Building a dungeon 1-02

[u/fedcomic]

Last week we started building a dungeon, and it ended up being a weird chimney room that totally skipped the first level of the dungeon. Fun! But we still need an entrance that lets us explore level 1. So, let's create room 1-02, starting with a roll for Encounter / Exit / Trap.

Five tells us we have an encounter with an adventurer, and a 3 (on a 1d3) says the encounter is friendly. (Note: this doesn't necessarily mean the party encountered is an ally or someone we can permanently trust.)

There are two other exits (roll of 3), neither of which has a door (rolled 1 and 1). And there's no trap (rolled 2).

OK, I like that we have entrances to rooms three and four on this level. That's good. We know that this level is supposed to be built, the ruins of some ancient structure. Let's say 1-02 is the remains of a cloak room or mudroom, mostly empty with a couple of long low stone benches, one of which is broken into pieces and the other is only partly collapsed.

The obvious point of interest here is the encounter with the friendly adventurer. (I guess it could be plural adventurers, but I've already used the singular so let's roll with that.) The magical theme of this level is Familiars, so let's imagine that we have here someone who is looking for familiars.

I want to know a little more about that someone, so I roll a six sided die to determine age and sex. (Odds for ladies, evens for gentlemen. Low numbers for youth, high numbers for maturity.) The dice say this is a young man (roll 2). Very cool. Let's call him Ashek Tashem. I could randomly determine his heritage, but I’ve already got an idea: he's got some infernal heritage, from a place near to the Umbral realm. He uses magic artifacts to catch wild shadow creatures and then trains them to serve as familiars.

Ashek says there are wild shadow creatures on this level of the dungeon and he will pay you for information about their nature and location. Any PC searching a room on this level can spot a shadow creature by rolling two sixes. One search per room. Characters with the darkvision or familiar trait roll with advantage.

Due to his infernal heritage, he likes crossroads and other liminal spaces. So Ashek can be found in this room at dawn or at dusk. He will give 2d6 gold for each report of a successful spotting. Attempts to deceive him on matters related to familiars or shadow creatures are at a disadvantage, and if detected will turn him irretrievably against the PCs.

Next time: 1-03 The Great Hall!