Skip to main content

The Occasional Dungeon: Crypt, Ground Floor, Part 2

Here's what's in areas 1-5 on the ground floor crypt map:

1) The room is partly filled with a dense grey mist from a few inches above the ground to a height of about three feet. Oddly, does not flow or expand outside of the approximately 12' by 12' room. Anyone peering under the mist sees a wooden chest in the southwest corner of the room.

The mist is acidic, doing 1d corrosion damage per turn spent immersed in it. It's possible, though, to crawl under it. Crawling under the mist requires a roll against DX - (2 x SM) per turn (that is, a -2 penalty for SM +1, a +2 bonus for SM -1, and so on). Failing the DX roll incurs a single point of corrosion damage, or a full die for a critical failure.

The chest itself weighs 40 lbs. is somehow resistant to the corrosion. It is locked (a straight roll against Lockpicking opens it), but there's a poisoned needle on the mechanism:

Detect: Per-based Traps.
Disarm: DX-based Traps.
Circumvent: The chest can be smashed open though it's probably a bad idea.
Evade: No
Effects: The needle is envenomed with a toxin which causes searing pain. -2 to DX and IQ; roll against HT hourly for the effects to subside.
Shots: One.
Steal: DX-based Traps at -5 to remove for reuse.

It contains a set of six large, exquisite blown glass goblets made of an iridescent crystal, elaborately enameled with tight patterns of interlocking triangles ($570, 1 lb. each).

2) This area contains a life-size statue of a swordsman. Only the figure of the person is stone. It is clad in a suit of plate armor (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8, p. 34), with padding underneath, a surcoat over it, and carrying an actual thrusting broadsword and medium shield. Anyone who successfully attempts to detect magic will find that both statue and armor are magical.

The statue is made of Essential Stone but is not otherwise enchanted. It would have a base price of $25,000 in town, though it weighs 600 lbs. The armor acts as a golem-armor swordsman. It can't move while it's on the statue, but if removed, it'll "wake up" in an hour or so, reassemble itself if it's lying around in parts, and attack anyone nearby. If someone's actually wearing it, they're forced to come along for the ride. Every turn, roll a Quick Contest of ST. The winner determines the physical actions of the armor for that turn.

3) This room is a more or less conventional tomb, containing a pair of bodies. In life, they were enemies of the cult which built the crypt, and once they were defeated they were laid to rest here so that the spirits and mystical forces of the place would prevent them from coming back and bothering the living. They have come back, but they've shown little inclination to bother the living. Rather, they're simply resentful of their situation and hostile to anyone they see. Treat them as draugr (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, p. 12). There are also four statues set to watch over them, one in each corner of the room. Over the years, they've become animate; treat them as stone golems (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2, p. 26). They'll attack anyone who comes into the room to prevent them from assisting the draugr from leaving.

4) This room contains the source of all the rock-based monsters. It is occupied by an immortal medusa (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3, p. 15). Over the years, she's seen a number of the creatures she's changed to stone become animated by ambient magic. She's accompanied by three statues which are equivalent to stone golems and two rock trolls (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3, p. 19). The medusa has a gilded breastplate (worth $10,000), and there's $3000 in jewelry, mostly silver and tumbaga chains and ornaments, lying around the room.

5) The last three yards of this corridor past the corner are a no mana zone. The Silence enchantment which covers the crypt isn't operative here, so adventurers can speak here, but spells won't work either. If mana is enhanced in the area, the Silence enchantment kicks in as well.

Comments

Unknown said…
Room 2 with the statue of the swordsman with real armor that animates is pretty creative and an interesting trick/ trap.

Popular posts from this blog

More Nattering About Writing Historical RPGs

omeone made the mistake of asking me to expand on some things I'd said about writing historical rpg material, so you all must suffer for it. I write a lot of historical rpg stuff as well as entirely fictional setting material. So why make historically themed games rather than just making stuff up? Well, because it's an effective way of achieving the purpose of writing settings and adventures in general. The purpose of settings and adventures, I would aver, is to give players things to do in a convincing context. Convincing context doesn't necessarily mean realism. Players have different levels of understanding of what's "realistic" in different situations and are more or less sensitive to how closely those situations adhere to reality. For example, I'm a history and culture guy. Put me in SF campaigns (which happens with some regularity) and the specifics of how reaction drives, orbital mechanics, and subatomic physics work entirely escape me. I don't,

Stuff I Wouldn't Do With Purchased Minis

One of the great things about the advent of 3d printing, when it comes to gaming, is that it allows me to take more risks and try stuff I wouldn't do otherwise. Take, for example, experimenting with painting techniques. Maybe I want to see what an unusual color scheme would look like or try doing an odd way of achieving an effect. Factory-made miniatures are expensive. Too expensive for me to risk it. Which, as someone who's not very good at painting minis and needs lots of practice, is one reason I've never gotten into them. I don't feel like I can afford the implied expense of getting better. Enter 3d printing. With the right files, I can print as many minis as I can like and mess around with them to my heart's content. Mess one up? That's fine. Resin isn't cheap , but it doesn't cost nearly as much as pre-made molded plastic. I can take it as a learning experience and move on. Which brings me to messing around with some Car Wars minis. I'd been m

Ferrous Metal Food Fighting Guy!

(This is something I wrote up some years back. I'm putting it here so I can find it more easily when I want to. Though it's rather silly, it's also where I came up with the idea of high-quality materials which don't provide a bonus to the craftsman's skill, but do add to the margin of success, a mechanism which later appeared in the crafting rules in GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3 .) One of the things not to be found in GURPS 4e is extensive rules for competitive cooking. If two cooks of steely resolve rise up to face one another across a cooking coliseum, the GM can only fall back on hand-waving and contests of skill. This article fills that much-needed gap. GURPS chefs can now stage furious contests wherein they construct fanciful dishes, the more elaborate the better, and prove whose cooking rules the day. To the kitchen! Procedure These rules provide guidance for attempting to cook complex dishes and comparing their quality when the cooking is done. A che