My characters are travelling the Mounds of Dawn and I would like to introduce che Stone Citadel of Dawn (fading land - see fta) during the next session. The description of the place is highly generic, tho. Has anyone written some more detail on this interdimensional fortress? Brainstorming ideas flooding is well accepted, even a few random suggestions would help me build the mood inside the complex!
The party is actually travelling with a caravan of gnomes, one of which is pregnant. I would like to have the gnome give birth to the baby during the trip, but the newborn the morning after conception has disappeared! The tracks lead to the Stone Citadel, and the heroes ave to enter to find the baby.
Your turn!
Quote:
Mounds of Dawn
----------------
These underexplored hills are home to many monsters that descend from the northern Yatils. Only a few clans of xenophobic dwarves and a handful of gnomes have settled there. Fine mineral deposits are reported to lie here, as well as many lost tombs and treasures.
THE STONE CITADEL OF DAWN
-----------------------------
In the Mounds of Dawn (hex L5-81) stands a single peak towering above the rolling hills. The southerly face of the mount is smooth and weathered, and for a period of 10 minutes following its exposure to the sun’s rays at dawn, the facade of a great stone fortress appears as if some great hand pushed the design against a surface of stony membrane.
The great stone gates of the Citadel cannot be opened by mere force, but a spell as simple as knock will open them for ld4+2 rounds. Attempts to teleport or plane shifr in or out fail. Those who enter the Citadel find an endless succession of smooth stone chambers, all windowless and featureless except for stone statues of warriors and guardians. Stone golems, galebduhr-
like creatures, xorn, and earth elementals are among the creatures encountered therein.
Mapping the rooms is a nightmare: tesseractlike complexes have been reported; distance distortions operate in large areas within the Citadel; and “impossible” confluences of passages and overlapping chambers occur routinely. Further, the structure changes with time.
The one reason for entering this place is simple: adventurers have retrieved a number of magical weapons, armors, and shields from the Citadel (but no other kinds of magical items). The items are powerful (typically +3 enchantment), but always have some unique or special failing-armor +3 may be useless against one specific weapon type, a sword +3 may cause minimum damage each time it is used aainst a specific class or category of monster (avians, regenerating monsters, etc.), a shield +3 may actually attract electrical attacks to its user, and so on.
In the depths of the Citadel are passages leading through the Yatils, entries to the underdark, portals to the Elemental Planes, and even (oneway) teleportation links to other mountain ranges. Unfortunately, these appear to be the only exits from the place unless magic such as a wish is available. The doors of the Citadel do not open from the inside, so in order to escape, wise adventurers arrange for the doors to be opened periodically from the outside after they have entered. Whether they can find the front doors from the inside is another matter. Who built the Citadel, and why, is a matter of
much conjecture. The original Flan dwellers of the area are not generally thought to have progressed far enough to have built such a place, and there is an absence of any distinctive Baklunish qualities or dwarven workmanship. Legend lore spells reveal nothing about the weapons recovered from the
place. The Citadel remains a complete mystery.
When I ran Ghost Tower of Inverness a couple years ago, I made it a type of dungeon that can be accessed from multiple places while the interior of the dungeon is its own dimension.
I also made the treasure at the top whatever the party was seeking, so many adventurers coming from many places wound up at the same place seeking a different reward.
It's not specifically what you asked for, but its a novel idea which can be used with what you are doing.
I haven't done things with the Mounds of Dawn, but if I ever do, I might make use of the content found in the 3 part adventure arc called "Seeds of Sehan" which appeared in Dungeon mags number 145, 146, and 147.
Altho Seeds of Sehan isn't about the Stone Citadel, within those adventures are a description of Exag, which is 30 leagues from the location of the Stone Citadel given in FtA, a mention of an ancient race of Crafters, as well as various elemental creatures, which all seem apropos to the area's themes, plus Flan-related fluff, and last but certainly not least, Yak-Men.
It sounds like it will be a fun adventure, good luck with it!
nematode
Last edited by nematode on Sat Oct 03, 2009 7:25 pm; edited 1 time in total
I was gonna mention the Crafters, but Nematode beat me to it. You could actually have some Crafters show up in it, maybe in the form of a boss at the finale. Depends on what level you're running this as. My conception of Crafters is that they're kind of like the Vaati, instead of being elemental air they're elemental earth. Another possibility might be minions of Ogremoch. If lower level or mid-level, maybe a gang of earth mephits. They seem like the kind of critters that might steal a baby.
Yes yes, cool! The earth mephit idea is really good, and it ties in fairly well. Sounds a bit like the movie Labyrinth...
The party is quite atypical, a 5th level tiefling rogue escaping from the Black Cult of Ahm and a 16th level rogue from Greyhawk's Guild of Thieves which owns a Vaati artifact (a transparent dagger) with vast air-related powers.
I will dig a bit on the Crafters idea. The players just finished the 1st adventure in the cycle of Sehan and are leaving Exag with this caravan of gnomes, so I can possibly work some connection out.
Another thing which is not very clear is how exactly are these rooms. Supposing they're unfurnished plain squares of smooth stone, interconnected by Escher-like non-euclidean mazes, where are these weapons found? Resting on the floor? In the hands of the elementals? Resting on some statue? Floating in the air? How did you depict them?
I was going to mention the movie Labyrinth, especially for it's Escher scene. I would imagine that the gear could be found being used by the occupants of the citadel (stone guardians, golems, elementals, and earth-elemental themed creatures or even just 'found' like a shield and twin swords pegged to a wall as a coat of arms.
I did have one idea that I thought would be an interesting encounter for the party...
"The smooth stone corridor stretches on, perfectly straight before you, dwindling out of the reach of your torchlight. Occasionally you come across a cross corridor, seemingly identical to the one in which you travel and intersecting your's at perfectly right angles."
Allow the party to explore for awhile. The corridors seem to go on forever and it doesn't seem to matter if they turn down any of the identical side passages. If they are marking any of the junctions you may have them come across a junction that they have already marked even if the turns they have made could not possibly have brought them back to that point (or if they haven't even made any turns ). It should be an interestingly frustrating mapping exercise if they are trying to map it.
After they have explored for awhile and are starting to run out of ideas, get bored, or become frustrated have them find another cross passage, but at this one, as they look down the new cross passage they can see some figures in the distance. A closer examination shows that the figures in the distance is themselves, doing exactly everything they are doing, but looking down a different side passage where they are located at then the one that lead to the party. If the party turns down the corridor to go meet themselves the other 'party' does the same, although the corridor they choose leads out of sight and is not the one that the party is coming down. When they get to the junction where they saw themselves standing and look back the way they came they see themselves back where they were looking down the corridor at themselves with the same expressions of confusion.
Whatever they do, nobody will be able to actually 'catch' themselves, although if they separate various members of one group can link up with members of the other group... which is actually just the party anyway.
After awhile of bending your player's minds with this whole thing allow them to find an exit from this area of the citadel and go on to other encounters. The areas is just a confusing encounter... no monsters or treasures, just your players trying to figure out what in the world is going on.
I'd probably also have occasional 2-dimensional representations of 4-dimensional concepts as freezes and mosaics here and there in the cidadel. Some of them you might tie into a puzzle encounter that the party needs to solve to open a gate or aquire a magic item. Some interesting figures you could use are: Torus, Flower of Life, Egg of Life, Metatron's Cube, Golden Spiral, etc.
Like the Labyrinth idea, and really cool ideas from Varthalon! If you have access to the Dragon Compendium from '05, they reprinted 2 classic articles in there on using tesseracts. If your party likes riddles and puzzles you could mix those in pretty liberally, along wwith monster encounters, to let them get to the treasure by solving them. I like Varthalon's idea of them being on display, but you can only touch them if you pass the test.
Yes yes, here we're talking! I remember the original article on tesseracts indeed, it's time for me to start browsing old mags.
Besides, I think I will also steal some ideas from that old FTL games Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back (mid 80's), the chambers also were plain grey stone, just like the Citadel's!
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). It should be an interestingly frustrating mapping exercise if they are trying to map it.
