Entering the Megadungeon

During a chat with one of my players, I realised I’ve never written a blog about the main entrance to my megadungeon. While there are countless entrances to the dungeon, windows, balconies, and hidden passages. The most obvious one is the ground-level entrance. This entrance needed to set the tone for the entire dungeon and act as a clear filter for the careless.


My player's map of the entrance

The Corridor

The megadungeon is a towering wizard’s fortress, a 30-floor monolith of dark stone. At ground level, there’s only one visible entrance: a 20ft-wide corridor that stretches into darkness. The floor is adorned with beautiful marble, inlaid with a chilling message:

"Crawl towards your lord and thank him for your life"

Sixty feet down the corridor, a column of light illuminates a brass statue of a skeleton with its arms outstretched, as if welcoming visitors. At its feet lies a stone tablet, though it’s too far away to read from the entrance.

This corridor is a simple but deadly test. Spears shoot out from the walls to impale anyone walking upright. However, there’s a 3ft-high gap that remains safe for those who crawl. The solution is straightforward: investigate, follow the instructions, and survive. This is also a useful tool to stop large creatures wandering in!

The Waiting Room

Once past the corridor, you enter the main waiting room a 50ft by 60ft chamber with no visible exits other than the entrance you just came through. The room is dominated by the same brass statue of the skeleton, now holding a tablet and sporting a very shiny toe. The only other furnishings are four leather sofas: black, blue, red, and brown.

The tablet on the statue reads:

In Common: “Please wait to be seen. If you require power, sit on blue. If you seek answers, sit on red.”

In an Ancient Language: “You are smart. Sit on the black sofa.”

Looking at the different sofas around the room there are some hints to what they might be:

Red Sofa:

  • Appearance: Pristine condition, with a thin layer of dust.
  • Effect: Sitting here triggers a save vs. spell. Failure results in a vision of the tower being built, followed by an overwhelming sense of time passing—days and nights flashing by in an instant. 100s of years? 1000s of years? 

Blue Sofa:

  • Appearance: Surrounded by scratch marks in the stone and splatters of blood, suggesting a violent struggle. Someone or something did not want to touch it. 
  • Effect: Sitting here teleports the creature to the 10th floor, a deadly area for low-level characters.

Black Sofa:

  • Appearance: The sofa has fuzzy edges and is the deepest black imaginable, with no visible detail beyond its outline. A faint hum can be heard when standing close.
  • Effect: This is a sofa of annihilation. Sitting on it results in instant disintegration.

Brown Sofa:

  • Appearance: A mess! Falling apart and clearly the most used piece of furniture in the room.
  • Effect: Sitting here reveals two hidden entrances in the room. The exits were always there, but the illusion masking them is now dispelled.

The Shiny Toe Boon

As a small bonus, kneeling down and kissing the shiny toe of the statue grants a boon: temporary resistance to the corruption that permeates certain parts of the tower. However, the act also paralyses you briefly, though the boon lasts longer than the paralysis.

Why I Like This Entrance

This entrance sets the tone for my dungeon. It gives players plenty to interact with, drops subtle lore about the tower, and hints at what’s to come. A small ritual of kissing the toe quickly formed among my players, and finding enemies in the first few rooms provided unwilling test subjects for the sofas.

Interestingly, my players didn’t immediately connect that the skeleton statue represents the tower’s owner and a lich's paralysing touch. 

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