The Story So Far

It  never fails - no plan survives first contact with the enemy adulting. 

I was doing fairly well keeping up with the Dungeon Year first month until last week. Layoffs at work, rush jobs and a whole lot of unplanned work made a ruin of my schedule and left me no energy for this project. 

But that is okay! Because I knew things like this happen in life and I had allotted some slack in the design for "blank space". In addition, the design of the Capricorn half of January was meant to be more of a sandbox. 

The game is meant to open with the PCs 'awakening' to a strange twilight realm of tinkling glass and gloaming, directionless light. There they quickly discover themselves to be silvery, glass-like simulacra with incomplete memories. They will immediately get a brief lore dump from an NPC, setting the stage for them and setting a few imperative goals: 

1. Collect something called "living shards" (hereafter just "shards"), which they will use to reassemble themselves. 
2. The longer it takes to collect the shards, the more likely your shards will be taken from you by monsters. 
3. Also, after some time the PC will start to transform into one of the local monsters of this quasi-world, forever. 
4. Once each person has "enough" shards, they may transit through the Gates of Janus (1-19) to exit the dungeon, a complete person. 

The party will have three days (or Long Rests) to collect all the shards they can, usually by harvesting them from local monsters, all of whom need these shards to survive. In the meantime, the monsters will also be attempting to take THEIR shards, and after each period of rest the PC will begin to feel "less attached". 

In order to keep the players moving and seeking out shards, they will have to roam throughout this twilit realm and collect shards (I'm thinking 6-8 per character; this is a minigame which I will detail below). Thus many areas are simply open, and the players will be sweeping each area for shards. As far as unique locations, I have front-loaded them into the early days (except for 1-19: The Temple of Janus). The Lens of Oroboros(1-1), the goblin hunting den (1-3), the Onion Fort (1-11), the Silver Lake (1-6), the New Moon area (1-18) and the Shrine to Hecate. 

I will probably redistribute these features to other areas. I don't want to have set-piece areas clustered too closely together.... but maybe I'll add another goblin hunting den. I haven't decided yet. But the empty spaces between them will be key for random encounters which will provide those precious shards. 

Anyway, I will need to get a wiggle on to catch up with January. Fingers crossed - things seem to be normalizing at work! 

1-12: Treacherous Roads

 1-12: This area has more traffic than some of the other empty quarters, primarily because of its location between the Onion Fort and the Temple of Janus. You are far more likely to encounter Janussaries here than other regions, and as a result, oddly less likely to encounter goblins, who avoid the Janussaries like the plague. 

Janussaries will absolutely stop to investigate any activity they see or hear, unless they are on some urgent task (like returning to the Temple with more "recruits"). 

1-12 accesses the four surrounding territories; 1-5, 1-11, 1-13 and 1-19. 

1-11: The Onion Fort

 1-11: The Onion Fort. 

Standing alone on this broad plane of glass dunes, an enormous, onion-shaped edifice, with slits and cracks and firing ports, and a single, always-closed gate. This is the town of the goblins, where they bring all their loot. 

Within the fort, goblin town is 'organized' by competing gangs, ruled by goblin thugs and bosses, with King Boss at the center. The goblin leaders are stronger, each with individual “mutations” they’ve gained from consuming shards. But none are so mighty as King Boss Goblin. Outside of the High Priest of Janus, King Boss is the most individually powerful creature in the Mirrorverse.

The goblins make maximum use of death architecture; traps, pits, murder holes, imprisoned creatures let loose into controlled locations. The town is separated into individual, fortified complexes shaped from the glass-goo. They are as fearful of each other as they are of outsiders. 

King Boss Goblin is crafty and wise, there’s no point in letting people wander in and risk his personal safety when he could throw many goblins at the problem and escape in the chaos. 

1-10: Southern Bank of the Great Plateau

 1-10: Southern Bank of the Great Plateau

The three southern tunnels from 1-3 exit here along a long smooth slope. A faint road or path crossing this territory seems to get more use on the eastern side of the territory (the route most goblins take to get to their town and their Boss. Another path leads due south, but it seems less used as well. 

This area accesses 1-3 via the tunnels, or areas 1-9, 1-11 and 1-17 via roads. 

1-9: More Open territory

 1-9: More Open Ground

Much like area 1-7, the only features here of note are the roads which cross the territory in each cardinal direction. Random encounters! 

The road extends north to 1-2, east to 1-10, south to 1-16 and west to 1-8. 

Note that the northern and easter routes take you back to areas that can access the goblin hunting den and/or the vast plateau, area 1-3, depending on whether one takes toe overland or underground route. 

1-8: Goddess of the Crossroads

 1-8: The Crossroads

Much like 1-7 and 1-9, there is little of note in this broad expanse of glass dunes besides a road that runs East-West. Another road extends from the north to the south. Where the two meet is a shrine; a three headed goddess whose faces point in each cardinal direction except north. 

This statue represents the Threefold Goddess Hecate, goddess of magic, travelers, the Moon, and the crossroads. Since most travelers here are either devotees of Janus or insensate creatures, there's very little need for Hecate to have an active presence here, but given that *some* travelers are like you, the party, and may have incomplete personas, it is possible to gain some small boon here. It may be a point in the right direction, a cryptic clue, or possibly even a shard, but it will be granted only once. 

Random encounters do not occur near the shrine; it is a safe place to camp... assuming you have the time. 

The roads extend north to 1-1, south to 1-15, west to 1-7 and east to 1-9. 

1-7: Open Road

 1-7: The Open Road

A worn path snakes its way across this expanse of glass dunes, extending from relative east to west. Towards the middle of this stretch there is a fork in the path leading south (to 1-14). 

Other than random encounters, there is nothing of interest in this area.

1-6: The Quicksilver Lake

Note: Things got busy this week, and I did not get terribly far with this project beyond a few doodles and workshopping encounter lists and creature abilities. I confess to a bit of writer's block, but I need to give myself a break, because every single "room" can't be an entire adventure unto itself. In keeping with this truth, I will ad some more "open road" areas. 

1-6: The Quicksilver Lake

As the party descends into this area, the glass ground takes on a sodden feel, implying the presence of liquid. But the center of this area, a low point for this region of the map, is filled not with water but quicksilver. Or something like it. Over the ages, weird magical energies rendered from shards have coalesced into a thick, inert liquid, like mercury but without the, you know, brain damage and death and stuff. 

The good news is that this liquid is very dense, so it is quite easy to float or swim across it. The bad news is that it is occupied by oozes, who have no problem disguising themselves against the silvery backdrop. Among these one will find crystal oozes, oblexes, gray ooze, metallic ooze and slithering trackers. These creatures typically lurk near the shore, waiting for the approach of a living creature such as an amalgam, striking out and dragging them into the lake where they have the advantage. And if a large meal attempts to wade in or cross, well! So much the better. 

Even creatures  made entirely of glass will float, so it's feasible that even a large amalgam would chase a tasty morsel out onto the lake. Note that all lake movement is difficult terrain, unless you somehow managed to rig up an oared vehicle of some kind.

Area 1-6 borders on 1-5, 1-7, and 1-13. 

1-5 The Glass Dunes

 1-5 The Glass Dunes

An expanse of gently rolling glass dunes. Not much to look at, but this area will have a few hazards and a random encounter table. This area provides access to 1-6, 1-12 and, of course 1-5. 

While not exactly "trackless" this area is dull, inhabited by the meekest fauna of the mirrorverse - the lesser amalgams. Whether this is because they tend to originate here or because viable shards are few and far between, no one  knows. Or cares. Basically a desert here. 

Encounters, while rare, are possible. And given that this is an area where glassfalls tend to occur, you can find some weird stuff. I'll figure out the chance of encounters later. Whatever the average is, it's lower here. When they do occur, roll a d8: 

1. Medusa - miffed at being caught out by her own gaze attack, she is highly defensive and vulnerable. She has already figured out that her gaze doesn't work here. 
2. Wind chimes. Someone assembled a mobile or large set of wind chimes out of a 10 foot pole and some string. Weird but innocuous, might draw monsters. Occurs once then treat as 4
3. 1 medium amalgam
4. d2 lesser amalgams
5. Quickglass - looks just like the glass grit/gravel everywhere else but it's liquified. Slows the party down one way or the other. 
6. 1d3 basilisks - incredibly hungry and not smart enough to realize their gazes don't work here.

Not every area was going to be exciting! 

1-4 Goblin Warrens

I'm busy today, so I'm pre-posting this area. 

    

On Logistics, and Organic Development

    So far, so good. We have a theme, several thematic monsters of the initial area, and even a hook into the end stage of the dungeon itself (the Amalgams fascination with the Eye of Oroboros). 

    The plan is to proceed day by day, room by room, and fill out the first 19 days of January. Day 19 and 20 will be the Temple of Janus so really there are only about 15 more "rooms" to fill out. There are three things I need to keep in mind: 

1. Shard Collection. The mechanic of collecting shards to fill out each character needs to be both urgent and rewarding. Giving away too many shards too fast devalues this first, ultra-weird level of the dungeon. On the flip side, though, there needs to be a pressure for the party to press on, so I'm thinking of imposing a 3-day (3 long rest) time limit. Each time the party takes a LR, they feel a little bit more detached from that urge to reassemble themselves. Balancing urgency vs risk is key to this portion of level one. Given that a party of four will need 24+ shards (undetermined yet but probably 6 to 8), that's a lot of farming! And that doesn't include potential losses from penumbrae or glass goblins.  
2. Room Logistics. Each room-day will be connected to one another sequentially (making it possible to travel through all 365 rooms or regions), but also laterally through the day of the week (Monday to Monday, etc). With a few exceptions (where months connect, and the future "gap rooms"), this means that there should be at least 3 different directions of travel for players to move through (4 for most mid-month days). 
3. Overcomplicating things. I've already introduced multiple groups or factions and it's only day 3. Penumbrae (the undead shadows of the mirror realm), the glass goblins and the Amalgams form the main three threats of the Capricorn section. I plan to include more on the goblins. The Amalgams and penumbrae are non-directed threats, wandering monsters that endanger all. I will probably add a few more random encounters - other beings trapped here, perhaps another party of NPCs. 

    I plan to include more geophysical threats in this section - yawning gulfs, teetering piles of loose glass shards, quickglass, other navigable hazards as they occur to me. I am considering making the environment itself more dangerous as the PCs collect their shards, indicating they have become less the stuff of the mirrorverse and more tactile. I haven't decided on how to manifest that mechanically yet. Difficult terrain everywhere? Spike Stones-like damage for moving at full speed? I do know that they will become more "delicious" to the locals as they grow. 

    In addition, the glass goblin faction needs some develoment. I have an idea of what the Goblin Boss will be like, but will need more time to reflect (chortle) on that. 

    Eventually I will introduce the Janussaries. While they are not interested in collecting shards, they actively recruit (aka kidnap) new members for their master - another existential threat. However, once a character has a full set of shards, the Janussaries lose interest. At that point they may pass freely through the Gate at the Janus temple. 

    As far as the characters themselves go, they will enter the game as bland ciphers - a 10 in each ability score, a +2 proficiency bonus but no race or class (thus no skill modifiers), an average amount of hit points for their level but with monster rather than class hit points (I'm thinking 3rd level so ~14hp). This can be a mini-game in its own right; picking and choosing which elements of your character to fill out with your precious shards. Maybe I'll wait to fill out my low scores last? 

    More anon, but I'm pretty happy with how things are developing! 

1-3 The Goblin Hunting Warrens and Wolf Supermoon

    The tunnels from 1-2 (and 1-4 and 1-10) lead into a tangle of glass goblin hunting warrens. Here the goblins wait and hunt the minor amalgams, watch for new shardfalls, and otherwise pass the time in relative safety. Two rooms serve as storage and dormitory. When the goblins decide they have enough material, they set out for their lair to make offerings to the Goblin Boss. 

    The goblins have learned the trick of extracting a gum-like substance from living amalgams and using it to craft wicked traps. The floors and walls of the tunnels are unusually smooth compared to the terrain outside. Some sections of the tunnels have pits covered by a thin layer of glass, which the oblivious may blunder into. Some have cunningly inlaid glass covers to "sneek toobs" or small rooms the goblins may flee into. Collapsing ceilings and walls are also common, but require a lot more work. 

    Within the tunnels, there are 2d6 glass goblins. If less than 4 are present, the rest (1d8) are away on a hunting/scavenging patrol and will return within an hour, as they dislike wandering out of sight of the warren entrances. 

    At any given time, The goblins will have collected 1d6 shards (to be returned to the Boss). 

    The warren has 3 exits leading to 1-4 and 1-10. 

1-2 The Sinkhole and Glass Warrens

 A wide, shallow depression in the floor, around and across which scuttle smaller Amalgams, hunting for shards, chasing off competitors and milling about. Beyond, you see the slope of what appears to be a high  ridge or mesa of piled glass gravel. Several openings pierce the bank and appear to recede deeper into the mountain. 

The Sinkhole

The shallow depression is a semi-stable formation covering a sinkhole. The smaller amalgams may walk across it with  impunity, but the larger amalgams, such as those from 1-1, would trigger an avalanche of glass. The small amalgams know this and so tend to linger in the area, as they can run across the sinkhole and hopefully lead the larger Amalgams to their doom. 

Each lesser Amalgam yields 1 shard if harvested correctly. 

The glass bluff extends into 1-3. It is a warren carefully dug by the glass goblins as a camp. The entrances are arched; meticulously balanced shards of glass braced against one another to stay open. The interior of the tunnels are similarly shored up. These entrances are fragile, susceptible to physical shocks, causing a landslide if significantly disturbed. 

There will be 1 or 2 goblins within the recesses of the entrances, watching out for large Amalgams and waiting for the smaller ones to let their guard down. The rest of the goblins are in 1-3, resting and preparing for the next raid. Then the goblin raiding party will attempt to capture as many of the small Amalgams as possible for harvesting. It's not an easy job. 

Each goblin will yield 1 shard. This goblin raiding party has collected 1d6 shards. 

Ascending the glass bluff will yield a long-distance view of 1-1, 1-8, 1-9, and the surface expanse of 1-3, though it increases the likelihood of drawing attention from the penumbrae...

1-1 The Eye of Oroboros

 Orologium of the Ormenians. 

1-1. The Eye. 

An enormous lens with a dark, slitted iris like that of a predator stares blankly from the slope of a hill of broken glass. It stands unnaturally erect, not fully supported by the heaps of glass shards which surround it. Beyond this lens and this hill, there is a gulf, loose shards of broken glass sliding and tumbling toward the edge, falling off into nothing. The eerie half-light of this level reveals nothing in the empty air beyond this point. 

The largest of the Amalgams on this level linger here, gibbering, moaning and digging among the glass scraps. There are 1d3 here at all times. They will attack anyone they see, though they are cautious of their kinfolk. 

The Amalgams know the Eye is a gate, but they must be of sufficient power to pass through it. Thus they scour the floor for any shard-bearing creatures and gobble them up, returning to the Eye to attempt entry. 

The Eye is a one way gate to 12-31, but it only allows passage to sufficiently powerful creatures, say CR12 at least. 

Dungeon Year 2026 - Orologium of the Omenians

    In two days, I will start my Dungeon Year '26 project, and that is exciting! For the last five years or so I've been focused on my Angard campaign, which is nearing its climax, probably within the next four of five sessions. While it is not winding up at that point, probably, I can't take that campaign development farther until the players decide what they want to do after. 

I missed out on #Dungeon23 somehow, but I'm captivated by the idea. Slowly, day by day, working your way through a custom megadungeon, dredging up ideas and inspiration. The excellent Blades of Gixa (backed and bought) is exactly the sort of thing I would love to make, even though I don't have nearly the artistic skill of Paradiso... 

Even though the intent of Dungeon23 was to improvise daily on a dungeon, I wanted to have a theme for this project. As this will be my first run on such a project, I settled on the (not terribly exciting) idea of a calendar dungeon; a dungeon whose structure emulates that of the calendar year. Each floor would have as its theme the nature of the deity or myth surrounding its name. 

Thus January would reflect the nature of Janus, March - Mars, May - Maia and so on. 

And everything was going swimmingly until I hit July. The months of July and August were inserted in honor of two Roman Caesars. Hmmm. My difficulties only increased moving into September, as the last four months of the year are based on numbers rather than mythical persona. 

To break up the potential monotony of THIRTY DAYS OF <GOD NAME HERE> I decided that I would incorporate aspects of the zodiac into the dungeon design. Thus, Janus' realm would be divided in two; a Capricorn half and an Aquarius half. 

note: I'm sticking with the January to December calendar, even though I'm told the zodiac calendar starts at midsummer. F that. I already have a notebook planner. 

This addition gave me the inspirational kick I needed. All of a sudden, instead of a dungeon level populated by ettins, death dogs and other two-headed things, there was a metaphysical schism within the realm of Janus (apropo, no?) which could be expanded on and exploited by players. 

On top of this, Aquarius domain would spread to the second level! Hmmm, how would that work? I guess I'll figure it out in February!  

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January

    I've had an idea for an adventure for ten years or more, a one-shot that involves the players' final goal to be to... complete their characters. Essentially, the party awakens to consciousness with only a dim knowledge of who they are, inchoate and confused by disjointed half-memories of a time before now. 

Furthermore, their bodies are but ciphers of their original selves. They discover themselves to be assembled of small pieces of reflective glass pressed into a humanoid mosaic. All their ability scores are tens, they have an average number of hit points and lack even basic class features. And the world around them is much the same; they seem to have appeared in an enormous, dimly lit chasm or landscape made entirely of broken, mirrored glass. 

The goal of this adventure would be to rebuild their characters to their original state. A narrative NPC will describe what they must do; find special shards of glass with which to complete themselves so that they may escape through one of a number of special mirror portals. 

Well, I have decided to make this the first half of level one. The party arrives, and must negotiate a meandering hallways and chambers walled by huge, teetering mountains of broken glass, seeking enough fragments of self to grant them passage through... what? AH, the mirror at the heart of the level, within the Temple of Janus. 

    This setting suggests things about the occupants - there are the discarded souls of those who fell through magic mirrors (mirrors of life trapping, for example) or arrived by other means like sticking a rod of absorption into a sphere of annihilation or sundering a Staff of the Magi. 

Given that all dungeons are clocks irrespective of the calendarial theme here, there should be danger. Hazards. What happens to those who never escape? Do they disintegrate? Devolve into monsters? 

I have several ideas. First I would say there is a time limit that drives the party forward. Say, on your third long rest in this area (since we are using 5E), you become part of the local fauna. The PC can feel what vestiges of identity that remain fading away, worsening after sleep. 

The party will realize quickly that they need to get as many shards as they can, as fast as they can. But surely they can't be the only inhabitants of this strange non-space who seek out shards. No. There are in fact several varieties of strange creatures occupying this region. 

First, there are the shard thieves, the glass goblins. These creatures collect shards to bring back to their lairs. The goblins are individually weak but hoard shards for the power they possess. Leaders of the goblins accrue power through the shards and use them to - you guessed it! - bully the other goblins to collect more shards! The goblins have the ability to pluck shards from your body, whereupon they flee back to their lairs as quickly as possible! 

Next are the penumbrae, the shadows. Some prisoners of this place lose their sense of self before escaping and become the drifting penumbrae. They also covet shards, but for a different reason - it is food for them. Absent of their old identities but containing enough shard material for them to persist in a sort of half-alive state, these tragic creatures hunger for the temporary comfort of shard material. These creatures have a touch attack that destroys shards within a victim. Yow! 

Finally there are the amalgams. Occasionally, two shards land against one another, fusing, and creating an amalgam. These are simple, crab like creatures who scuttle about searching for shard material. Composed of collected glass shards, they are well-camouflaged and able to disappear into the scenery. They are not strong, nor brave, about the size of a mid-sized dog or a small child, and they will flee at the first sign of danger, fading into the walls, floor and hummocks of the maze.  

If an amalgam is successful in its hunting, it will eventually grow in size. When they are the size of a human being, they become more directed in their actions. They continue to seek shards and gravitate towards an odd feature of the dungeon, a huge lens in room 1, through which the very largest amalgams may pass to... somewhere else! Some of these creatures are immense, and very intelligent and dangerous. The largest are best avoided. 

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    So, what about Janus? As a two-faced god who faces both the future and the past, I've placed his temple in the center of the level, at the "cusp" of Capricorn and Aquarius. The temple is tended by the high priest of Janus, a former mortal once named Divultuus. Divultuus sits atop a throne-like bench, staring simultaneously northward into the mirrored lands (representing the past, reflection) and southward into the Aquarian zone 

The old temples of Janus were neat structures, built like rectangular gatehouses and clad in bronze, with two sets of doors, one at each end, which had a ritual significance - when Rome went to war, the doors were kept open, but during peace time they were closed. 

Somehow I like the idea of a gatehouse separating these two halves of the dungeon, with Divultuus and his minions overseeing the passageway. The passageway itself ending at a mirror of self-realization or what-not, through which only complete souls can pass. And what lies on the other side? ... I don't have to figure that out until January 20th. 

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Wow, all of a sudden I have all this content...