RangerWickett
Legend
TL;DR - in a bronze age city-state, sometimes poorly worded magic spells 'glitch' and shunt nearby people and objects into a demiplane of loosely linked motes of reality. What sorts of weird stuff could the party find in there.
(This thread is loosely linked to an earlier one: D&D General - Brainstorming an inland temple of a bronze age sea goddess)
I'm running a bronze age fantasy game in a setting inspired by Mesopotamia, centered around a city with a holy ziggurat called the Palace Hill. The state religion produces a variety of tablets which contain the literal 'Word of God,' which creates magical effects in close radius (e.g., no rats or fleas can come within 12 cubits; or any person who disturbs this garden who is not a devout follower of the goddess Methodra shall be expelled; or the nearby fountain shall be fed with safe water).
The vibe I'm going for is a mix of Hammurabi's Code and the Ten Commandments, but with a sort of computer programming language element. Over a century, the state religion (which can produce exactly one tablet each day) has gradually worked out what sort of phrasings function as intended, though along the way they've had some small disasters when flowery language was rendered literal by a magic tablet. (E.g., "When a traveler from another land has trouble making their words understood, natives of our land within 12 cubits of this dictate shall know what is in their hearts" . . . leading to speakers of foreign languages dying horribly as their hearts are ripped from their chests.)
The religion keeps these mistakes secrets, but internally refers to them as Consequences.
I have an idea for a dungeon that would be created from when odd interactions between tablets get resolved by basically glitching stuff into an extradimensional space. "Oh, tablet A says no vermin within 12 cubits, and tablet B says that priests of the camel god can curse someone with biting fleas which they cannot remove for 1 day, and the cursed dude walked within 12 cubits of tablet A? Well, he's now no longer here, and he shows up in a semi-void, like if you were programming a video game and no-clipped off map."
(Or something sorta like the video game Bastion.)
Originally everyone just, y'know, died when this happened because they'd fall into a void, but one priest investigating someone's disappearance had a hunch and made a special commandment tablet to ensure anyone vanishing due to a Consequence of tablet magic gone awry would find themselves somewhere safe. Now, whenever a new glitch occurs, the magic has to determine what 'somewhere safe' means, which usually takes the form of an 18-ft radius (12 cubit) chunk of dungeon manifesting - with floor, and maybe some walls, but seldom a ceiling.
And they're all linked together and somehow have breathable air and at least some light, at least where you first arrive. But so far no one has ever gotten out. I want the PCs to be the first, giving them a monopoly on accessing this demiplane that's full of weird stuff.
---
In last night's session, the party stole a magical tablet from a temple of the sea. The tablet's purpose was to let the high priest of the temple decide which creatures could come and go through the threshold of a holy pool in the center of the temple, which they cultivated as a sort of garden with sea life and coral and such.
The party managed to sneak in, swap the tablet out with a decoy, put the real one in a bag of holding, and then slip away.
You really shouldn't put these magic tablets in extradimensional spaces.
So when they were trying to cross a canal to get out of the city and back to their hideout, the moment one of them tried to step from the boat to dry land, they glitched. They were 'leaving the waters,' but since they weren't in a temple, 'who is high priest' was undefined, and so was 'what choices did the high priest make on who can come and go.' The uncertainty got resolved by just preventing any of them from leaving the water, and we ended the session with the party having been deposited in the Consequence Dungeon.
Right now it's just them, the small ferry they were traveling on, and a freaked out pilot, all stuck in a space with a stone floor, and part of a wall, and a hazy void beyond, where they can see other motes of solidity connected by dark pathways, and all around them cascades of water pour into the abyss.
So now I need to flesh that dungeon out.
I already know at least one way I am thinking they can escape. A previous person who got stuck in the Consequence was a former priest of the sea goddess, and he could do enough magic to conjure food for himself to survive, but he has gone gradually mad with isolation, and has begun to transform into a Lovecraftian horror. Still, he is a priest, and if they speak with him he could help them understand the nature of the glitch. He could decide to let them leave; they just have to find a temple for him to be in - and of course there's a whole temple that got inadvertently glitched into the Consequence also. They just need to get there, and fight all the weird things in their way.
Another option is that the party has befriended a few folks who are still out in the real world who could notice their disappearance, one of whom is a priest of a god of fire. The party's tabaxi fighter (and copper merchant) has received a blessing from the fire temple, and so I might have the priest be able to communicate briefly whenever the tabaxi is nearby fire - hearing a voice from the flames, which could let them coordinate between the two worlds. My players are clever. Hell, one of the reasons I made this whole campaign was because of how much I enjoy seeing them figure out exploits and unexpected interactions of things in my settings.
So the escape is less the hurdle. I need ideas for stuff that would get glitched into an extradimensional dungeon. I want to give the players a reason to keep coming back, to look for useful magic and such. They might even figure out how to start intentionally glitching stuff there to turn it into a super-secret base of operations. So it'll be sprawling, but I want there to be at least some logic to it, some theming.
Right now the party's 4th level.
So, any ideas? What's here, and what went wrong for it to get here?
(This thread is loosely linked to an earlier one: D&D General - Brainstorming an inland temple of a bronze age sea goddess)
I'm running a bronze age fantasy game in a setting inspired by Mesopotamia, centered around a city with a holy ziggurat called the Palace Hill. The state religion produces a variety of tablets which contain the literal 'Word of God,' which creates magical effects in close radius (e.g., no rats or fleas can come within 12 cubits; or any person who disturbs this garden who is not a devout follower of the goddess Methodra shall be expelled; or the nearby fountain shall be fed with safe water).
The vibe I'm going for is a mix of Hammurabi's Code and the Ten Commandments, but with a sort of computer programming language element. Over a century, the state religion (which can produce exactly one tablet each day) has gradually worked out what sort of phrasings function as intended, though along the way they've had some small disasters when flowery language was rendered literal by a magic tablet. (E.g., "When a traveler from another land has trouble making their words understood, natives of our land within 12 cubits of this dictate shall know what is in their hearts" . . . leading to speakers of foreign languages dying horribly as their hearts are ripped from their chests.)
The religion keeps these mistakes secrets, but internally refers to them as Consequences.
I have an idea for a dungeon that would be created from when odd interactions between tablets get resolved by basically glitching stuff into an extradimensional space. "Oh, tablet A says no vermin within 12 cubits, and tablet B says that priests of the camel god can curse someone with biting fleas which they cannot remove for 1 day, and the cursed dude walked within 12 cubits of tablet A? Well, he's now no longer here, and he shows up in a semi-void, like if you were programming a video game and no-clipped off map."
(Or something sorta like the video game Bastion.)
Originally everyone just, y'know, died when this happened because they'd fall into a void, but one priest investigating someone's disappearance had a hunch and made a special commandment tablet to ensure anyone vanishing due to a Consequence of tablet magic gone awry would find themselves somewhere safe. Now, whenever a new glitch occurs, the magic has to determine what 'somewhere safe' means, which usually takes the form of an 18-ft radius (12 cubit) chunk of dungeon manifesting - with floor, and maybe some walls, but seldom a ceiling.
And they're all linked together and somehow have breathable air and at least some light, at least where you first arrive. But so far no one has ever gotten out. I want the PCs to be the first, giving them a monopoly on accessing this demiplane that's full of weird stuff.
---
In last night's session, the party stole a magical tablet from a temple of the sea. The tablet's purpose was to let the high priest of the temple decide which creatures could come and go through the threshold of a holy pool in the center of the temple, which they cultivated as a sort of garden with sea life and coral and such.
The party managed to sneak in, swap the tablet out with a decoy, put the real one in a bag of holding, and then slip away.
You really shouldn't put these magic tablets in extradimensional spaces.
So when they were trying to cross a canal to get out of the city and back to their hideout, the moment one of them tried to step from the boat to dry land, they glitched. They were 'leaving the waters,' but since they weren't in a temple, 'who is high priest' was undefined, and so was 'what choices did the high priest make on who can come and go.' The uncertainty got resolved by just preventing any of them from leaving the water, and we ended the session with the party having been deposited in the Consequence Dungeon.
Right now it's just them, the small ferry they were traveling on, and a freaked out pilot, all stuck in a space with a stone floor, and part of a wall, and a hazy void beyond, where they can see other motes of solidity connected by dark pathways, and all around them cascades of water pour into the abyss.
So now I need to flesh that dungeon out.
I already know at least one way I am thinking they can escape. A previous person who got stuck in the Consequence was a former priest of the sea goddess, and he could do enough magic to conjure food for himself to survive, but he has gone gradually mad with isolation, and has begun to transform into a Lovecraftian horror. Still, he is a priest, and if they speak with him he could help them understand the nature of the glitch. He could decide to let them leave; they just have to find a temple for him to be in - and of course there's a whole temple that got inadvertently glitched into the Consequence also. They just need to get there, and fight all the weird things in their way.
Another option is that the party has befriended a few folks who are still out in the real world who could notice their disappearance, one of whom is a priest of a god of fire. The party's tabaxi fighter (and copper merchant) has received a blessing from the fire temple, and so I might have the priest be able to communicate briefly whenever the tabaxi is nearby fire - hearing a voice from the flames, which could let them coordinate between the two worlds. My players are clever. Hell, one of the reasons I made this whole campaign was because of how much I enjoy seeing them figure out exploits and unexpected interactions of things in my settings.
So the escape is less the hurdle. I need ideas for stuff that would get glitched into an extradimensional dungeon. I want to give the players a reason to keep coming back, to look for useful magic and such. They might even figure out how to start intentionally glitching stuff there to turn it into a super-secret base of operations. So it'll be sprawling, but I want there to be at least some logic to it, some theming.
Right now the party's 4th level.
So, any ideas? What's here, and what went wrong for it to get here?
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