Collaborative Cave #2 - Updated map (see 1st post) - Now doing room assignment

[Dannyalcatraz]

The volcanism could also act as a "ticking clock"- the volcanism is a relatively new event, the area wasn't active when the evil army was imprisoned in the ice.

With this twist, the party can't just reccomend "stop mining, the trouble will stop." Closing the mine just slows things down. With geysers & outgassing and possible outright lava flows, the ice will continue to melt anyway and the army of evil will eventually be released.

IOW, the ice bought humanity some time, but now a permanent solution must be found.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It just occured to me that there is an Alien-ish film out there in which some space-miners on an asteroid hit a vein of pure-ish platinum (or some such) and keep mining...then find out that they've unleashed one of the most evil things the universe has ever seen from its billion-year old prison.

I can't recall the movie's name, but its out there...waiting.

 

[Gregor]

Ooh, ooh - we could combine both ideas into one. An ice mine which opens up into an area containing an active volcanic flow. Nice.

I would love to participate in this design if possible.

If an ice and fire area are to be combined, it would be really cool to add some additional environmental flair by having a sort of no-man's land between the two areas. To expand, an area that marks the transition from ice into fire could be an underground lake of melted ice, where a whole independent ecosystem now lives (perhaps even an Aboleth who has his sights set on enslaving some of the things that are about to be released from the melting ice). Or, it could be pools of steaming water and steam geysers. The ceiling of the room is still ice, but the presence of the steam is melting it so the room looks as if its raining inside (foggy, misty), etc.

Anyway, just some ideas.

 

[der_kluge]

How about, instead of an ancient dragon, it's an remnant from a god, like, a severed hand the size of a city?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To twist that...steal from Christian, Greek or Norse legend.

The body part isn't from a god, but from a being who sought to overthrow them in an epic war in the heavens (like a Fallen Angel, a Titan, or Jotun, respectively).

 

[Vorput]

To twist that...steal from Christian, Greek or Norse legend.

The body part isn't from a god, but from a being who sought to overthrow them in an epic war in the heavens (like a Fallen Angel, a Titan, or Jotun, respectively).

Possibly trapped in a gem ala 'Trap the Soul' spell?

 

[der_kluge]

Ok, you guys certainly haven't made this easy on me, but I like a good challenge. Here's a rough draft of something.

I'm struggling a little bit with angle here. I'm not sure if the hand should be a side view, or a top view, or isometric, or something else. I just don't know. I'm also struggling with how a mine fits in around this thing in a plausible manner. Plus a volcano? I think we should throw a kitchen sink in for good measure.

Anyway, here's what I'm thinking - the hand is HUGE, just flat out enormous, so large in fact that those who have mined it have no idea that it's a hand. They just come across walls of *whatever* - magic calcium, platinum, adamantine, whatever. It doesn't matter.

The hand was severed, but retained the last remnants of some spell at the thumb and forefinger, and created a nexus of fire energy, which is now a pool of lava, basically - amidst a cavern of ice.

This drawing shows the location of the hand, and a rough idea of where a mine would be, and then possibly where those mines led to the bone, and then where they open up into a huge chamber of lava.

I don't know.. it seems kind of boring, oddly enough. I need some ideas.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) Make extensive use of aberrations and aberration templates to simulate the creatures descended from the cells, bacteria and parasites the hand had at the time of the severing.

One place to look would be the Green Ronin sourcebook, "When the Sky Falls"- instead of the impact being of the meteoric kind, it was this severed hand.

2) Perhaps the hand in question belonged to the campaign's equivalent of Prometheus, and the spell in question (that formed the lava pool) was the primordial divine fire he was bearing to humanity.

3) If the hand is like a normal creature's, its bone will be honeycomed to contain marrow. On that scale, the honeycombing would result in large, straight caves as the bone fossilizes.

 

[der_kluge]

I don't know... I'm just not liking the hand. It's too weird, I think. It won't really fit into most people's campaigns, without seriously altering their whole campaign mythos and mythology.

I'll probably just try to draw up a regular cave and/or mine complex. I might go with the fire/ice idea, mostly because I think it will look cool.

As a general rule, though, I think mines tend to be rather boring - mostly linear without a lot of diverse terrain. I'll see if I can spice something up a bit.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OK, plan 2.5- make the cave more universally usable.

You could borrow from the Star Trek episode with the Horta (The Devil in the Dark?)- a critter from the elemental plane of earth has been in the caves, leaving behind nicely mineable veins...but its angry at the miners for some reason. (Trapped away from its home, it has gone insane, and directed its misplaced aggressions at the miners?)

You could borrow from the show Sliders, and have dimensional warps (in D&D speak- interplanar portals) floating through the mine...the creatures who emerged from which freaked out the miners. The portals are caused by a campaign MacGuffin.

You could borrow a page from the Namor the Sub-Mariner stories in Marvel comics- the submerged sections of the caves are actually linked to a major body of water, and have become a testing ground for an elite set of Sahaugin (or your favorite marine intelligences) Commandoes who are training and testing out attack plans against the surface dwellers.