D&D 5E Monster's body as a dungeon

[toucanbuzz]

Looking for some ideas for a monster's body as a dungeon/puzzle.

Setup: PCs are running a fledgling barony and on their border is a troll with ambitions to run his own monster kingdom (Kingmaker adaptation). When he dies, a fey pact kicks in and an ancient colossal being known only as "Talonquake" in legend rises up from beneath his castle and moves to finish off the PCs capital. A mutually assured destruction option if the troll couldn't pacify them into a food and/or slave source as he had going with the bandits who previously ruled the area. The PCs already have come across stories about it.

Rather than make this a hackfest, I was envisioning it more like a puzzle, or a dungeon. Thoughts?

 

[Sithlord]

Use a tarasque that was slain way back when by a hero that needed its heart. After millennia its brain is regenerating and causing regional effects as it tries to grow another heart. Enter through the anus and make your way to the brain to destroy the brain before it resurrects itself. Beware the sphincter of madness.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

This is for an entire campaign but perhaps it has some ideas to borrow...

Salt in Wounds

Game in the fantasy economic powerhouse fueled by centuries of perpetual butchery of an unkillable regenerating giant monster. New Post Every Wednesday

www.saltinwoundssetting.com

 

[Benjamin Olson]

 

[Quartz]

Looking for some ideas for a monster's body as a dungeon/puzzle.

IIRC there's a Dungeon adventure where the 'dungeon' is the innards of a huge construct.
Also somewhat similar is a Dungeon adventure where there's a castle on the back of a (living) monster.

 

[J.Quondam]

The 5e-ish setting Neverland by Andrew Kolb includes an overview for a short 10 or 12 room dungeon for the inside of the great crocodile, Tick-Tock. It's not necessarily specifically detailed for the most part (aside from the layout), but it includes suggestions for special effects and encounters for different anatomical parts. For example, poison effects are minimized in the liver "room" as the organ filters the toxins out.

 

[toucanbuzz]

I can envision the look on my players' faces... "The only way you can save your barony is to crawl up the rectum of Talonquake and..." (Followed by the sound of 5 chairs moving away from the table, the patter of feet in full run, and the slam of the front door.)

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

There's the Eyes of the Stone Thief that is a living dungeon. IIRC they made a 5e version (it was originally for 13th Age).

There's a setting + system that had its inhabitants living in a world-size monster. The character are scavenger finding weird stuff from worlds eaten previously by the monster. I cant seem to remember the name though.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I remember one of the old SSI/TSR video games had the party go through the comatose body of Moander - basically a giant, godlike shambling mound. If you waited too long, every certain amount of rounds, the heart would pulse and it would push you into rooms. I could see mapping that in a very generic, abstract way - come in through a giant wound on the 'leg' and try to get to the brain.

 

[dragoner]

The Dream Life of Balso Snell, by Nathaniel West, also author of "Day of the Locust" (where Groening took Homer Simpson from, all of it fairly dark though), takes place in the entrails of a Trojan Horse: The Dream Life of Balso Snell - Wikipedia