The Pit of the Deceivers
Robin Mooch
This rotten edifice was once drafted to serve as the foundation of a great and stately tower to praise the glory of the Blessed Truth. Yet tragedy struck when cultists and depraved scum amongst the architects blended cursed and unholy ointments into the mortar. After standing gloriously for exactly three semesters months the entire rotten edifice came crashing down, becoming a ruin shunned by all sane folk. But whispers speak in the city slums of darker things remaining amongst the rubble, for the wicked have plans that run far deeper than merely destroying their adversaries. Two to six brave adventures must plumb the depths of the foundations of what was once the Tower of Intellect, rendered now….The Pit of the Deceivers.
1: Entry to Hades
Broken mortar and scattered stone, nothing of value or import left amidst the lingering bitterness of betrayal. The tower is still almost visible in the sky if you shut your eyes and imagine what could have been. The air is cold and moist, like the tongues of the liars who brought it down. You stand on the precipice of something. Dare you take the next step?
The illusion of pointlessness is only skin-deep: a careful search with even moderate attentiveness will peel loose this first of the many pathetic lies shielding the Pit’s masterminds from justice – a trapdoor hidden behind a stack of fouled and rotten sacks of potatoes in what was meant to be the root cellar. No roll necessary; these parasitic and fawning mockeries never dreamed keen eyes or stout mind would search for them, trusting in the need of their noble adversaries to trust them. No longer!
Inhabitants:
Treasure: A lost holy symbol of the Tower of Intellect has avoided capture or defilement, having fallen into one of the abandoned water barrels, where it shines like a lost coin in a gutter. It will Embless the party during their mission as a 50th-level Holy One. Its material value is 50 gold, its ideological value is priceless.
2: Descent into Lies
The maddening spiral of this stairway stretches to depths unfathomable, and every inch of it is a slow but suffocating insult to the senses. The stone beneath your feet is fouled and slippery as no honest rock should be; the air which should be clean and wholesome is rank and slimy in your lungs; the light flickering from the torches is greasy and only deepens the shadows. From somewhere you hear a whisper of a monotonous and nasal chant.
This stairwell is testament to the hubris and folly of its builders: for all its grotesque pretensions to grandeur, it is but a few scant shallow stories in depth – the rest is but the work of architectural smoke and mirrors, an optical illusion creating the appearance of endless evil where rests a rather humdrum and typical squalid hole. So too typical is the waiting ambush; several cultists of the Scum Sucker are skulking in the alcoves holding torches, posing as the crude statuettes that otherwise fulfill this role. They are clumsy and fearful of the righteous; this ambush suffers a -5 penalty; -10 if the holy symbol from Area 1 is present.
Inhabitants: 10 Scum Sucker cultists (LVL 1; 3HITS; 1ATK; 2DAM, SPEC: Rotten wounds: when a cultist dies they vomit bile as an extra 1DAM Rot attack). These pitiful creatures will fight to the death; not out of bravery, but out of the sheer inability to comprehend that they may be outmatched. If panic gets the better of them one or two might cast themselves down the shaft in stupid terror, thereby destroying their own illusion. Thus is evil ever undone and deceit unmasked.
Treasure: None. The cultists are penniless due to their own perfidious and pernicious sloth.
3: Chambers of Ingratitude
This foul-smelling and cramped dormitory clearly serves as domicile for the cultists you so recently slew. A twisted and sloppily constructed idol to the Scum Sucker dominates what little floor space is available – the mindless idiots, in their haste to raise praise to this putrid being, have witlessly ceded the only available patch of floor space they could have used for anything productive.
The cultists’s bedsheets are repositories of fleas and nits; any foolish search for something of value in the possessions of these wretches will find naught but a chance at contracting Scum Scabies (33RISK; 1DAY). The Idol of the Scum Sucker is, for all its putridity, powerless to do anything to impede the stout and good-hearted.
Inhabitants: None.
Treasure: The Idol of the Scum Sucker is utterly worthless and the party should be punished with ill-fortune by the grace of the divine should they attempt to carry it with them. If the holy symbol from Area 1 is present it will dissolve the Idol into foul-smelling mucus instantly.
4: Apse of Treason
A gnarled and crooked little domed chamber houses what little pathetic pretense of knowledge and learning this festering slime-trap can muster: a single shelf, filled with reams of snot-encrusted and pus-smeared papers. This must the cult’s record-keeping section, where they kept all the records of their sabotage, backroom dealing, and terrible slanders against the wonders of the Tower of Intellect.
The cultist’s attempts at hiding their lies are as transparent as daylight to any player examining these records. Bringing these texts to the authorities will doubtlessly lead to the wheels of justice coming down with great and holy force upon any straggling supporters who remain in the rest of the city.
Inhabitants: None. The cultists are all illiterate, fumbling morons who don’t even know how to employ capitalization properly, let alone spell. The sight of this room – necessary though it is for their foul work – pains them.
Treasure: Bringing the texts to the attention of authority will surely garner the party commendations and raise their esteem in the eyes of all.
5: Labyrinth of Hate
The stonework – already of meager, barely-serviceable quality – here degrades into rough and clumsy scratching on raw and untrammeled stone; a cavern clawed loose from the rock without even the beneficial caress of water’s flow. A maze of twisty little passages seemingly surround you, all alike. Keep your wits steady and your blade ready.
This pitiful attempt at a ward is a true labyrinth indeed; all the party need do is follow the single winding path and their escape shall be guaranteed, so long as they can defeat the Scum Slave chained to the exit.
Inhabitants: 1 Scum Slave (LVL 3; 15HITS; 2ATK; 7DAM, SPEC: Chained, the Scum Slave cannot move from its position and can only spit for 1ATK 1DAM against any foe beyond its reach). This pathetic thing is meant to be the cultists’ superweapon. Do they not realize their own incompetence foils their every ploy? Of course not.
Treasure: The Scum Slave has swallowed a bejewelled ring if the party can bring themselves to cut open its rotten belly. It is worth 40 gold.
6: Road to Damnation
This is like the first staircase the party encountered but smaller.
It’s probably less impressive too now that they know the trick behind it.
Inhabitants: None.
Treasure: None.
7: Chamber of Lies
Within this dark place, the nadir of this antithesis to the once-glorious Tower, foul vapours congeal and mist from a noxious pit in the floor that plumbs the depths of the world and intrudes into a place far more sinister. Above it, foolishly believing themselves its masters, two robed figures lower their clasped hands and pause in their unceasing, monotonous, idiotic chanting. The Twin Deceivers unsheathe their wicked, backstabbing daggers and prepare for a battle their cowardly hearts suspect they cannot win.
These two utter bastards oversaw the overturning of the overarching rules and overall guiding principles of the Tower of Intellect and would gladly have turned it into a rotting hive venerating the wretched Scum Sucker – blessed be that their own incompetence achieved nothing but its ruin! They even now whine and entreat their dark master to return. Enact great and terrible vengeance upon them!
Inhabitants: Foul Sorcerer Sammael (LVL 3; 10HITS; 1ATK; 5DAM, SPEC: Spellcasting: 2rot missile, 1foul stench). and Fiend Scholar Paeiet (LVL 3; 8HITS; 2ATK; 2DAM, SPEC: Spellcasting: 2deceitful whispers, 1screech), the ringleaders of this wretched coven who turned all others to blasphemous worship of the Scum Sucker. They will fight with vicious cowardice to the death while begging for mercy they do not deserve and will never get.
Treasure: Nothing they own is worth anything. Setting their belongings on fire will cause a pure diamond worth 100 gold to form in the pockets of all party members with a tiny ‘ding’ of pure sweetness and light.
8: The Pit of Deceit
Behold! The great antithesis in its rotting flesh! The Scum Sucker’s loathsome maw roils hungrily at you from the great pit, gnashing with spite that it hasn’t received the feast that it was promised! Stand fast!
To defeat the Scum Sucker, all the party need do is close the hole by clogging it with any of the loose objects lying around, preferably including the bodies of Sam and Pat.
Inhabitants: Sandii the Scum Sucker (LVL 10; 0HITS; 0ATK; 0DAM, SPEC: Otherworldly, the Scum Sucker cannot intercede without a potent mortal intermediary and is powerless to touch the physical plane)
Treasure: Upon defeating the Scum Sucker and closing the Pit of Deceit the party will return in triumph to the Principal of the city and be granted Monitorship of all byways and the adulation and admiration of all worthy folk.
***
The Festering Cavern
Sam Bolth
There is a very large cave outside of town, everyone knows that and it’s a cool place to hang out sometimes. It’s got a big gross monster inside it, everyone knows that, they let it be and have its space. Until recently, all of this wasn’t a problem. Now the monster’s crawled out across the countryside screaming and farting all night. You’ve been hired to go in and make it stop.
1: The Holeway
The cavern’s mouth is wide and damp and smells bad. Inside you can hear a distant whining.
Some of the ooze dangling from the ceiling is acidic glue; anyone taller than a dwarve will run into it if they aren’t careful.
Inhabitants: 2 Acidic Glue (LVL 2; 20HITS; 1ATK; 8DAM, SPEC: Flammable, weak 2fire).
Treasure: the Festerer regurgitated a big smelly pellet from last night’s meal just outside the cavern mouth. Anyone poking through it will find a ‘best runner-up’ trophy from last year’s Minidungeon Round-Robin, worth 5 gold.
2: Main Sludgepit
The cave combines limestone walls and a filth-covered floor with a rotten and root-riddled ceiling that’s about to cave in. Whatever lives here doesn’t pay much attention to its surroundings.
The center of the sludgepit will suck in anyone who walks through it without checking (Dwarve and alf players will sense the uneven flooring just before they get too close; so will woodwisers). Six scavenging Big Teeth are hiding on the ceiling by holding onto the roots.
Inhabitants: 6 Big Teeth (LVL 1; 3HITS; 3ATK; 1DAM, SPEC: Gnawing, if one ATK hits the next hits automatically)
Treasure: The largest Big Teeth has a ruby caught in its incisors worth 50 gold.
3: Rear Sludgepits
Farther in the cavern splits apart into three deep alcoves. All of them are filled with loose garbage and bones.
The first sludgepit is filled with skeletons and nothing else. The second sludgepit is filled with a skeletonne formed from a cow, two deer, and three humans. The third sludgepit is shallow and leads to Area 4.
Inhabitants: 1 Skeletonne (LVL 3; 12HITS; 4ATK; 2DAM, SPEC: Splinter, whenever it loses 3 hp create a copy of this monster with 3 less hp)
Treasure: The deer were both trophy bucks and their antler racks are worth 10 gold each.
4: Narrow Passages
This tunnel is dark and cramped and pretty hard to get through and it’s almost like whatever made it doesn’t want any company.
The roots in the walls will try to grab you (2ATK) and deal 2DAM after seizing hold. Attacking them with rot, fire, or bladed weapons will stop them immediately; blunt weapons, light, or cold will take longer and they’ll deal 1DAM before backing off.
Inhabitants: None.
Treasure: None.
5: The Festering Cavern
This is the worst-smelling place you’ve ever seen and it’s because of the big gross monster squatting in the center of it. It looks like a flightless robin the size of a truck and it’s still whining even as it jumps at you.
Boss fight. If you bring it to half health it tries to escape, but it’ll panic and get stuck in the roots in Area 4 and you can finish it off pretty easily.
Inhabitants: 1 Festering Robin (LVL 5; 22HITS; 1ATK; 7DAM, SPEC: Thin Skin, weak 3all)
Treasure: Everyone thanks you for getting rid of a greedy asshole who was driving people away and trying to turn a perfectly good hangout spot into his private shithole.
***
The Silent Pool
Pat Garvey
Imagine a place devoid of sound. Devoid of light. Devoid of time. A place neither hot nor cold. An endless, tranquil pool where you can sink forever without the need to break the surface for breathe. It sounds amazing, and you’re here to find it, somewhere higher up this peaceful enchanted hillside of Tumbled Peak.
1: Soft Slopes
These green and mossy stones welcome you to the mist-enshrouded base of the tranquil rise in terrain. What awaits you?
Although the moss looks slick, it’s perfectly safe and stable underfoot as long as you don’t jump around a lot like an asshole.
Inhabitants: None.
Treasure: Peace of mind.
2: Fae Copse
Halfway to the summit a small village comes into view, woven into the small local trees and the stone of the ground, moss-shrouded and fern-draped. Who lives there?
The alfs, dwarves, and nomes of this town are shy but very friendly and will be nothing but friendly and nice to anyone visiting as long as you don’t start accusing them all of backstabbing you like an asshole.
Inhabitants: Like ten good friends.
Treasure: Camaraderie.
3: The Silent Pool
Atop the worn and weathered warm-edged stone of Tumbled Peak lies the pool. But someone has made it here before you – sitting in it is a small and stalwart figure. You know them. Where from?
Gee I don’t know maybe from before the society’s membership went from seventeen to three huh?
Inhabitants: Your best friend Sandy who really did not deserve any of the shit that went down and is here to have a goddamned break with you half an hour after you turn in this stupid fucking submission.
Treasure: The peace of mind that comes from splitting a joint half an hour after saying PS I Quit Fucko
PS: I quit, Fucko.
PPS: ‘Fucko’ is you, Robin.