Saturday 6 May 2017

One Page Dungeon: "The Inverse Tower"

Here is my entry for this year's One Page Dungeon competition.

"The Inverse Tower is simultaneously a dungeon, magic item and portal. It will appear in the campaign world when and where the GM sees fit. The reward for besting the tower is entry to the inverse world, a plane that manifests as the exact opposite of whatever the GM has mapped and written to exist in the campaign above. All ac-tions taken here magically have the opposite effect on the world above (Fires cause floods, deaths cause births, lost things are found). Do not let the adventurers know this until they have returned to their once “normal” world..."



I actually wrote a couple of extra entries for the door and stuff tables, but had to cut them due space constraints. Here they are restored:

Doors, d10:
1. Ornate, bone gilded door with a 1 way glass viewing portal into next room. Black and featureless on other side.
2. Ornate ivory door that disintegrates to dust whenever anything living gets within 5 feet of it. Rebuilds itself when they leave.
3. Wood door carved into a kindly face. Face will ask in whispered oakey tones if it should open, close or lock and will generally do as told.   
4. A curtain of shimmering upside down blue flames. Heals d6 wounds of any that pass through.
5. Appears as a mirror until a living being is within 5 feet, than appears as see through door to next room, now filled with the best/worst things those peering through can imagine (flip a coin).
6. Bare stone door, rusted iron handle. A puff of sand billows from the hinges when opened or closed.
7. A hacked, burnt and bloodstained wooden door. Anything inflicted on this door is inflicted on the next being that passes through it.
8. A stained, crusty curtain. While it is stationary on ingress, it is slowly billowing around the next room allowing exit at any point (with patience).
9. Bare stone door, iron handle, slightly creaky.
10. Wood door with well oiled hinges, opens and closes silently.

Floor 1 - 2:
Stuff, d8:
1. D6 thunderous circular waterfalls, flowing up and down.
2. Scuttling gilded ivory furniture, traversing floor, ceiling and walls.
3. Invisible walls between doors turn this room into a corridor.
4. Room funnels downwards where a stone maw is chewing rubble.
5. Black ichor drips between the bricks, room shudders when touched.
6. The room is an abyss, traversed by an ornate gilded ivory bridge.
7. A choking grey fog , flashing intermittently with blue bolts of electricity.
8. A calming pond on the ceiling, foliage erupting around it Insects and frogs clog the room.

Floor 3 - 4:
Stuff, d8:
1. This room is filled with treasure hoard, but the party is shrunk to the size of ants while in the room. It takes several days to traverse the room like this.
2. Wind billows in through the cracks of this dilapidated room. Perring outside reveals an endless sky.
3. This room appears to be a part of a sewer system of an aeon aged city.
4. There is a large brass bowl in the center of this room, engraved with the word “sacrifice”. The doors out of the room will not open until someone has placed something they truly love in the bowl.
5. An enormous tome, bound in grey turtle skin, chained to a stone altar. All pages are empty save the middle two, which each has a black spiral draw in opposite directions. A fast deteriorating, child like simulacrum of anything written in the book will appear in the previous or next room.  
6. Ornate pillars and arches fill the room. They crumble and fall with the slightest provocation.
7. Room is inside a giant, scintillating gem. From inside gem is a lovely view of the treasure horde room.
8. Pink gas billows in from cracks in the wall. It will help things float and is also extremely flammable.

Floor 5 - 6:
Stuff, d8:
1. A ceiling to floor frieze depicting an infinity of scenes of human conflict, torture and brutality. Gaseous copies of the party will begin to form and fight each other/the party if too long is spent here.
2. Glass ceilings and floors. Above and below scenes of galactic implosions and explosions whirl.
3. An extravagant feast laid out on long wooden table. Mute, malformed homunculi devour the dishes. The are unaggressive if unprovoked. Leaving the room and returning will find the homunculi dead and the food rotten.
4. Statues of naked humans. Their hands, feet, eyes, mouths, ears, noses are bound with red silk cloth.
5. Untold vegetation chokes the room. Vine, leaves, roots all shift with an unseen, unfelt wind.
6. A soft rivulet of blood runs through the room. Malformed homunculi sometimes wash ashore, coughing and gasping for air.
7. Room filled with mounds of calcified and dusty flesh and bones. There is several basins made from this material containing crystal clear liquid. Washing ones face with the liquid restores their youth and teleports them to the entrance to the tower.
8. Empty save for a chalice in the center of the room. There is a clear liquid in the chalice and at the bottom a key. Touching the liquid transforms the toucher into a random monster from the tower.

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