goes on long enough, it changes drastically. What was once a copy-and-paste from the Night Angel's Trilogy's Khalidorians had morphed into the Rather distinct Kholirahi. The only Vestiges that remained were the root-themed skins, the fratricide, and the plot to take over the world by the godking. I was in an interesting position at this point. I had already refered to the people of Manaharamu as Manarahi, and now I have the Kholirahi. As any amateur etymologist would realize, these two word must be related. At least in my world, where they weren't before, they were now. Rahi, to me, clearly meant people. That was the beginning, other words and places contained the hints of a language, "Mana Ulla" meaning magic well gave me certainty as to what Manaharamu was. Mana was magic, or at least power.and energy The mountain itself, Mohara, gave me Hara as Mountain or hill. Mu then, must be town, city, or place. I had it. Manaharamu, the energy hill place. If you wanted to be dramatic, I guess you could call it the Magic Mountain Town.

So I had a few bases, and immediately I added a few more. I'm extremely simulationist, so I asked myself what were the first words uttered among the Manarahi? Their origins were universally extraplanar, having come here as a result of experimentation or Magic going wrong, Unable to escape the prison plane's magic when they got there. Most of them ended up being stuck underground in caverns purpose-built to contain the worst creatures. I got them to establish the most important things. Fire, Water, Giant,Sky, Rest. Pipir, Alag, Cuukiku (which gets funny later), Oowa and Pruwa. all of them onomatopoeic. The popping and hissing of fire, the gurgling of a subterranean river, the stomping of a terrifying giant, and the sound of a deeply relieved dragonborn when they find a cave to house their new, growing family. Racially, the Manarahi might be considered half elf, but in those lonely sparse caves, if it could breed, it did. It is not to be a surprised if one of their descendants is a sorcerer from a stranger bloodline. Utar, sarcasm, came next. I wanted something that had the drip of an english curse, the ability to say it with unfortunate passion. A moment later, I realized I should probaly round out the elemental trio with Brek for stone. Wind was not yet a big factor in the minds of the early manarahi. Time to get to work explaining those bases though. Kholirahi became Kholi and rahi, the something people. I made it a dual meaning. Poetry or injustice, poetic irony, cosmic irony. One of the beautiful parts about language, is that if someone asks how you tell which meaning of the word they're using, just say "Context." Now, Kholi is a decently long word, it's got a modestly complex Kh and pretty big vowel shift, it probably has etymology of its own. Kao, now meant thought and li came from leeg, and both meant "lies". Pileeg and Aleeg, Pili and Ali, burning lies (from pipir) and flowing lies (from alag). Both have their dangers after all. Pileeg, lies as we know them, take work to keep up and are liable to destroy everything you have worked for....buuut a well-maintained lie can keep everyone warm and be a useful tool. Stories, or aleeg, are great to pass the time, they tend to do their own thing and many can benefit, but there is danger in drowning in them. At this point, I look at two of my bases, Manar and Utar, both of these roots refer to speech, Ar, which became language.

Originally, Manar was spoken in a vague Eastern-European accent, butt as it developes and phonemes begin to coalesce out of its decently consistent etymology, it begins to take on a life of its own. I mention this now because at this point in the language, I settled on 'n, an, and ne as negative prefixes, which in the very first instance of their use, betray how much the manarahi care about certain forms of pronounciation. 'nli and anleeg both mean "truth", depending -I suppose- on how fast one is speaking, or how long wants to draw out a poem, or how quietly one wishes to mumble. Mumbling is important in a language, they've all developed their own ways to do it, and nearly half of the bullshit that happens to a language over time happens because of mumbling.

The Conjugation was a fairly simple thing. The Manarahi self-identify as multiracial. Functionally they are predominantly elf and human, but the people's history is one of strong unity between any race that decided to play nice during their time underground. Because of this, not all of the Manarahi were sexually dimorphic, plenty of shardmind, warforged, dopplegangers and many things such as devils, dragons, and angels all found a reason to use the Manarahi to stay alive. As such, the conjugation contains no gendering, and indeed the words for "Male" and "female" are very much later additions to the language. I will use "ra" as the noun, meaning "thing" and used very much the same way as it is in english. Apostrophes indicate a glottal stop, like the T in batman
   Ra'a -Me, I am

   Ra'i - us, we are

   Ra'u - You, you are

   Ra'ta - Singular they, them, another

   Ra'ti - Plural they, them, others

   Nera - Not

These suffixes are universal, and combine nicely with a Peculiar but convenient trick in Manar. Verbing. Any noun can be appended with one of those suffixes and it becomes a verb that describes the most contextually relevant action associated with that noun. It works far better with esoteric nouns like "quiet", than it does with concrete nouns such as "goblin" but in some cases, we do the same in English. Try it with the word "Fish"

Noteworthily, there is no plural "you," as it is expressed in a bit of a longer format "Ra'u sho Ra'ti," "you and them" or in some cases, not at all

Another Suffix that matters is Tense. Manar has three Tenses, Past, present and future, and they are appended onto the verb to indicate its position relative to the context preceding the verb. The present and the infinitive are identical, as the idea of being one who does things belongs partially in the past, and there is another word devoted to that outside of the suffix. The two are as follows
-'lo in the past
-'ab in the future

Betlyss'u'lo, for example means "(darkgood) Good night - you -future" or "You (will) have a good night,"

This brings us to basic sentence structure. While Conjunctives work more or less the same way that they do in english, the sentence structure is drastically different. A sentence in Manar is organized from most passive and furthest abstracted to most active and concrete. Indirect object, Object Predicate-Subject followed by any description of the subject. This can be nested complexly with any subject becoming the object of another clause. So far it has been sufficient.

Pluralization has ended up being a very late addition to a language, and it was bizzare to deal with the idea of making more than one pig for example. I wanted a solution that would allow loanwords and weird sequences to be relatively easy to understand. By using Ra'ti (thing, multiple others, they) before a word, one will recognize it as referring to multiple distinct objects.This does run an interesting issue of multiple things that are the same thing doing things. Ra'ti can be replaced with any similar verbed noun.  Pep'ti Lor. Hopping they Rabbit. Multiple rabbits are hopping.


That's all I'm going to cover for now, this blog post took too long to even get to this point and I apologize for the wait! I've been busy with a campaign of such a large scope that I haven't learned too much from it yet! I've got an idea for another post already so that might be coming up very soon!

English hiar'u, Manar hiar'u'lo, Petiar'a'ab Jatira Hiar'u'ab, Lirano'u dal'a Ra'ke. English you are reading, Manar you will read, Anything that you have read that I have written, a gift from you for me it is.

-Nirrum The Mad

Magic.JPG: Setting precedents on the extended reaches of a world and system

Nirrum can make spells that others haven't seen yet

I, on the other hand, can make a mean Veggie Stirfry

In My context on levelling, I mentioned  King Fleet-Admiral Lazarus Honoré Dorian Tibeaux-Avisen. Tibeaux is almost unhittable, in part due to an item that allows him to put 5ft of distance between him and any effect, Nullifying Melee and ranged attacks and potentially dodging spells entirely. But who made this item? Could a player make this item? Today I'll be talking about how I handle players doing things that aren't exactly in the level description.

Does it have to be a bag?

The wizard who made Tibeaux's cape doesn't have a name yet, but they're an expert with the magic that a bag of holding uses. With what is perhaps the most iconic Item in dungeons and dragons, the ubiquitous bag of holding has Two tricks, it's bigger on the inside but it always weighs the same. You can turn it inside out for some interesting effects but rather importantly, The bag of holding is not a natural part of the world. A Creature, sapient and experienced, had knowledge that allows one to craft such a device. The implications are profound. Bags of holding have come in different forms over the years, from satchels to messenger bags. The Quiver of Ehlonna, Robe of Pockets, Portable hole, and Handy haversack all just permutations on the theme. What this tells us is that the magic isn't so rigid as a hard pre-coded spell, but is in fact, shapable. There is now precedent that people can make things that are bigger on the inside and things that nullify weight. The bag of holding and its friends are referred to as having demi-planes within them, portals to somewhere else that isn't really anywhere at all. I'm sure the math works out. When Making the cape, I started with a bag of holding and asked "How wide can the mouth be?" Being the dungeon master I said "fuck it" and made the "bag" just be one spread out piece of fabric. It's not capable of holding things and it'll make you sick for a day when you first put it on while you get used to space being warped around your arm and half of your body, but indeed, you get used to it.  Precedents are the handiest tool you can use when making new spells and items. Let us take another example. There is a common trend that there tends to be a wand for many type of spells. Rather, it is a wand that has the same effect as a spell. There are also wands of other effects, wands of secrets and wands of binding and the like. This precedent is simply that the wand is a rechargable option for Magic.jpg. Make a wand of "Turn one specific person's guts inside out", or something from a class feat "Wand of subtle spell" with charges to turn something into a subtle spell.

Actual cool Magic

Pay close attention to what other things can do. Setting up traps that don't correspond to any spell other than wish, having magic abilities that no one else does. If it can be done, then it can be done, no reason to limit it with unobtainability. Having your Audience capable of learning these things provided enough investment into the game. Let research happen, let shenanigans occur, Provided they take the time. I like the idea that any setting is a minimum of 20x larger than the representation. 20x more people, 20x more distance between locations. Taking this 20x factor and applying it to spells, something that's 20x as powerful as a regular spell you learn on the fly in the run of an adventure and it takes 20x as long to learn and 20x more resources and 20x longer to cast. 20 year long rituals for something that wish can't accomplish. Time Taken outside of an adventure is time you can use for research on Generic magical things. A first level wizard, capable of casting Silent Image and minor illusion, should probably be able to produce, given a few weeks, the equivalent of a Movie, provided some resources. A wizard capable of casting wish should, given a few weeks, be capable of taking over a city with any sort of effect, give a few months, a country, given a few years, the world. Uninterrupted of course. The downside of such downtime is that an interruption could ruin quite a lot of effort, which is why such beings as Acererak from the tombs of Annihilation and Horrors, takes many saturday morning cartoon level pains to prevent people from interrupting his work.

The Balance Problem

The only balance to Magic.jpg is that it can be interrupted, slowly dispelled, and at the worst moments, wished away. The ultimate truth of Magic.jpg is that, like the spear, the bow and arrow, and the gun IRL, it's a better option than not having it. You can't get hit if the enemy is too far away to hit you back and with magic, There's no physical work equivalent that would be able to counter the most efficient use of the two things that can truly break a system. Time and Economy. Keep adventurers handy for just such an occasion.

Deep Lore Redux

I am so simulationist that honestly, I struggle to have the system of Magic.jpg ready for any given system it operates in. I haven't yet thought of the grid of materials and conditions that would allow one to put together the effects of spells and magic yet revealed in, say, 5e. That said it can be done, and when time permits, it will. The more narrativist designers will have an easier time, but might back themselves in a corner if one ingredient is too abundant. Like blood, everyone has blood, and it sets a murderous precedent, especially if the counter is something like rubies. Not everyone has rubies

Betlyss
-Nirrum

Post Script

Updates may be a bit more infrequent coming up. Not only am I running out of things to say (gods be praised) but some health issues are doing a major number on my creativity, it took me over a month to write this and it's not up to my usual standard. Apologies to all!

Mixed Signals: Obfuscating options, Rewarding the stubborn

The easiest way to fight Nirrum is appetite suppressants

The easiest way to fight me, on the other hand, is with a punch or two

I've talked a bit about the mutability of the world, how by definition, things can be changed if they have been made. Some settings get around this by saying that the knowledge is lost or that a god has hard banned the most powerful of magic which is needed to undo the curse found in your average "unforgettable hat". Personally I like to take a different approach if I don't want something broken.

Misdirection

Consider this quote from the temple of the world spirit

  The dungeon has black doors inlayed with gold filligree in the shape of a poem in abyssal, describing how the world-speaker should stay out of the way of the yuan-ti. The words are charged with magic that prevent the door from being damaged while it is in the feywild. The doors are large and their frames are hexagonal. They have no hinges but a handle on one side allows the door to be opened by rolling it sideways. Opening doors requires an action with a DC 11 Strength(Athletics) check. The doors are well-balanced but are mechanically Driven to close. Keeping them open for more than one round causes the DC to increase by 5 for every round that passes up to a maximum of 30, If the door is held open past this point, it breaks and remains open. Undoing the Door's Magic requires two checks, a DC23 arcana check to learn how to pause the magic and a DC15 Sleight of Hand to scratch the appropriate lines. The doors feel glassy with obvious changes in texture where the writing is.  

Pretty sturdy overall. The walls however,  have this description

The Dungeon has Green Serpentine (Of course) Walls, with snakes in relief. The walls seem to smell of blood, or copper but none is present. The walls are nearly a meter thick at least. (but not indestructible if someone takes a pick to it, go to 20 if they escape). The walls feel glassy in all places where the carving has been finished, though occasional imperfections in the material will create a void or a small rough spot

Notice the bold text, which indicates the intent. This part is not described to the players, and when I ran it, they almost noticed anyway. Almost. This is a pretty typical misdirection. One of these two aspects of the dungeon is disproportionately reinforced and it's the one that is in the way the most. Players tend to assume that the door, which is an experience of egress, is the weakest aspect of the dungeon's construction. You can still get around it after all. The door's strength is indicative of the effort put into the least permanent, the most targettable  and thinnest point in the wall. The walls are oft seen as immutable in their own right, Surely if the door is that reinforced, the walls must be doubly so.

Ma, Mishliatab ra kao'u. Eh, One could think that.

Building up expectations of how the world works and then the subsequent subversion of those expectations is comedy, it creates and releases tension. Not releasing those tensions obviously makes them build up. Your choices, Drama and Comedy, are a win-win narratively. These walls are obviously an expectation. The expectation is that it's faster to go around, that the walls are harder than the way forward. For those that have experienced a dungeon, a level, or a setting for too long can tell you, there's often a better, quicker way in retrospect. I talked about rewarding exploration before, and this is an extension of that, you can now reward players for their choices by allowing those choices to matter. Tunneling through a wall in the middle of a siege has its own issues and challenges, but don't be afraid to experience "your" puzzle being defeated by 6 munchkins with a cart. The degree of importance of any given challenge will come with rather telegraphed defences for the most part. Thick walls, sentry patrols. Just about everything that they'll come up with has been tried historically. A quick google search of what was done to defeat a tactic will give you plenty of results.


As mentioned in my post on Random Dungeons, Tedium is your only real enemy as a dungeon master, and We should keep that in mind as we continue.

Obfuscation.

Many dungeon masters have made good use of obfuscating an easy path to increase drama. Six guards wait outside the door, each armed, wary and attentive. Their armor is thick and they are disciplined.  Upon witnessing a disturbance, one guard knocks on a small grated window and shortly thereafter, a patrol of five comes out to deal with the disturbance. Six hours of throwing rocks and conscripting and fighting locals, the bard finally decides "Excuse me, could we go in?" would be a good way to attempt ingress. If they haven't made an enemy of the guards by now, the answer might likely be "yes, just sign in at the guardhouse and leave your weapons there, you'll have to register if you're a caster, security reasons and all that." Bonus points for a cheeky "it's been a rough night out, best watch yourselves"

Twelve standing stones, each with a different symbol begin to glow as you approach. A mountain-sized monster glares your way as head toward it, following your movement closely. You stand in a room, and upon the wall is the word "overthinking" (NSFW link, by the way, very entertaining though). All of these things are methods of obfuscation without slowing the player down, because until they get in operating range, nothing is going to happen. Compare this to the hypercube dungeon, or worse, the new monster that is a penteract dungeon in which the obfuscating factors are hard set and more of an impediment, slowing the players down and removing their flow. The first group represents a far more easily digested circumstance while the latter two are Dick moves.

The Fear of God

Your players might catch on to a lot of these and begin to breeze through them, let it happen a couple of times before manifesting what should have been their fears rather directly. It makes for great drama and is a sustainable power-release gambit, in that your players will always get complacent given the chance. Have that giant throw a rock, have those standing stones zap them into the plane of suck.

N'hikao, hialo
-Nirrum