A&A Playtest: Comet Dungeon 1.0

Comet Dungeon 

Behind the Scenes

Now that both teams have completed the Comet Dungeon I can talk about the design of it.  As you may have noticed there is a lot of scribbled information on what originally started out as a turbine diagram with some op-amps thrown in.  The dungeon began with the final room and then moving back and filling out the rest for what would fit the theme.

The Massive Hexagon.

An old wizard had chained and bound an archdemon in this dungeon using a combination of magic and artifice.  The binding left him immune to harm and unable to physically harm anyone else.  Unfortunately for him like any good demon he worked a loophole into the binding that prevented anyone else from leaving the dungeon so long as ye olde archdemon was trapped there.  As a result all the living inhabitants were trapped there and the Wizards constant struggling with the confines of the spell eventually caused a combusting scroll that was his demise.

Before the Comet Impact this dungeon was hidden away and completely undisturbed before it tore four holes into the dungeon.  In addition to the three entrances to the dungeon (trapped front door, gelatinous cube chute, and lab entrance) there would be four more entrances to deposit them in the middle of the dungeon thanks to the comet shards.  The caveat of course is that the comet left plenty of space goop behind that loves to bind itself to metal.  Thankfully, each Team had someone who selected Piece of Ancient Tech: Hoverboard as a Relic so they could scout out these entrances.

Drop zone number one was in the Chimera room where undead servants, dipped in silver to prolong their wear and tear tended to the cages.  Some of them however were hit by space goo and act kinda crazy. The second drop zone is an actual triangular shard of the comet, each side is covered in a lesser spell [Dyne's Runaway Force, Mime's Imprisonment, and Telepathy (PSI)]; it is blocking a T intersection.  The shard is razor sharp and and rope spelunking down carries a 2/6 chance of slicing the rope and stranding them on one side of the T intersection.  Not only that but the goo-less path to the hole crosses over the hidden pit that drops straight into a Gelatinous Cube chamber.   The next hole is into a room with a single visible exit and a bunch of space goo that has completely covered a hammersmith automaton.

The biggest comet entrance was in the Demon's chamber, thirty feet of goo was around the massive hole so only the most ambitious would go storming in there.  The melting comet destroyed half of the bindings on the Demon giving him some autonomy, but still leaving him 50% invulnerable.  The Demon will telepathically call any that make it North of the blocked T intersection or who approach his room from the west.  Likewise, the comet site left a large black pyramid covered in potent Chronomancy spells near the demon.  Inside the pyramid is a dying alien who beseeches any who listen to enter the pyramid so they can enter into an agreement where he uses their body as a vessel (Introduction to the Avatar System).  Only those that have witnessed the non-euclidean geometry from the comet touchdown, from the dead wizards journal, or simply experiencing portal madness are susceptible to the aliens call.

The guildmaster Youjiro the Silent waits patiently in the Wizards false bedchamber ignoring the petulant demon and keeping an eye on the pyramid.  Also an Avatar, but his spirit comes from an ancestral magic sword rather than a space invader, he will attempt to slay any who emerge from the pyramid.  The stage is set, in the next post I'll tackle how the rest of the dungeon came to be.