Subteranean Complex (AKA "Dead Elves Mess With The Players")

Okay, basic description of the place, then a bit of commentary on what exactly is going on here. Fairly standard except for some of the mechanics. Warning: I will be doing a playtest of this on here, using a play-by-post format. Those of you who would be interested should keep away from here except for the player view, at most, and shouldn't read the "DM's Grand Tour" part until we move to the next level/have finished up this one,. Also, I will go through the section in here that I say will probably cause the mapper headaches, and actually describe it properly then, but it'll be super boring to the average guy who has no need of it to hear the twists and turns being described for 100+ feet of hallway. Also, it's fairly linear, as I want to try out the mechanics, but if we decide that it was fun enough to continue, we'll move out into the northern forests of Salnar, and thus to the area I've been working on for the West Marches style campaign.



Player View:

The Player View doesn't include what this is stocked with, etc. or anything else that would A. Give the players an advantage that they wouldn't otherwise have (For fairness, as a standard group wouldn't be able to prepare based on special knowledge), and/or B. Be something that the players wouldn't pretty much certainly explore at this point - Locked rooms, anything beyond secret doors (or the doors themselves), and the non standard mechanics

So, let's take a look around... The first room is a 4X3 (for this dungeon vertical dimension is first, unless there's some weirdness going on with the shape) rectangle, probably umpteen-gazillion places have it as an entry way. On the east wall there's a straight staircase, going up 10-12 feet to the surface. In the central square of the top (North) wall there's a door. It leads to the second room in the complex, but it's locked. On the third square of the east wall there's another door. The ceiling is 10 feet high, which I'm using as the standard assumption unless noted otherwise. The corridor beyond this one (Door that is) is actually pretty interesting. It's ten feet of standard hallway, then it has two squares where the south wall has a five foot square taken out of it, and the north one has the same done with a triangle. Moving on we come to a turn, then another door. This opens into a 1X3 room with an extra square in the center of the north wall, making it 2X3 there. This section of the room also has a door in it, leading to another 1X3 room, though the central square is open on the top and extends another 30 feet. Beyond that top square to room opens out into a 3X4 chamber. This area has two doors, in the center of the east and west walls respectively. And here we split off into two sections:

East door: A twisty, turny, hallway with a few more weird spots in it and then we get to a room. It's a 1X3, except for the westmost square, which has a 10 foot triangle cut out of the north and south walls.

West door: Leads to a standard corridor, nothing special. A few squares south it turns east. There's another door on the south side of the next square [This quirk in the corridor was actually put in to cover up a mapping error]. This leads to a straight run down, culminating in a triangle.

DM's Grand Tour:

This bit covers the stuff that the players might not find.

Locked door, room 1: The space beyond has numerous levers, switches, buttons, etc. covering the walls. In the center there is a dead elf. He appears to have locked himself in and starved to death. The stuff on the walls will change the weird bits of wall in various ways.

Secret door, room beyond the twisty [I fixed it before posting, but this was "twitsy". Anyone want to give me a definition for that?], turny, hallway: Contains several dead elves. They seem to have killed themselves when the food ran out. Also has a record book, talking about the fact hat they were sealed off from the stairs by that (insert non-favorable description of choice here) in the gateroom, and that he didn't close up this room, which should prompt some speculation, as the door is in the westmost wall of the chamber - the one with the ten foot triangles carved out of the north and south walls.

Beyond the pointy bit, eastmost corridor: The pointy bit will actually suddenly transform into a five foot triangle on the east and west walls if the correct lever is pulled. More of this kind of thing in the hallway, then the stairs to the next level of the dungeon.