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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8257606" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 23: May/Jun 1990part 3/5The Pyramid of Jenkel: Willie Walsh is back once again, with a surprisingly normal dungeon crawl rather than his usual whimsy, although it does feature some very rarely used monsters. The city of Juncert was destroyed 500 years ago by mysterious magical apocalypse. Since cities are usually situated on prime real estate, the much smaller town of Jenkel grew up there as the legends faded and people were no longer terrified that they'd meet the same fate if they hung around. Now the same forces that caused devastation 500 years ago stir again and things get very interesting indeed for the townsfolk. An off-brand marilith from Tartarus (multi-armed snake ladies, like crabs, seem to be a body plan that evolves independently many times throughout the multiverse) comes through the unstable planar rift, decides this is a much nicer place to live than home, and gets to scamming and betraying people who don't know it's a scam and betray back casually and routinely. Pretend to be a god, start a cult, and then gradually push your followers into making increasingly extreme offerings until they're ready to engage in full-on human sacrifice, at which point even if they're not all evil, it's very hard to back out. Your typical fiendish scheme. This is where the PC's get entangled. They'll get approached by the cultists, love-bombed, and then manipulated into taking an initiation test which is really just sending them into the pyramid to become dinner. (or if they're suspicious of the whole thing and turn them down you then encourage them to investigate the pyramid sneakily of their own accord) So the dungeon crawl part of this is fairly standard, as you explore the pyramid and the caves underneath it while fighting a mixture of local and extra-planar creatures, but it's the roleplaying before and after that are distinctive and interesting, as you deal with the various cult members in the beginning, and then the fallout when you escape to tell your tale, the dupes amongst them find out what they've really been worshipping and turn on the leader. There's plenty of different ways it could go depending on how the PC's interact with them, and more than enough moral ambiguity that hopefully the PC's won't just slaughter everyone and let the gods sort it out. Definitely a better framing device than once again meeting a mysterious patron in a tavern for your missions.</blockquote>

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