Thursday, December 27, 2018

One Page: A Dungeon

A cursed page pulls the party into the world of a thaumaturgic diagram. Will they become a footnote in the annals of scriptomancy?

This was a winner in the One Page Dungeon Contest. https://www.dungeoncontest.com/

--Steve Kilian



What I Want, or How To Seamlessly Lay Down Some Exposition

GLAAAAR!!!  Feel the bite of my +2 axe, Grimripper!  Know the finality of death as I cleave through your scaly torso and open your ribcage!  Pump the last of your sour fish-blood onto this beach, where you and your kind will be driven back into the sea!  Weep as your plot to melt the icecaps and flood the lands of Cragjaal, our beloved planet, is foiled!  Know that kidnapping the priestess Romava of the Skein-weavers as she passed through the underground passage of the funicular transport system that links the forbidden cloisters cut into the cliffs above Glavenhold to that fair city was ultimately useless, since she was rescued by me and my hardy band of adventurer-scoundrels, including Fenrikkler the rogue (who struggles with lycanthropy), Varloorius Greel, wizard of indeterminate ancestry, and Thudvurk Jerb, half-orc warrior and wielder of Baang, a +3 warhammer forged from black meteoric metal.  Don’t die just yet, Sahuagin scum!  I’m not finished.  Know also that our investigations into her disappearance revealed that the tunnel through which the funicular passed was part of an ancient network linking the surface to a mega-dungeon below the cloisters, and that the fine tilework and other finishes of the well-lit stations at either end of the tunnel soon gave way to dripping caverns infested with troglodytes and the human cultists who worship your fell fish-god.  All will be slain! 

Obviously I will be quitting my job and becoming a professional writer on the internet. 

--Steve Kilian