Collage on paper 6"x9" or so. Click to enlarge. Here's a version of it labeled using the Vornheim font Andreas made for me...
I figure the Afflicted Lord (M) has been trapped down there for centuries on account of his own wickedness, cursed and slowly mutating yadda yadda, and the guy in location Q is some equally afflicted servant. I also figure following the (hard to see) dotted line from F down to G and H leads to the family crypt.Also: the pale yellow squares are ordinary doors and the blue squares are secret doors.
If you've got any ideas what else is going on in there, please let us know...
11 comments:
K- Sand People. This room is the prison of several hungry and angry humanoids made of sand. They fight like Sandman from Spiderman comics and can do anything logically that sentient sand can do like form sandstorms or sift through small areas. All sand people feed on dreams, but some have the ability to enter through a living beings mouth (or other orifices) and from their induce an intense coma-like state so that they can continually feed on that creature.
These Sandmen were likely imprisoned here to be used in the creation of magical hourglasses later since their sand is known to have interesting properties.
Sand people are also weak to both water and extreme heat. Water will disable them and morph into slower and less dexterous mudlike beings and heat can change them into glass, essentially petrifying them.
nice
A - The Sunsphere.
This is a magical trap designed to evaporate tomb robbers. It is in a plain but elegant and aesthetic room, on a pedestal or in an obvious and attractive container amongst some piles of metallic and only modestly valuable treasure (which may or may not still be there, I suppose).
The four pillar things on top of the pyramid surround a witch-glyph of some sort, which is replicated underneath the sunsphere.
Energy from the sun is routed through the glyphs into the sunsphere, which slowly captures and stores it as Charges. When disturbed, the energy is released in a burst of heat-doom to the tune of D6 per Charge.
Accumulates 1 Charge per week (month? year?) up to a maximum of whatever is appropriate for your group/style, but, arbitrarily, lets say 20.
Could also link the trigger to a certain item in the room. Whatever you like really.
Lovely image. Like some Joseph Cornell, Dave McKean, even some Bill Sienkiewicz-type twitchyness.
I do enjoy your art. As a "new reader" to this blog, I feel like I've discovered a new artist I appreciate. Do you post dates of when/where you exhibit your artwork? Or do you keep that info off this grid?
Thanks either way!
K- This room is totally empty, save for a rather plain, though sturdy looking dagger, lying carelessly on the floor.
And a razor thin, squiggly line, of dim, greyish light, hangs in the air, running the length of the room, barely perceptible and very slowly fading.
The Dagger is Expellere. It is +1, +2 when operating on the Astral Plane. Upon command, the Dagger can cut a fissure onto the Astral Plane, which will widen and suck in everything within a 15' radius, save the wielder. This cut in the Prime Material will quickly begin to close and can be approached in relative safety, within a minute of its initial creation. A thin wound will remain for 3d4 days, which will be unstable enough that some magical activities, might rip it open again.
The previous owner used it in the midst of receiving a deathblow, dropped the dagger and was the, drawn through the opening, along with his antagonist and whatever else was once within the room.
On the Astral Plane, the full power of the Dagger is realized. On a roll of a Natural 18-20, it will cut the Silver Cord of an astral traveler (Save vs. Death at -2.)
0 - The Lurking Fear
The room is lit by a dim yellow light that emits magically from the stone ceiling. Floating in the room are four spheres 10x10x10 of blackness that float 3 feet above the floor where reside corresponding shadows 10x10.
The spheres in actuality are the shadows <4th dimension representations projected into a 3 dimensional space > of the 2 dimensional entities below. All attacks pass through the sphere doing no damage.
Any physical attack upon the shadow will cause the instrument to be pulled into the shadow itself, the wielder better let go or they themselves are pulled in < Simple Dex save to let go, yet no save if a player makes contact with the sphere > The shadows are slow moving 2" a turn. A shadow attacks by manifesting itself under a target and pulling them into itself
Once inside the target is helpless lost in a Dirac Sea, cut off from all but psychic contact from the world.
Every turn there is an attempt by the lonely trans dimensional entity to make contact with the mind of the entrapped target(s). (Will save) Vivid hallucinations accompany these contacts. If contact is made the target begins to lose Int at the rate of 1 int per turn. When the taget's Int reaches 0, the target's psyche is absorbed by the entity and forever dead. Note: Even if contact is made the target may continue to make a will save each turn until its int is fully absorbed or the entity is defeated.
Each will save, deals d8 damage to the entity. Once defeated the target will burst out of the entity's shadow sphere in a an eruption of gore. All Int lost will be recovered at the rate of 1 int per day.
Contact with an alien mind is not pleasant. Please roll a d6 and consult the chart below. Roll only in contact was made.
1 Unsettled - for the next week all attacks and skill checks are at -2.
2 Unnerved - any fear save will be made at -4 for the next month. Aquire one random phobia.
3 Stammering Mess - for the next d6 days the player will babble in incomprehensible tongues unable to do much else - (can walk/run if guided/pulled along, can eat and drink if feed, will vacate its bowels/urinate without warning nor care. Aquire 2 phobias, 1 mental ailment but gain +2 int bonus to checks and saves dealing with extra planar beings.
4 Unwound - Int loss recover is per week not per day. Aquire 1 phobia and 1 mental ailment.
5 The Voices The Voices! For the next d6 days, the player hears voices talking to him/her in languages without tongues. Will save per day, or will try to deafen him/her self, If already deafened will try to blind, if blind and deaf will try to tear out their own tongue. Gain 2 mental ailments.
6 I see the Maw of Lidless Eyes, the Lactating Menace of Copulating Corruption. Player is psychopathically insane.
The Extra Planar beings are AC 10 immune to all worldly/magical attacks. HPs 16 each.
Ack one last thing - the beings can not leave the room, unless the magical light is dispelled. The light was cast by an elaborate ritual equivalent to 12 Level levels.
@jonathan
google "zak smith" my site will come up and my facebook and all that. you can check that stuff there.
L. The Archives. Rows and rows of shelves stuffed with papyri. In the center is the withered, leathery figure of a mummified scribe hunched over a small desk, laboriously sharpening reeds, grinding inks, and scrawling the atrocities committed by his lord on a fresh papyrus. He has long since run out of actual atrocities, and is now in the process of constructing an elaborate semi-fictionalized biography of the Afflicted Lord, transforming some of his master's more banal misdeeds into intricate, painstaking schemes that take generations to reach fruition. Casual assignations become passionate, destructive love affairs. Inconsequential persons are given a much grander role, and figures of great importance (particularly those who slighted the scribe in life) are shrunk to insignificance. He has been at this latter task for some 500 years (or whenever).
He will gladly answer any question about his master's past (he was a witness to much of it) but there is a 35% chance that he is confusing historical fact with his own "improved" narrative. After all this time, they run together in his mind quite seamlessly.
You know, I figure E is honestly just a goat. It wandered down here somehow and is now grazing confusedly on the blood-red furnishings.
Hi Zak,
Love the blog. I saw this list and thought it might be up your alley:
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/07/h-p-lovecrafts-commonplace-book/
Happy Fireworks Day
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