D24 - D31: catching up on the catchup: Finishing January

 Ran my regular Pathfinder game last night, and decided to spend time prepping for that and then getting some sleep rather than spending an hour posting stuff. So I'll try to do some catchup now

1-24: Silenced Corridor

This long corridor winds through the walls, mirroring 1-08. The door in the north to 1-19, as well as the door in the SE to 1-25 are both unlocked. Survival 17 reveals bandit tracks; a group of 4 humanoids have come this way recently.

The group quickly notices that in this hallway, nothing can be heard. A Identify Magic (DC 20; 18 if using Arcana or Occultism) recognizes that the whole area is under the effects of a Silence spell. A critical success reveals that this is the result of either the degradation of the field of magic as a long-term result of demonic attacks, or the breakdown of some defensive enchantment (once I decide which it is, or if you have a good suggestion).

1-25: Ruined blast gatehouse

Similarly, this room mirrors room 1-10. Stairs in the northwest corner lead upwards to the tower in level 2.

Simple Hazard (Low 2; level 3 simple hazard)

On the eastern wall, there are similar runes moving through seven colors: green, red, blue, orange, indigo, yellow, and violet (GM note: the ommission of octarine here is deliberate). An attempt to investigate using Identify Magic (DC 18; Arcana DC 16) notices that the runes are unstable and degraded; on a failure the runes explode, dealing 3d6 damage to everyone in the room and in the gate area (code tbd), basic reflect DC 18. The damage type is randomly determined by d4:

1. acid
2. cold
3. electric
4. fire

The runes can be deactivated with a thievery DC 19 check, but to repair requires an Arcana DC 18 check and materials worth 20 gp purpose-bought for repairing the runes.

1-26: Crescent base

This unusually-shaped room is the base of the tower above; the room is built out of a spur of obsidian, harder and more magical than the rest of the rock which the builders carved away. The door to the south to 1-22 is unlocked; the northern door is locked (I need to update the map image here) with key 2A (which can be found upstairs; it may also unlock some other doors on level 1). One set of stairs in the south leads up, and the flight in the north leads down.

Encounter (Severe 2)

A quartet of bandits have been stationed to guard the stairs leading up, and will attack on sight, and to the death. Note that if any bandits are captured, they will start to reveal that there is more to their presence here than convenience; their leaders initially took shelter here, but have begun to hunt for something in the ruins and in this tower specifically...

There are 2x guards and 2x bodyguards. Respectively they are an Orc (Puff of Poison), Half-orc (Spout), Human (Daze) and Tengu (acid splash).

1-27: Infested Sally Gate

The name of this room admittedly caused some hilarity when I shared the map of the completed level 1 online. Maybe... not the best name. But apt.

This room has a staircase in the north coming down from the tower above 1-26, and a door leading out to the cliff-side. The door is hidden from the outside and barred on the inside, but if the party can get it open, it may be a useful alternate access point into the tower. Finding the door from the opposite side requires fifteen minutes of searching and a DC 22 perception check.

South of the 'kink' in the corridor, the whole tunnel is filled with spider webs as the web spell (save DC 20). These webs are ancient and immensely thick, and cutting or burning through them would be a matter of hours. They can be destroyed only with the application of higher-level fire effects, such as a 3rd+ level spell, or 5th+ level effect; each point of fire damage dealt in a square then clears out that area.

Encounter (Severe 2)

The web is filled with spiders. Every other round, another spider enemy emerges from the web, either an elite spider swarm (except size huge and 33 starting hp), a hunting spider or giant trapdoor spider; the attacks will continue until the party has cleared out sufficient webbing that the spiders have nowhere to appear from (i.e. add up the area of webs; the max number of spiders at any time is the spiders which would fit in that area. The spiders will "recharge" if the party departs for a while.)

Note that this stream of enemies is intended to drive the party off; a relatively low-level party should feel like they will be quickly overwhelmed if they stick around. The spiders will not move far beyond the cover of the webs, and will retreat into them rather than face ranged attacks (except fire). Award the party 120 XP for first encountering this threat, and then 100 xp once they manage to clear the webs entirely and open the door.

1-28: Messenger stables

This whole area is covered in thick snow, and is difficult terrain. Streaks of windblown berms covered in ice are also uneven terrain. Inside the ancient stables, however, the snow is thin enough not to restrict motion. Most of the doors along the south (and the broken wall to 1-21) are unlocked; the easternmost door, to 1-15, is frozen shut and requires a DC 21 athletics check to force it (or a plan to warm the air temperature above freezing...)

Encounter (Moderate 2)

Perhaps drawn by the ancient comforts for the flying mounts that were stabled here, a griffon makes this her home. The remains of a bandit who disturbed her are visible in the stables, where she has been worrying it apart. The griffon is happy to make a meal of anyone else who disturbs her, but will flee and depart for good if reduced below 20 hp.

Treasure

If anyone searches the grisly remains of the bandit, its pouch contains a lesser eagle eye elixir (fat good it did).

1-29: Elemental earth overflow

This room is dominated by an enormous crater in the eastern half. It is shaped like ripples in a semi-viscous liquid, such as milk, spreading out, with heavy 'splash' marks frozen in the dark brown stone. The 'splash' has created considerable obstruction in the room (the ridge line is about 5 ft above the crater center, and requires a DC 15 climb check to move quickly over, as in combat). The 'splash' has also traveled through the northern wall, and caught the door to 1-31 to the north; that heavy stone door is fused to the ground and cannot be forced open. The other door, to 1-30, can be opened normally; the door from 1-26 is locked with key 2A.

An identify magic (DC 20; Nature 18) recognizes that powerful elemental magic has reshaped the floor, and it cannot be reshaped without significant effort. A critical success identifies that this was not an outside force, but something relating to the ground itself here. All "earth" spells cast in this area are heightened to one level higher than cast, if applicable.

1-30: Unloaded carts

This large room should once have connected to 1-04, if not for the avalanche which collapsed the area. The same recessed path comes up the southern spur, as it emerges from the rubble.

The eastern spur is also collapsed; it looks like it once led to 1-13 or some space in between. Eventually the party will find the general cause of the earth movement which caused this disaster, I believe.

This area has the wreckage of several carts and wagons, of an ancient design (appropriate society or craft to discover that these were made for humanoids, in a very strange style. Possibly non-bipedal?)

Encounter

Unless the party is attempting to be stealthy, they will attract the attention of the bandits in 1-31. If they do, the bandits will open the portcullis in the north wall and rush to attack. Note to me: I'll need to give the party another way to get to the space under 1-31, since the portcullis can only be opened from that side and I don't want to give them the key to the door from 1-29 early.

1-31: The guarded dock

Ok, the final room on level 1! This large room is surrounded by ominous art, with cobra-head statues hanging around the room about 15 feet up, with mouths open, forked tongues and fangs exposed. The bandits have put torches around the room, giving it an eerie look. Two full serpentfolk statues flank the alcove in the northeast, armed with enormous tridants.

A grand staircase descends in the center of the room to the space below, where the fortress's stores were kept. Square holes in the ground once had magical lifts to lower the stores from the wagons. Another pair of stairs also descend in the south and east to level 3. The portcullis to 1-30 is controlled by a lever on the west side of the opening; pulling the lever causes the portcullis to drop into the floor below silently, with no sign of machinery (within the space of the interact action to open/close it).

Encounter (Severe 2)

A trio of bandits are guarding this area, although they may move out to 1-30 if the party attracts their attention. They are stated as an archer sentry (lizardfolk, electric arc), bandit (dwarf, produce flame), and ruffian (halfling, chill touch).

Treasure

The archer sentry is armed with a +1 crossbow, and the ruffian is armed with a +1 mace (no need to adjust their stats, though). Between the three of them, they have 4 gp and 22 sp on their persons.

Final thoughts

Wow, I caught up with January! Getting a full level done has given me a lot of optimism about what's going on, and I was glad it was reasonably simple to provide enough content and also fit everything in to about 30 rooms. I was going to devote 1 room to the exterior courtyard, but I might just do that as a bonus (fake leap day room?) Similarly, the gatehouse between 1-25 and 1-10 was going to be part of level 1, but I'll probably count it in level 3, since it's a little below 1-25 and 1-10.

On the one hand, I'm glad level 1 (and level 2) were such explicitly artificial spaces, since it helped (most of the time) to be able to decide what a space's purpose was in order to 'populate' it with features and encounters. That will still be true for most or nearly all of level 3 too, but after that we'll be moving into presumably more natural cavern spaces. Also, I think I need to make sure to provide more explicit clues in this level about the siege and aftermath, although I can also do that in level 3 and the wizard's tower in level 2.

Finally, here's the full map of the level (I've made a few adjustments of door types and such since, but trying to update it repeatedly leads to madness, so here's what I'm providing):

Happy dungeoneering!