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Under Gallax Hall - Level 2 - Steam Tunnels
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1 Day = 10 Hours = 100 Turns = 1000 Minutes
1 Hour = 10 Turns
1 Turn = 10 Minutes
WANDERING ENCOUNTERS
1 in 6 chance every 2 Turns, or on loud noise.
Roll 6d10 for the schedule of the Custodial Juggernaut.
1. Panic Room
1-2: Custodian | 5-8: Empty | 8-10: Lisa
Brass plaque on outside door:
Panic Room
Maximum Occupancy: 1
Only one person may enter. If two try to enter at the same time, one is randomly expelled. Door swings shut upon entry. Just a modest room with a wooden bench. While one person is occupying the Panic Room, nobody may open the door or enter the room by any means short of a Wish.
Lisa: Sophomore, Sister, Secret Serpent. She occupies the room from 8 to 10 to do homework and cry out her anxieties. There's a lot of pressure being all at once a university Sophomore, a Sister in Omnicron Delta Theta, and secretly a snake-person. Otherwise an unrecognizable sister among many in Area 13 - Wet Lab.
Lisa
AC Leather HD 3 HP 13
1d3 + Mutagen Needle OR 1d4 + Poison Snake Head Bite
Poison: Save vs. Poison or die.
Mutagen: See Sisters of the Cell
Spells: Magic Missile, Knock, Conjure Snakes
2. Biohazard Sharps Pit Trap
ENVIRONMENT: Dense fog, restricts vision to 5 ft.
TRAP: South of panic room door are two consecutive 10ft covered pit traps filled with biohazard sharps. Falling in causes 1d4 additional damage (on top of fall damage) and requires 3 consecutive Saves vs. Poison, one each for Super-Lockjaw, Mutation, and Wizard Herpes.
Lockjaw: Paralysis. Onset: 3d10 Turns.
Mutation: As per Mutation list.
Wizard Herpes: Spells bubble in boils at the mouth, causing 20% chance of miscast.
3. Spooky Skeleton
ENVIRONMENT: Dense fog, restricts vision to 5 ft.
A dumb-looking Skeleton lies against the northern wall. Tattered student’s robes.
CONTINGENCY: Magic Mouth on the wall above activates upon touching the skeleton or its clothes.
“DEAR UNDERGRADS: THIS IS ED.
ED TRIED TO STEAL FROM OMNICRON DELTA THETA.
ED IS NOW DEAD.”
4. Humidifiers
1-2: Empty | 2-4: 2 Sisters of the Cell | 4-1: Empty
ENVIRONMENT: Dense fog, restricts vision to 5 ft.
Opened steam valves create a dense fog throughout rooms 2 through 5. There are seven openings that are hot to the touch, causing 1 damage burns if interacting unprotected.
The Sisters come here to calibrate, measure, and mentally record the humidity differential. They will each have Gaseous Form prepared.
5. Sharps Barbed Wire
ENVIRONMENT: Dense fog, restricts vision to 5 ft.
TRAP: Three hedges of barbed wire glued with whatever biohazardous sharps could be found: razor blades, needles, syringes, lancets, nails, staples, etc.
Hidden in the dense fog. Unless being careful (such as waving a stick ahead of you, or being completely armored) the first person walking this way will trip into the tangle for 1d4 damage plus 3 consecutive Saves vs. Poison: one each for Lockjaw, Mutation, and Wizard Herpes. (See Area 2 for disease descriptions)
If retreating in either direction, Sisters of the Cell will use Gaseous Form to get over this.
6. Make An Offering
1-3: Empty | 3-4: 1d4+1 Black Magic Brothers | 4-5: Tub has Body |
5-9: Empty, Bloody Tub | 9-10: A Custodian | 10-1: Empty, Clean Tub
A solitary bath tub, no faucets or drains. Engraved on its side: “Make an Offering”. Sometimes there’s a body left in it by the Black Magic Brothers. Sometimes the Custodians clean it.
The Three Weird Sisters in Area 7 collect the bodies and use them for their potions.
SECRET: Leaving a body gains the favor of the Sisters of the Cell - gain advantage on reaction rolls within 1 Day with them.
7. Double, double...
"Metal, metal, foil and nettle
Agar cool and culture settle.
Fillet of a giant snake,
In the kettle boil and bake;
Hope of anthropologist,
Buttocks of geologist ,
Eyes of the philosopher,
Tongue of the astrologer,
For a cell of finest fettle,
Let the culture cool and settle."
Three Weird Sisters of the Sorority of the Cell are mixing up a potion! It's...
1) Cancer in a bottle (Harmless, potentially useful cell line)
“Alive! Alive foreeeeeveeeeeeer!! (Ten-thousand generations capable!)”
2) Super-Cancer in a bottle (Pulsating mass leeches 1d6 CON on touch and doubles size)
“Beyond control! Subject to no wizard anymore! (...Or us, for that matter!)”
3) Flesh-eating bacteria (2 STR and DEX damage per 2 Turns on touch)
“Hungry, thirsty! Thirsty for juices and renders! (And eyeballs, especially!)”
4-6) Monster Mash! See Hybrid. “Our beautiful child! (So precious, so strong!)”
7) Giant flowing brain. (Can be used as per Augury spell. Pulsates = Weal. 1d4 Psychic damage in 20ft = Woe… or you forgot to feed it.)
“Oh so smart, so clever! Aren’t you, precious? (But why does it hurt?)”
8) Snake Oil. (When applied, makes person think their wounds have been healed)
“For burns and scrapes mild and severe! (But not for long! Hehehe…)”
The Sisters are unpredictable. Roll for Reaction every time they’re seen.
If friendly, they’ll ask for donations of biological matter.
“Protein! Bring us protein for the pot!” “And fat! Sweet, sweet fat!” “Don’t forget the carbs!”
Three Weird Sisters
AC Unarmored HD 6 HP 30 (shared health pool)
1d6 / 1d6 / 1d6 Three Sharp Knives
Spells: Fog Cloud, Augury, Invisibility, Tongues, Barksin, Sleep
Together Spells (all 3 casting simultaneously): Passwall, Wall of Flesh, Polymorph, Geas
Weirdness: These Sisters share a health pool, and sometimes each other’s sentences. When it is depleted they all perish into biological soup. (Worth 1000gp if ransomed back to the Sisters.)
Hybrid
AC Leather HD 2 HP 8
1d8 Sharp Thing
Roll 2d10 for Components:
Duplicates create that animal… but MORE! (i.e. Bear-Bear = Double Bear, twice as Bearish)
8. OwlwO’s Nest
1-6: OwlwO | 6-10: Empty | 10-1: OwlwO
A ferocious but sometimes cuddly half-owl half-wolf hybrid makes her nest-den here - Owlwolf, shortened to ‘OwlwO’. Her left eye is always half-drooped, creating the (ΟΔΘ) Sorority sign with her face. Serves as a lookout for the Sisters when not hunting. Noise from Area 5 will prompt her to warn Sisters in Area 11 by making barking-screeching sounds.
She is quite hungry, especially for eyeballs. She likes to keep the ears and shiny things.
Area littered with compact pellets of fur and bones, nesting made from torn student robes and shredded textbooks.
TREASURE: 99gp pile of miscellaneous earrings with little bits of ear.
OwlwO
AC Leather HD 3 HP 14 Speed as Wolf / Fly as Owl
1d6/1d4 Toothed Beak / Talon
Robust Physiology: Advantage on Saves vs. Poison and Constitution Checks.
Howling Screech: (1/Turn) 20ft cone - Save vs. Petrification or 1d4 sonic damage and Deafened for 2d6 Turns.
Just Wants a Friend: +4 to Reaction checks from other (large) hybrids or critters. Friendly to people who smell like the Sisters (agar, bacteria, rendered fat).
9. Walk-in Culture Room
1-4: Empty | 4-6: 1d4 Sisters of the Cell | 6-9: Empty | 9-1: 1d4 Sisters of the Cell
Smells like soiled jockstraps for yeast athletes, burnt and wet dog, bleach, or all three at once. Warm and humid. Rectangle tissue culture plates stacked like miserly coins, vials of clotted blood strewn like a blood bank exploded, recycled bottles full of cherry red or pale orange Kool-Aid (culture media).
Culturing biological experiments. It’d take a month to decipher what mad science is being tested here, less from its complexity than its lack of organization and proper labeling. The most important thing, really, is:
What Happens If We Knock Stuff Over?
(Roll once for single incident, 4 times for an explosion or similar catastrophe.)
1: Poisonous Gas fills the room. Anyone inside Save vs. Poison or die.
2: Flesh-eating bacteria released. Unluckiest person Save vs. Poison or take 1d4 damage per Round until dead or cured
3-4: Unluckiest person gets Random Mutation
5: Unluckiest person smells like cotton candy permanently.
6-9: Nothing. Whew.
10: Everyone in room Save vs. Poison. On success, gain 2 in random Attribute. On failure, take 1d6 Damage.
10. Hall
Empty, except if any alarms have been sounded by the Sisters, in which case those in Area 11 will be here, listening at doors adjacent to the intrusion.
11. Dormitory
1-4: 1d4+1 Sisters of the Cell | 4-9: 1d6+1 Sisters of the Cell | 9-1: 1d4+1 Sisters of the Cell
Six beds, dirty or blood-stained clothes hanging from pipes. Sisters here will be resting, sleeping, or doing custom drugs.
TREASURE: 120gp in Custom Drugs strewn about (50% chance they’ll make you sick, 50% chance some other drug, but stronger.)
SECRET: Semi-hidden curtain-shade chain in the eastern corner can be pulled to raise the wall to Area 12, revealing the Secret Stash.
12. Secret Stash
TREASURE: Reagents for Biomancy: high-quality nutrient (100gp), mutagenic chemicals (400gp, 4 servings, causes Mutation on exposure), high-quality metal needles and glass syringes (50gp), three big chunks of bug-laced amber (300gp).
13. Wet Lab
1-4: 1d6+1 Sisters of the Cell | 4-9: 1d4+1 Sisters of the Cell | 9-1: 1d6+1 Sisters of the Cell
If an OSEH nightmare itself had a nightmare, this would be it. It puts the ‘wet’ in ‘Wet Lab’.
The Sisters will defend this room with zeal, though they won’t want to fight in it (for all the reasons listed below). If lost, they will send a fleshy messenger (as Animal Messenger) up through the pipes for 2d4+2 Sisters reinforcements arriving in 3d4 Turns for a counterassault.
TRAPS:
Floors: (1 in 6 chance of stepping in something awful for 1 damage and Save vs. Mutation) sharps strewn like toxic Legos, pools of chemical waste, cracked glass, pipette tips… so many pipette tips.
Lab Benches: discarded tissue culture plates, stale media, third rate chemicals, surgical equipment, bloody tissues in abundance, TUBES. So much Wizard Herpes... and probably worse.
Miscellaneous Hazards:
Four scattered horizontal gas canisters: oxygen (highly flammable), laughing gas (as Hideous Laughter), carbon monoxide (suffocation), poison (as Killcloud). Enough to fill present and any adjacent rooms within 1 minute. Significant impact will send any of them exploding like an artillery shell up to 200ft, through thick walls too (10ft of wall = 100ft). Anything in the way must Save vs. Death Ray or get blown up.
(For locations/directions of canisters, roll 4d4 on a paper or the battle map. Die location is canister location. Die result equals canister direction. Pointed: 1) North 2) East 3) South 4) West)
Buckets of biohazard waste: five of these. Exposure means Save vs. Poison or Mutation.
(Toss 5d6 on your map. This is the location of the buckets.)
Portable High Energy Laser: 1d6 uses. Button-activated. Adjacent to southern wall, pointed towards northern door. As Color Spray of 6th level caster, but line attack with range of 400ft. Ornamented as seven eye stalks surrounding an unwieldy metal chest. Requires 20 combined Strength to move.
TREASURE: High-proof Alcohols (40gp), high-quality scales (50gp), 200gp in spellgold.
14. Toilet
Somehow, very clean and respectable. Pull a chain to flush.
Unless the toilets are flushed first there's a 75% chance for toilet to have a hostile Sewer Ooze (HP 10; HD 2; 1d8 Acid Splash) resting in it.
15. Steam Traps
Every Even Hour this hallway is spontaneously erupting blazing hot steam. Two consecutive Dex checks are required to pass unscathed. Each failure deals 1d4 damage.
16. Dead End
Empty
17. Crossway
1 in 6 chance (roll once an Hour) that entering this tunnel crossway causes one to instead enter Area 31 from a similar direction. Wonky spatial magic.
18. Secret Door Valve
Empty, steamy. Animalistic sounds of Hybrids radiating through the metal pipes.
SECRET: An orange valve tucked around some pipes on the eastern wall rotates open said wall, revealing the connection to Area 22.
19. Hybrids
1-4: 2d4 Hybrids | 4-5: Custodian | 5-6: Empty |
6-7: 3d4 Hybrids + 1 Sister of the Cell | 7-1: 2d4 Hybrids
2d4 Hybrids languish in this room, replenished daily a Sister, leading them with leashes. From 4-5 a Custodian arrives to kill them to take their bodies to The Furnace. These daily hybrids are scared, hungry, and hostile.
There will be an additional 1d4 Hybrid corpses as they have cannibalized each other.
(To make it easy on yourself, roll 2d10 for Components for the entire group at once, instead of each individually. That is the hybrid composition of this ‘batch’.)
Hybrid
AC Leather HD 2 HP 8
1d8 Sharp Thing
Roll 2d10 for Components:
Duplicates create that animal… but MORE! (i.e. Bear-Bear = Double Bear, twice as Bearish)
20. Heavy Metal Hazmat
Three lead-lined diving suits suspended from the ceiling by metal chains held on by carabiners. In event of severe environmental catastrophe two will be missing (worn by the Custodians at the incident).
TREASURE: Heavy Metal Hazmat Suit - protects from heat, cold, poison, and radiation. Provides 1 Turn of oxygen. Extremely heavy. Wearing or carrying one below average Strength is impossible. With above average Strength, subject gains one level of Exhaustion per Turn it is worn or carried. Worth 600gp each on the Black Market.
CONTINGENCY: If any Hazmat Suits are stolen and not returned within a Day, add Custodians to the Variable slots on the Wandering Encounter table. They want them back...
SEARCH: A disguised-as-pipe lever at the south end of the room opens a secret passage leading to the entrance stairs to Level 1 - Basement.
21. Gas Pipes
Multiple open-ended pipes culminate facing downward on the ceiling.
CONTINGENCY: If the Green Valve in Area 22 is turned left, Nerve Gas (Save vs. Poison or paralyzed. Repeat Save every Turn. Three consecutive fails = Death) will be pouring out of these open-ended pipes.
22. Valves, Valves, and more Valves
1-8: Empty | 8-10: Two Custodians
Numerous colored valves along the western wall. Their pipes lead through the floor and ceiling. An empty metal sink sits in the corner, slowly dripping water.
When the Custodians arrive daily, they reset every Valve.
CONTINGENCY: Consult the table.
23. Custodial Alarm
1-7: Empty | 7-8: Custodian | 8-1: Empty
A body suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the room, like a caterpillar in cocoon. Depressions where the mouth draws in breath. If cut open, nothing but cotton and dirty paper towels pours out, though it will stop what sounds it makes.
TRAP: Approaching within 10ft of the body prompts it to scream and futility writhe: unleashing an ultra high-pitch screeching sound for two Turns.
CONTINGENCY: The Custodian from Area 24 will slowly approach if the alarm sounds. It will take them 5 Rounds.
24. Always Mopping
There’s a Custodian here, always scrubbing. There's rust in the floor that won’t come out. Ever.
CONTINGENCY: They’ll approach any loud noises, such as the Alarm from Area 23, someone falling in the pit in Area 29, or the Black Granite Door loudly scraping open in Area Area.
25. The Black Granite Door
ARCHITECTURE: Metal pipes and oily rusted walkways turn to polished granite floors and walls. Press your ear against the stone, and you'll hear soft mad whispers of budgets and meetings.
A black granite slab, three feet thick. It is cold, incredibly cold. Frosted breath near it, despite the heat and humidity of the surrounding tunnels.
SEARCH: An invisible key hole, found by deft fingers. The key no longer exists - it was thrown into the Furnace long ago. Only an Unregistered Key will silently open it.
TRAP: Using Knock on the door produces a cataclysmic crack, prompting a Wandering Encounter roll with double chance and the Custodian from Area 24 to approach. It will take 3 consecutive Knock spells to fully split the door, allowing access.
Past the door are polished granite stairs leading down to Level 3 - Old Gallax Building.
26. Custodial Juggernaut
1-10: (Special) | 10-1: Custodian
Special: Juggernaut schedule determined randomly each day. Roll 6d10. It’s Active during those hours. Accompanied by a Custodian at the hour per every duplicate die roll.
(Example: 6d10 rolls: 1, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8. Juggernaut active during Hours 1, 4, 6, and 8. At hour 6 it is accompanied by two Custodians.)
If Juggernaut is Inactive: The end of the hall (statue icon on map) is completely filled by the Custodial Juggernaut. Those who attack, approach within 10 ft, or otherwise interact with the inactive Juggernaut will Activate it.
If Juggernaut is Active: The end of the hall is empty. The metal along the floors and walls are hot. Various valves and open-ended pipes are exposed on the eastern end. If these are severely inhibited the Custodial Juggernaut will be inanimate for 1 Day (a Custodian will come and fix it within 1 Day’s time), during which remove it from the Wandering Encounters table.
TREASURE: One of the pipe fittings is made to interface with the Juggernaut is composed of solid platinum: 800gp. A different pipe fitting for a similar purpose is made of silver: 150gp. Both fittings are fused to the metal pipework, requiring one to get through 1 inch of solid steel to release.
Custodial Juggernaut
AC Plate + Shield (Front), Chain (Rear) HD 8 HP 50 Half Human Speed
3d12 Crush
Big: Occupies a 10x10ft space, wall to wall.
Slow: Disadvantage on Initiative.
Steam Roller: Attacks by occupying same space as opponents. When moving into opponent space makes one attack against each opponent within.
Construct Immunities
I'm continually amazed!
ReplyDeleteWill you collect them all in a PDF?
ReplyDeleteGood question! I just might, though I really don't have a lot of experience with layout and such. It might simply be a Googledoc that's converted to pdf, or maybe I'll take a stab at trying some layout work myself.
DeleteI think the most important things is to get the entirety of a room entry onto one page. There's surely more and better advice from people in the know, but just doing that much will make it pretty usable.
DeleteI agree with Anne. If you're just starting out doing layout, the most important thing is sticking to a few core principles and not worrying about the rest.
DeleteIf you wish I can probably do a layout for this. I did recently two pdfs for other blog articles (Ant-lerr's KRX and Sheep and Sorcery 'Children of Howl').
DeleteWell now, let's not be too hasty. I still need to write the next three levels, not to mention actually playtest this bad boy. I really appreciate the support, though! :D
DeleteTo clarify, I mean to do it for free.
DeleteSure, let me know when/if you wish to do it.
That'd be super cool, Kyana, thanks! I'll give you a poke about this in about 2-5 months (when I anticipate it'll be finished) when I decide what to do next with it.
DeleteI'm gonna give this a shot, level 1 here we come.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHave started some play test notes:
ReplyDeletehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1uCpGLCEo4cfWJEufwHlKuY3G_8-o-NIkP1CfYxMPu5g/edit?usp=sharing
This is super duper helpful! Thank you for doing this.
DeleteAnd I'm sorry to screw further with the time shenanigans, but in the next floor I introduce the 11th and 12th Hours, which will alter your time table. This will functionally make 1 UGH Hour = 2 of our hours.
Yay! More weird time stuff. I dig it.
Delete