The Dwellers Under The Tombs

The final page of Jonas Kiles' journal:

"I wonder how Jacob Kiles discovered these subterranean ways?  He did not construct them.They were carved out of dim caverns and solid rock by the hands of forgotten men -- how long ago I dare not venture a conjecture. 

While hiding here, waiting for the time to be ripe, I have amused myself by exploring them.  I have found they are far more extensive than I had suspected.  The hills must be honeycombed with them, and they sink into the earth at an incredible depth, tier below tier, like the stories of a building, each tier connected with the one below by a single stairway.

Old Jacob Kiles must have used these tunnels, at least those of the upper tiers, for the storing of plunder and contraband.  He built the entrance tomb to mask his real activities, and of course cut the secret entrance, a stone door hung on a pivot.  He must have discovered the burrows by means of the hidden entrance at Smuggler's Point.  The concealed door he constructed there was a mess of rotting splinters and rusting metal when I found it.  As no one ever discovered it after him, it is not likely anyone will find the new door which I built with my own hands, to replace the old one.

I have wondered much as to the identity of the race which must have once inhabited these labyrinths.  I have found no bones or skulls, though I have discovered, in the upper tiers, curiously hardened copper implements.  On the next few tiers I have found stone implements, down to the tenth tier, where they disappeared.

Also, on the topmost tiers, I found portions of walls decorated with paintings, faded but evidencing great skill.  The picture paintings on lower tiers were cruder than those of the tiers above, until the last paintings were but meaningless daubs, such as an ape might make with a paintbrush.  One gets a fantastic impression of an imprisoned race, burrowing deeper and deeper into the black earth, century by century, and losing more of their human attributes as they sank to each new level.

The fifteenth tier is without rhyme or reason, the tunnels running aimlessly, without apparent plan -- so striking a contrast to the top-most tiers, a triumph of ancient architecture, that it is difficult to believe them to have been constructed by the same race.  Many centuries must have elapsed during the building of the tiers, and the builders must have become greatly degraded.

But the fifteenth tier is not the end of these mysterious burrows.  The doorway opening on the single stairway at the lowest tier was blocked by stones.  Prompted by curiosity, I cleared away the debris, in spite of the tax it was on my strength, and opened a hole, this very day, although I did not have time to explore what lay beneath.  Indeed I doubt I could do so, for my light showed me not the usual series of stone steps, but a steep smooth shaft leading down into the blackness.

Into what unthinkable pits it leads I do not care to even guess.  For some reason, the realization that the fifteenth tier descent is not a stepped shaft gives me a strange creepy feeling, and led me to fantastic conjectures regarding the ultimate fate of the race that once inhabited these hills.  I had supposed that the diggers, sinking lower and lower in the scale of life, had become extinct in the lower tiers, although I have found no remains to justify my theories.

Tonight I leave this infernal retreat forever.  Nor will I be sorry, for the eternal darkness and silence are beginning to shake even my iron nerves.  I am becoming imaginative: even as I write, I seem to hear stealthy sounds, as of things creeping up from below."

-- Robert E. Howard, "The Dwellers Under The Tombs"

Endless Night: A Megadungeon Hook

Imagine a fantasy world in which two events happen simultaneously. One, a total solar eclipse that never ceases. Two, an earthquake and rend in the earth near the city centre, providing access and passage to the endless stair. What is the cause? What do both events portend? Will you brave the endless stair to discover the answers to these questions?

The Death Frost Doom Map That Never Was

Still getting my head around a different kind of megadungeon design for the endless stair; something that appeals to my naturalistic adventure design aesthetic.

This is a map of St. Paul's catacombs in Rabat, Malta. That catacomb map would have made for an inspirational reference for Death Frost Doom, a James Raggi adventure full of menace and horror but lacking in evocative cartography.

I continue to be attracted to maps and images like this one of St. Paul's catacombs. As an adventure designer, there is an honesty in using real world subterranea for the basis of one's own maps, if only for the designer's own moral fortification.

The user of the adventure may not appreciate that the environment does, and therefore can, exist. But from the creator's point of view, there is a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that the environment makes sense.

What's most challenging for me is attempting to visualize these catacombs. There are a handful of images on the internet, but I think it would take actual exploration of an environment like St. Paul's catacombs to truly appreciate the depicted map. The next challenge would be to communicate what you have seen to the end-user of the adventure in a way that is not burdensome.

The Endless Stair: Dungeon Inspiration

I've been busy working on a 3-page dungeon design for The Endless Stair, an idea I had for a mega-dungeon, and have been searching for inspiration from the plethora of cave maps available on the internet.


My disenchantment with the traditional graph-paper-constrained dungeon maps continues to grow, as I pore over the myriad underground systems mapped by cavers.


The deeper I fall down this rabbit hole, the more tempted I am to dispense with graph-paper altogether, in favour of a scale legend and dimension map-notes.

The Endless Stair And Player Choice

Keep On The Borderlands is one of the better TSR modules. Not because it has well-developed NPCs (it doesn't). Nor because of its' exceptional artwork (serviceable, but not mind-blowing). Not even because of it has a sophisticated plot (at best, the DM may tease something out about the Temple of Chaos organizing the scattered humanoids into a raiding force).

What is great about Keep On The Borderlands is that it allows players to select the level of challenge they are willing to face.

Among the rumors provided in Keep On The Borderlands is that the deeper you go within the Caves of Chaos box canyon, the more dangerous the denizens. A cave mouth closer to the canyon entrance is less dangerous, while those at the end of the box canyon are likely filled with fearsome opponents, and fabulous treasures. The players can play-it-safe, and explore the nearer cave-mouths, or take a chance at the deeper ones. The DM can adjudicate the results of that player choice, free of any hint of bias, since it is the players themselves that pick the easier or harder road.

It is well-understood by all experienced D&D players, that the deeper within a dungeon you delve, the more dangerous the traps and monsters. Yet one of the design principles, regularly applied to dungeon creation, is that the stairs to the next-deeper level are difficult to discover. Call that what you like: I call it railroading.

Rather than hiding stairs to the deeper levels, i'm of a mind to have one staircase -- The Endless Stair -- that traverses the entire depth of the dungeon. Not a staircase that goes directly down mind you, but one that meanders, splits, crosses chasms, follows underground rivers, backtracks on itself, and reveals varying architectural styles at different points in its' descent.

As the stairs decend, there are dungeon levels hiving off in different directions, sometimes blocked by hastily-completed walls, or locked and barred doors, offering danger, mystery and treasure. There may be collapsed stair sections along the way, requiring magical or mechanic means of bypass, and portcullises on the staircase preventing immediate entry to lower levels for those lacking creativity, but there will be no question where those stairs are.

The only question ... for the players ... is whether they are feeling lucky today, and want to take a chance exploring lower dungeon levels in exchange for potentially higher rewards.