Turning 3.5 Dungeon Encounters into a Dungeon parts 8/10

Back when I started this sequence of posts, I had hopes that I would be able to use each encounter chart as a level of its own.

But this was not to be because these encounters are TRAAAAAASH
I also figured out a pattern. 5th level has 1 mummy. 8th level has 1d3+1 mummies. 13th level has a mummy lord. Meanwhile the players are just mummy bored.

So I'm taking it a step beyond condensing multiple encounters, I'm condensing multiple levels.

SO! This dungeon doesn't go to 20, it goes to 10. The post titles are now awful and ruined but I really have better thought experiments to do than brainstorm the difference between Wanker, d3+1 Wanker, Greater Wanker, d3+1 Greater Wankers, and finally the Greaterest Wankerest.

Dungeon levels 8-10 aren't just reached via flux space. They ARE flux space, and are all part of 'Dungeon level 8' now. So lets ignore all these awful functional duplicate encounters and get to work with the caves, picking out all the interesting encounters. Roll a d12 and use the next highest result whenever  you reroll a result of 5+. Caves not specified as 'dead end' have 1d3 exits. This cavern system is functionally infinite, you explore to find paths, not to map the whole place out. The final encounter is supposed to spook the players, but feel free to add more and more horrible things if they keep searching.

1. Path to Level 4, the Caves Near the Cathedral of Blood and Gold
2. Path to level 7, the Unmapped Caves over The Walls
3. Path to Wyrm Road. Can travel to level 7 or level 10.
4. Path to the Lost City of the Underest Men (AKA Level 9)
5. Cave of The Unfrozen- Dead end. Man-shaped imprints inside a glacier. 3 5th level trogolodyte(actually cavemen) clerics have thawed out from their cryogenic glacier stasis and have come from the past to save the future.Only cross this out once you roll it again, indicating a random encounter with the Cavemen hero-shamen in another cave.
6. Cave of the Unfossilized- Dead end. Strange imprints of skeletons in a rock wall. 1d3 Advanced Megaraptor skeletons have awakened from their fossilized undead stasis and have come from the past to stop the cavemen. Only cross this out once you roll it again, indicating a random encounter with the megaraptors in another cave.
7. 1 ettin and d3 brown bears. In the absence of her husband (the captive ettin on depth 6) she has adopted d3 brown bears. This is the ettin equivalent of a catlady. She knows a path to the surface mountains.
8. 1 Stone giant. Is actually just a statue in a cave, not a golem or nuthin. But actually it IS a stone giant, they just truly become statues when they are asleep.
9. Stalagmite Cave. A Behir lairs here, which is a stupid monster. Instead what is here is a possessed gemstone atop a truncated stalagmite that ricochets lightning bolts in complex and deadly angles to obliterate anyone who tries to steal it.
10. Here's an encounter that was extra weird. 1 formian taskmaster and 1 dominated 5th level human barbarian. Mindslaving ant-men. I'm gonna make it weirder though. It's just a regular psychic ant queen, in a regular ant nest. This mentally manacled barbarian guy is probably an unfrozen caveman. His friends would like him back.
11. Small cave, dead end. Insane scratching on walls, malproportioned stick figures and "Don't look at it, don't approach it" is all that's legible. Broken knife.
12. Hibernating Naga nest. Dark, spirit, guardian, every type of weirdass human-faced giant magic snake, in a big ol pile. There's a crack in the ceiling that goes all the way back to the surface, in the mountains somewhere.
13. Crack in the floor, 2 feet wide and 10 deep. There's a bottle at the bottom with a Noble Djinn and a Dickass Ifrit. They'll grant you a wish, but you have to choose which one is the right one to pick to grant it. The Djinn(good) always tells the truth and the Ifrit(Dick) always lies so it shouldn't be too hard to figure it out.
14. Ogre tribe. Ogres are fey creatures and don't really need to eat, but they want to eat you anyway. Led by an ogre mage, an ogre berserker, and consisting of d3+4 ogres. Have treasures.
15. 1d3+1 bearded devils and an Erinyes. Engaging in bizarre roleplay with the Erinyes pretending to be an angel dispensing divine wisdom to the devils who are pretending to be saints. One of the exits is a gate to hell that has a really tricksy riddle. The devils want to go back to hell but they can't figure out the riddle so they're just killing time.
16. Dead end, collapsed rubble. Excavation reveals a Horn of Blasting and a flat skeleton.
17. Pit of undead- Various ancient and horrible undead are stuck in a 30 foot deep and 100 foot wide pit. This is a dead end unless you find away across.
18. Titanic skull, exits are accessed by climbing through nose then up through eye sockets. One eye socket is scratched with markings 'i should do this'
19. Worm of the Earth. Too huge to realistically kill. It will burrow a large path to another either existing or new location, but until its done, this place is a dead end.
20. Winged Vrock demon perched above stalagmite maze infested with basilisks obsessed with following skerples basilisk boss monster combat rules. The Vrock will attack if you turn back, but will just watch cackling if you fight or sneak your way through its maze.
21. Stalactite Hydra- 10 Heads are armored like stone. It has burrowed into the ceiling to bedevil passerby by impaling them with surprise ceiling attacks. Not actually a hydra, actually a colony of barnacle-like molluscs.
22. Dragon skeleton suspended in massive spider webs. No spiders present.
23. Massive spider web. Dragon-sized spider present. Pulls on webs to seal exits with attached boulders once players have entered. Cutting off a spider leg to unseal an exit easier than cutting web. 
24. Frozen cavern guarded by Frost Giant and 1d4+2 dire wolves. A dead end unless you get past. One exit is portal to a strange and frozen world where the sun died.
25. Half-fiend 7th level cleric. Absolutely hideous, but absolutely holy. Has lived in these caves in ascetic contemplation of the divine living off 1 drop of water from a stalactite a day for 99 years, and will become a saint after just one more year. May grant miracles to the pious, but is admittedly kinda snobby when it comes to people less faithful than he. Dead end.
26. 1d4+2 5th level human paladins out to kill the above cleric. Are totally lost, both physically and spiritually speaking, and are gonna end up falling and becoming blackguards in this place.
27. A hallway. Bobbing lights look like lanterns rapidly vanishing. Chasing after them is required to keep them in sight, and running will lead you to turn a corner and fall into a chasm all the way down to level 10 for 4d6 fall damage. Ouch. Will o' wisps.
28. Ancient Night Hag. Has learned how to make soup from rocks. Desperate for new flavors and will pursue players in their dreams.
29. Haunted Monolith. More insane scrawlings on walls. 'What is it' 'seeing it=taboo' 'god have i sinned' Ghosts and wraiths trapped in monolith, limited in action to reaching 1 foot from its surface and moaning so horribly that the monolith vibrates. Seeing this gives +1 appreciation of ancient gondwanan screamlord music, though you won't know this until you learn about ancient gondwanan screamlord music.
30. Underground sea. A dead end for landlubbers. Beach infested with lobstrosities. Dad-a-chk? Did-a-chum?
31. Eyeball room. 'stone lumps' on the walls open to reveal hundreds of glowing beachball-sized  eyeballs, as from level 6. HP of party drops to 1 from fear infliction, though they're free to go forward or back now.
32. 5th level drow wizard, mind flayer, and hellcat. All are zany chaotic good rebels from their oppressive societies. They're also on the wrong dimension but left their astral boat somewhere around here. I thought this was interesting because while the barbarian+formian encounter specified the barbarian was mentally enslaved, no mention of such was made here, hence their weirdness.
33. Bodak, but let's twist it up a bit. Rather than a death stare, seeing it instantly cuts your HP and all your stats in half(rounded down) and you close your eyes reflexively. It's like sneezing. You also get the immediate sense of dread, pain, mild confusion, and the certainty that if it ever gets too close to you, you'll die.There's no saving throw for this effect. That reflexive squint and you losing half your shit and leaping to an insane conclusion WAS you making the saving throw.
    

    

    This guy looks a little lame. We should give him some tentacles, or a suit, or something. Maybe both.

    Anyway, its going to follow you around very erratically. It doesn't walk, or move, it just teleports, and never to where you're already looking. It also brings with it a awful rustling noise in your head but people who haven't seen it can't hear it. It's just an audio cue that indicates you need to start worrying about seeing it standing behind a stalactite or something. It's on every encounter chart from now on, until you figure out how to rid yourself of it. You can't look at it without losing half your shit, you can't approach to melee without definitely dying, and it can teleport. Also, nobody has any idea what it is. There's a lot of stalagmite pillars in this room that it sorta hides in. And there's only one exit. There's a dead adventurer in this room with a journal of a madman. You might recognize the handwriting.
    

    

    perfect

Turning 3.5 dungeon encounters into a dungeon, part 7/20

Finally, the true fortress of the Undermen, where the Underking dwells! There's a ton o' weird single encounters here, so I'll be combining a few.

There are 5 main encounter areas here- Over The Wall, The Underking's Keep, the Cathedral of Bloodiest Gold, The Garden of Corpsetakers, and the Road of the Wyrm.

If the players arrived via K3 of the above level, they enter
The Keep of the Underking. Here, the most elite of his warriors dwell, and as such I'm combining the dire bear, Invisible stalker, drider, weretigers, 5th level fighter ghost, Hill Giant, manticores, 4th level ogre barbarian, d3+1 Jann, 5th level hobgob fighter and 5th level gob thief and 1d3+1 minotaurs into The Elite Guard.

The Elite Guard are level 4 warriors who bristle with swords and crossbow and heavy armor, and they show up in groups of 2d4. Each squad is led by a 6HD warrior with a gimmick. Squads are well organized, numerous, and will seek to gang up on the PCs and destroy them.

1- Stealth- Black platemail, limited light sources, snipe from the darkness. Thief abilities.
2-Berserkers- They will never lose morale and won't die at 0HP until they fail a save
3-Deathless- So long as the Underking is alive, this squad of warrior ghosts will rise eternally.
4-Parasitized- They have Itava parasites that limit their strength but add horrible acid spraying to their bag of tricks. They moonlight as apprentice corpsetakers.
5-Golden- Worshippers of the God of Bloodiest Gold, they have max HP.
6-2 leaders, an illusionist and one with a Jann in a bottle. These are indeed the same fellows from the ravine, so if they've been killed they wont show up. Incidentally, Undermen grow weaker the closer they are to the surface, so they will indeed be tougher down herethen they were on level 4.
7- See Slaad

The Underking- He is quite displeased at his recent runaway daughter. He isn't a weenie and has 4hd, but rules via politics and charisma, not brute force or combat-ready magical powers. As a bodyguard/advisor/consort, he is accompanied by a succubus who looks a bit like the princess (because she's the the princess's mother, as it so happens, though the princess is so far disappointingly lacking in demonic powers). She will fly away with the Underking if they are threatened and can get to an exit (but note the keep has no windows, only ventilation shafts and chimneys) and can transform into a flaming skeletal tiger monster if she is forced into straight up combat (I figure combining the advised succubus and hellcat encounter is good enough). The king will attempt to parley for his life if cornered but is a proud man.

The Treasury Vault- packed with gold and interesting magic knick knacks. Situated next to the dungeon. The king has the key.

The Garden of the Corpsetakers. They farm mushrooms and skullmoths alike. Apprentice corpsetakers are just 2HD undermen armed with knives, but master corpsetakers have itava parasites to spray acid at their foes and provide an extra threat if the host is slain before the Itava.

This is like a grove of tree-sized mushrooms from which the occasional corpse hangs, twitching in skull-grub zombification. This place is the 1d3+1 violet fungi and 1d3+2 shriekers, the Flesh Golem, the Hill Giant, the Eight Headed Hydra, the d4+1 wights, and the various poisonous centipedes mentioned. Itava parasites supply the level drain, corpsetakers fulfill the roll of shriekers attracting bigger bads, master corpsetakers/Individual Itava are kinda like wights, and the big monsterss are big monsters.
1-Apprentice Corpsetaker
2- d3 apprentice corpsetaker+Master corpsetaeker
3-Skullmoth swarm
4-Skullgrub Flesh Golem
5-Itava Cocoon
6-Itava Hydra
7- See Slaad


The Flesh Golem/Hillgiant- Corpses sewn together into a horrible giant, the corpsetakers wanted to see if they could reanimate something like this with skullgrub larvae. They could, and now there are several twisted abominations of haphazardly stitched flesh roaming the garden. The high numbers of skullgrubs have rendered them far tougher than the weak zombies that result from a single corpse's worth of skullgrub infestation.

Itava Hydra- The natural guardians of such a well developed Skullmoth lair, these are the final forms of Master Corpsetakers who manage to attach 5 Itava and survive. They do not leave the Garden, and freed Master Corpsetakers are unlikely to be grateful.

Hidden at the back of the Garden is the path up to the ravine, and also the Road of Wyrms. Dragon corpses are the best thing the corpsetakers have found for inducing Itava metamorphosis, and the Road of Wyrms provides a steady trickle of deep-earth dwelling dragons drawn to the smell of the Underking's gold.

The other place the players might enter from is via the unmapped flux state cave system, in which case they will find
The Wall manned by the Elite Guard that blocks off the hideous monsters of the depths from reaching the Underking's realm (a similar wall will eventually be constructed on level 4)

In addition to various tunnels leading back into the unmapped tunnels on depth 4 (and down to levels 8, 9, and 10) there is the Pit of No Return, which prisoners who have REALLY pissed off the underking are thrown into.

Things the encounter charts want me to use- Aboleth, d4+1 carrion crawlers, Chuul, chaos beast, black pudding, phasm, umber hulk. Basically a bunch of horrible amorphous monsters with horrible status effects.

This looks bad but Boba Fett totally escaped the Sarlacc so you'll probably be fine

If you fall in, you must fight your way through a randomly generated tentacle monster or be devoured horribly. This is just a abstraction of all the sloshing slime and tentacles trying to kill you. If you fall to 0 stat you can't escape without help and even if you do you're seriously fucked up and might be worse than dead (phasms are basically super doppelgangers so the bodysnatching covers them)
Tentacle monsters have 11 AC and 8HD, but you're limited to short weapons like daggers and fists. People up top though, need long weapons to assist you. It's assumed you always catch yourself about 1d10 feet down if you fall in, but if you somehow get thrown deeper in you must fight a new tentacle for every 10 feet you must climb to escape. If the party gets in in their head that they want to KILL the pit of no return, they'll need something amazing. A few barrels of burning oil and all your arrows isn't even close to enough.

1. Brainsucking Ovipositor- Inflicts 1 point of HP damage and d6 INT damage. At 0 INT you have a baby tentacle monster injected into your skull that has all your memories. (The Aboleth analogue)
2. Spinemelting Tentacle Eel- 1 point HP damage, d6 DEX damage. At  0 DEX your spine is now a parasitic tentacle monster that controls all your muscles except your horrified face. (The Carrion-Crawler Analogue, since they paralyze you)
3. Giant Spiky Tentacle- Just deals 1d12 HP damage and shreds you. Has AC 15. (Chuul)
4. Radioactive Glowing Tentacle- 1d6 HP damage and a random mutation (chaos beast).
5. Acid-Spewing Sphincter- Each hit destroys d6 inventory slots. Once you're naked, you melt for 3d6 acid damage on hits instead.(Black Pudding)
6. Toothy Eyeball-covered Tentacle- 1d6 HP damage, save or lose an eyeball on each hit, once you're blind, save or gain a new monster eyeball that manipulates you to do evil by making you see illusions at inopportune times. (umber hulks have a confusion ray which is sorta this I reckon)
7. See Slaad

Anyway if the players ever lose to the Elite Guard and/or the Underking they'll probably survive, but be thrown into this pit after languishing in the dungeons for 1 day.

Also of note is the
Cathedral of Bloodiest Gold
Which is where the 5th level vampire fighter high priest lurks with a fountain of blood and a fountain of molten gold and is bad news all around. If this guy is killed, then his vampire nun underling on the 4th level upgrades to full vampire. Also since there's supposed to be a medusa down here, lets just make this guy have a paralyzing gaze attack that 'curdles your blood with fear,' draining your wisdom by 1d6 whenever you see his eyes (save not to see his eyes each combat round). At 0 wisdom you can only shiver in fear.

In addition to the high priest, there's 1d3+2 flamebrother salamanders who will be called to defend the temple if the fight starts going bad- but actually, they'll be molten gold demons in the fountain that are really bad news to fight in melee on account of basically being lava elementals. They are slow but are like roving 5d6 Fireballs just by getting too close, and the fight should mainly be with the vampire knight priest as the players are driven back through aisles of flaming pews by the advance of the molten gold demons. To stop them, the altar or fountain should be destroyed.

There are also some catacombs beneath the cathedral where a spectre and d3+1 shadow mastiffs? can be found. Let's just call these more shadow people, one of whom has extra magic powers- perhaps before the God of Bloody Gold came, this was a temple of shadow. Maybe they'll help if the players swear to convert. Probably after that shadow mirror in Carrol's mansion.

We come to the biggest route outta this place- the
Road of Wyrms
There is a dragon here, attracted by the scent of gold, but hesitant to brave the Garden. It's supposed to be a 'copper' aka 'good' dragon so this dragon shouldn't be out to eat the PCs, it just wants treasure. It could probably be enlisted to help raid the place with sufficient bribery and flattery.

The Slaad- The encounter wanted there to be a red slaad. Slaad are giant humanoid frog 'chaos' monsters that come in very conveniently color coded hierarchies. Unfortunately for the Slaad, they only appear on a 7 on a 1d6 because that's a helluva lot more 'chaotic' than anything Slaad are capable of. Seriously, Slaad are really lame and unchaotic for the face of chaos in D&D.

Turning 3.5 dungeon encounters into a dungeon, part 6/20

The "mansion" of Carroll is not just the home of the richest and most influential underman, it's also a fiendish barrier between the civilian undermen and the actual sorcerous underking.

It's split into several disconnected sections

Basically, blue is 'safe' Undermen quarters, yellow is areas full of Carrolls more dangerous toys and amusements, and the orange areas are locked off because they lead to the Underking's realm and/or have very dangerous monsters.

Let's start with Carroll's quarters, as the players may be invited here for dinner, chitchat about the surface world, and generously offered human sacrifices.

M1 is an entrance room and lounge, where the players can sit in stuffed leather chairs and converse urbanely about Under and Overmen surface politics, or perhaps about the monster heads mounted on the walls. There is also a locked door that can be opened by servant's keys, though the outer door is only accessible via Carrols key. A chandelier of hollow glass bottles each with a single skullmoth maggot and a small piece of meat is here, providing illumination. There is a cabinet with several bottles of vintage Underliquor that would be worth a lot to the right collector.

M2 is a dining hall/chapel to the God of Bloody Gold, and it is here that the players will eat dinner and have whichever servant brought them their food sacrificed on the table by Carrol after. The table is a big plank of wood over a stone altar, and this much wood is quite luxurious for the Underrealm.

M3 is a place where artistic pieces like urns and paintings are kept. There is usually a servant standing by here ready to attend to Carroll and keep the art free of dust. The art pieces can be looted and sold for good amounts, though they are massive, bulky, and distinctive, and getting them through town without being challenged would be an adventure.

M4 is Carroll's bedroom. There is a wardrobe full of grand robes, the bed is of spidersilk and bat fur, and there is a big clawed-foot bathtub that has some Mephits(Elemental Imps basically) trapped in crystals so that their amusing contortions can entertain Carroll and their powers of ice, steam, and mud can be harnessed to draw various baths. His multi-volume diaries are full of banal social interactions, brutal abuses of power, and handy bookmarked notes on dealing with the entities in A2 such as the chained ettin and the oracular medusa.

S1- This is the kitchen and pantry. A Salamander is kept in a fireplace to provide heat for cooking, and there are usually a few servants here. At the back of the pantry is a locked door that lead into A2.

S2- These are the slave quarters, where 'disposable' servants are watched over by long-term servants. If slaves please Carroll they may escape their inevitable fate and become long-term servants, otherwise they'll all end up as sacrifices to the God of Bloody Gold. d3+1 slaves and d3+1 servants are here usually.

S3- Servant Quarters. Long term servants stick around here, and greet the messengers of the Underking when they arrive. There is a secret one-way door at the end of the long, large hall that can't be entered directly from this side and appears as a normal wall, and the eastmost room has a giant chain winch that can be rotated to retract the chain. This takes nearly an hour, but will drag the Ettin of A2-5 back into A2-14 if fully wound up

The slaves and servants represent the d4+2 lantern archons for they have skullmoth lanterns, the d3+1 derro, formian workers, gnolls, trogolodytes, and yuan-ti purebloods for they are humanoids that can be negotiated with and played off each other, the ghasts for the slaves and servants will fight to incapacitate and shackle the players like paralysis, and like harpies because while no charm effects or flying is in play, the slaves are a lure into greater danger, as if you try to rescue them (or claim them as servants) you will draw the ire of the Undermen.

Well, now for the more monster-zoo areas.
A1 has 6 rooms and is Carrolls 'playground' where he uses his bloated MaxHP to play with his pet monsters, who would tear a regular human to shreds.

In room 1, we'll combine Displacer beasts and Howlers into Cu Sidhe, dogs of the Fae. The dogs are large green hounds the size of a pony and are kept in iron manacles, which hurts their flesh and is the only metal that can harm them. They are ill-tempered, bored, and restless, and capable of various faerie tricks like going invisible, mimicry of the human voice, and ventriloquism. They speak Elvish and were captured for Carrolls entertainment  by the Annis a few years back, and could be helpful allies if released from their chains and negotiated with properly, but they will be distrustful of humans.

Room 2 contains another vaguely fey creature, a Will O' Wisp. It is trapped in a contraption like a large puzzlebox of silk screens and iron bars, and shifting this contraption allows one to make various tricks and shadowpuppetry of light and shadow. Mastering the shadowbox is an artistic skill, and it would be an excellent addition to any theater company or illusionists repertoire.

Room 3 contains a pigpen. This replacement for 'Wereboar and d3 boars' is actually a prison for those who displeased the Underking, and the swine were once undermen and women who were transformed into pigs for some crime or other by the Annis. They cannot speak but display their human intellect still, and wish dearly for vengeance. They have mud from room 5 to wallow in, though they refuse to do so as a means of retaining their human identity.

Room 4 contains my combination of d4+1 shocker lizards and d3+1 locust swarms. A hive of Lightningbees hangs here, behind delicate glass doors. Their honey and stings electrocute those who experience either, and while the sensation is quite unique, ordinary people will have their heart stop from all the HP damage. Carroll and his divinely inflated HP, however, views the entire thing as a delightfully decadent experience.

Room 5 contains 1d3+1 minor Xorn, but I don't see why elemental beings capable of phasing through stone would hang around a place like this, so instead, Room 5 contains a fountain flowing with smooth mud. Covering yourself in Mud gives solid protection against Lightningbees, and Carroll sometimes tasks his slaves to try to retrieve lightninghoney for him this way, though they also have to get past the angry Cu Sidhe and avoid getting eaten by the Annis. Stone-To-Mud can be learned if you are mad enough to drink the mud, or if you fully submerge yourself so that the spirit of the fountain can impart mud secrets to you. The Annis of room 6 is sometimes here, posing as a 'Mud Nymph.'

Finally, room 6 is the laboratory of an Annis. Big books of cannibal recipes and tomes of herbalism hang here, along with a magic mushroom farm and a collection of bones and a big cauldron full of Lightning Honey. The Annis is loyal to the Underking and to Carrol, and she gets to eat everyone Carroll sacrifices. She has a key to K3 and in addition to her monstrous claws, she has the following magic abilities that she could teach as spells if coerced.

1. Alter Self- Though her true form is a giant hag, she will take the time to pose as an attractive 'Mud Nymph' in an attempt to separate and confuse the party.
2. Choking Smoke Potion- Throwing the correct mushroom into her cauldron will fill the entire area with choking, blinding smoke. You have to make a con save to speak or cast spells, and visibility drops to 10 feet. This also will put the lightningbees to sleep, which is the main reason she developed this trick. It requires a mushroom, honey, and extra magical energy, which lightninghoney helpfully provides.
3. Stone To Mud- She's learned this from her mud baths, though she doesn't want to compromise the stability of her lair.
4. Man to Swine- A curse that requires the target to be naked, muddy, and human, she can probably only cast this on someone who falls for the 'mud nymph' routine or if she remains undiscovered and the players decide to get muddy to try to retrieve honey.

 A2 occasionally claims the life of a servant if they pass through without observing proper procedure. If the players interrogate or befriend a servant they will have a much easier time with the threats of the place.

Rooms 1 and 2 are devoid of immediate threats, but 2 has a statue of a half dragon 4th level fighter, who was one of the encounters but was petrified when he looked down the hallway to 8, which has since been blocked off by some fluttering silk veils. Servants are meant to march through 2 blind and not listen to anything they hear, and anyone passing through WILL hear the medusa in 8 trying to get people to look her way and turn to stone.

Room 3- kept to scare new slaves into obedience, this room contains, not a Gauth, but a giant eyeball set into the floor. Normally protected by stony eyelids, it opens to glare at intruders, afflicting them with a sense of helpless terror and dread unless a save is made. NPCs will do anything to avoid nearing the eyeball. Rather than dictate PC behavior though (I've used fear effects in a past game and I wasn't really a fan), the effect on PCs is that their HP is immediately reduced to 1 as their limbs grow weak and trembly with fear, easy prey if they are forced into combat. The eye grows more and more bloodshot and shakes horribly if they draw near, trying to scare them off, but has no other abilities and can be easily slain if a player overcomes their fear of engaging with 1HP and moves in for the kill. If attacked at range, the eye will shut behind its stony lid, becoming immune to anything but dedicated melee smashing with a hammer or pick, or truly catastrophic damage.

Room 4 is ostensibly an alternate route to avoid the Ettin in 5, but the presence of a digester and a babau (an acid monster and an acid demon assassin) makes me think there's a Streetsweeper Ooze in here that has lost its alchemical behavior protocols and now is just a ravenous acid monster. It is pressed to the other side of the door as it hungrily senses the nearby servants, and will burst out in a surprise round if the door is unlocked, possibly blocking off escape if the players went down the hallway first. The door it is behind is very dusty and clearly hasn't been used in ages, while the 'dead end' is perfectly clear of dust, which hopefully will clue the players in.

Room 5 has an ettin with a collar and chain leading back into 12 and 14. There is also a winch mechanism that raises the secret door to the hallway south, but the Ettin will make operating that very difficult as it wants to smash people to pulp. If bothered by ranged attacks from a safe distance, the ettin will retreat to 12, crawling through the hall, and lay in wait around the bend in the hallway.

Room 6 has a door inscribed with symbols of some good god, and holes in the wall to 7. Access to this door is sealed off by spiked and golden chains from a Chain Devil. This vile creature is a servant of the God of Bloody Gold and has been tasked with preventing access to the shrine beyond. It gets 4 attacks per round and absorbs gold pieces=to damage dealt x10 on hits. It will wish to flay any players who do not worship the God of Bloody Gold, but will offer to spare them if they gift it 100xHP gold. Its chains are long enough to attack people in 7, snaking through the holes in the wall.

Room 7 is empty save for the holes in the wall and a skeletal adventurer. People looking through might lose an eye to the chain devil.

Room A2 has d4+1 shadows in it, and a giant mirror that is a portal to the plane of shadow and reflects nothing but blackness. The shadows will take over the shadow of anyone reduced to 0 STR by them, and from then on they'll be vaguely possessed. Whenever the shadow wants to do something, they have to make a save or act under the control of the shadow for 1 round.

The portal is open only when the mirror is uncovered and illuminated- in darkness, it can't reflect anything and shadows don't exist (this goes for the monster shadows too). The current shadows showed up when the Undermen retrieval squad accidentally opened the shadow gate, and the shades hope to catch the undermen when they return.

Room 8 Has a few more statues of various slaves and adventurers who were lured here or sought knowledge. Hanging from some chains is, rather than 1d3+1 cockatrices, an oracular medusa with a huge snake tail for legs that allows her to thrash and constrict the life out of anything that comes into the room, though another nasty trick she has is to haul constricted people up to her face so she can petrify them, and she'll bite off their eyelids if they think shutting their eyes will save them. She can only lie to people who can't see her, but must tell the truth to people who look at her. Anyone seeing her face will begin turning to stone from the feet up, and have 3 rounds/3 questions to ask her before their head turns to rock.

The mud bath in A1-5 will restore petrified people, and that's where the medusa will direct people who get a truthful answer on that subject. She'll direct people to come get the key from a broken servant statue in the room and enter K1 if obliged to give a false answer on the subject. She is very tired of being an immortal oracular monster and though she'll defend herself, she'd rather just die than spend her time locked up.

Room 9 is a a cluttered, abandoned storage room full of broken pottery, metal scraps and stone tailings, and moldy rags. It's a good place to hide people and things, but light here may alert the shadows in A2. There are dormant Itava parasites in some of the larger clay pots, as the encounter chart called for acid-spraying bombadier beetles and acid-spraying already introduced lifeforms seems close enough.

Room 10 is large, but empty, and there is a tablet on the floor by the north exit saying 'wrong way.' This is for the benefit of Undermen from K3, not the players.

Room 11 has a  large gong. Beating it at the appropriate tempo alerts S3 servants to retract the ettin chain to presumably make the way clear for incoming Undermen troops.

Room 12 and 14 are unremarkable save for the long chain that heads through the south wall, and possibly the Ettin lurking within. It prefers room 5 though.

Room 13 has 2 gargoyles guarding the door. They will unlock the door for people wearing Undermen guard outfits, but will fight anyone else to the death.

Finally, the 'K' vaults.

K3 is a grand staircase spiraling down to level 7 (which can also be reached by the secret door in the level 4 ravine, or perhaps by cavern exploration around the Cathedral of Bloody Gold). Skullmoth lanterns line the walls.

K2 is an abandoned shrine with a dying god. This is supposed to be some angelic being that's like an elf that can turn into a whirlwind, a Bralani, which is as good a starting point as any. This god was an enemy of the God of Bloody Gold, but was cast down and now languishes in this forgotten shrine, wasting away without any worshippers. The god appears as a blue elf with white hair fluttering in a tiny breeze, emaciated and starved. They are the god of Underground Weather, and oversee things like cavern humidity, bad air, draftiness, and the occasional fog. They also are good and seek to punish the wicked, which is how they got on the bad side of the God of Bloody Gold. For this god to return to the celestial realm, the nearby altars of the God of Bloody Gold (the cathedral one, Carroll's dinner-altar, and the main one on the level below) must all be destroyed.

Miracles Granted to worshippers
Find The Draft- Divine knowledge of air currents allows the petitioner to find routes to surface airflow.

Air Pressure- Gusts of air and pressure differentials won't slam doors or extinguish lanterns for the faithful, though they may for the enemies of the faith.

Canary Guide- The ghost of a canary will be dispatched to warn the faithful of hypoxic environments and poison gas, and if possible, it will beat its wings to clear the air. Alternately, the faithless could be smote with a bad air pocket

K1 should contain a 5-headed cryo or pyrohydra, but instead it contains an Itava Hydra- 5 acid-spewing parasites that have totally taken over the body of someone- the torso is just an excuse as the head and limbs have atrophied and the parasites took over their functionality. A single hit cuts off a parasite, but it only DIES if 6+ damage is dealt.

If all the parasites are removed, the still living host is a '5th level lizardfolk druid' but actually it's a 6th level underman master corpsetaker who gained a sort of immortality via symbiosis with these parasites. He was the old mayor of the town and wants vengeance against Carroll, who locked him up here. He also will wax eloquent on the lifecycle of the skullmoth and how amazing their contradictory nature as biological being and negative-energy monster is, and generally come off as a creepy parasite cultist because that's what he is.

Turning 3.5 Dungeon Encounters into a Dungeon, part 5/20

Aight, Level 5 is beneath the cathedral of blood and gold. This, level 6, and level 7 will all be part of the Undermen's territory.

There are 36 encounters here, and a distressing number of them are exactly the same as depth 4 but with d3 instead of solo, or d4+1 instead of d3.

Incidentally this sort of design of 'How do we make "Enemy" a bigger challenge? I know! Enemies~!" Is part of why Dark Souls 2 is the worst dark souls.

Anyway, lets try to salvage this. Area wise, we need to think- why didn't the undermen settle in the nice open space up with the cathedral? Well, two reasons- that 'nice open space' is strategically unsound- there's too many weird little tunnels that lead into depths to keep track of them all, and if a ravening horde of monsters appears they'd have no chokepoints to defend. Also, Undermen are all agoraphobic and prefer to live in tight, twisty little little corridors.

So that's what's underneath the cathedral- the 'village' of the undermen, a bunch of tunnels wide enough for two men to walk side by side, but not to fight that way unless they're drilled in formation fighting like a hoplite and have a thrusting weapon. It's like a maze of alleyways, and doors into the small, one-or-two room homes are just stone slabs propped over the carven doorway. This is, after all, the equivalent of the peasant and craftsman district, not the great grand hall of the Underking.

Skullmoth lanterns hang about, illuminating the streets. Some buildings have iron signs hanging over them, depicting the line of work the inhabitants are in, and these building rarely have doors, as they wish to encourage people to come inside for business. They deal in blood sacrifices and gold and go to communion at the church of bloody gold every once in a while. Also, murder and slavery is not a crime, so the denizens down here are polite, tough, and evil.

In anycase, lets start translating this meaningless mix of mindless and merciless monsters into shopkeepers and townsfolk. They all count as 1d3HD combatants, except for slaves who are noncombatants. That's why they're slaves, probably.

1. Stonecutter/Sculptor. Rather than a basilisk, we'll have a burly fellow armed with hammer and chisel. He is a rich man and has many slaves. He likes strange bodytypes and has his slaves pose for his art, and his home has many unfinished statues.
2. Tanner/Tailor- Rather than Barghest, Bugbears, d3 celestial lions, and a cloaker, let's have a family of people well trained in turning beast hides into clothing. If the PC's want to turn monsters into clothes, this large and boisterous family has no equal. There are 4 sons and 1 daughter, and they all have swanky leather jackets. They sold their parents into slavery once they came of age, which made the parents both angry and proud.
3. Bat Man- Rather than Bearded Devil and Dire Bats, lets have an old and shrewd bat-farmer. His colony lives in the big cave of the cathedral, but he keeps sick bats in his home to wrap them in little bat blankets and nurse them back to health. He patrols the streets hawking his mushroom batwing kabobs. He is an excellent climber and has lots of rope, spun from human hair. He is supernaturally skilled with the lasso, able to wrangle a flying bat, and might act as a grumpy master for those willing to learn his art.
4. Brothel of Night's Desire- Drow and a doppelganger? For deception, we'll have a Illusionist Madame who tailors her (very plain) prostitutes to look like anything you can describe, for a bargain price of 5 gold! If you piss them off you may have to deal with illusion-concealed killer hookers infiltrating the party. The madame won't share her spell for anything less than a fortune large enough to retire on.
5. Silkweaver- Ettercap and spiders- well almost. This is actually just a giant spider that provides silk to the townsfolk in exchange for slaves to eat. Silkweaver is very displeased with her errant daughter who has run off to be a playwright instead of sticking around to either take up the family trade, or be eaten. Deals in gold to buy slaves. When business is booming, she might have some living slaves kept wrapped up for later snacks. Lives in a regular underhouse.
6. Lawyer/Arbiter- Rather than a genie, lets have the reason that retrieval squad has a bottled genie in the first place. Even in a town of evil undermen who consort with monsters and murder their own slaves, there is a need for Law. The Arbiter is a cold-eyed man with an excellent grasp of rhetoric, logic, order, and so on, and disputes are taken to him if neither party is willing to just use violence to sort things out. He is invaluable for making deals with demons, djinni, and other sticklers for the letter of the law. His wife can be a green hag (well, just a regular old woman) and his daughter can be the gibbering mouther(or rather, gibberingly insane). It's a strange household- most Underfolk would have just sacrificed their 'defective' daughter and been done with it.
7. Smith- Instead of a manticore, we'll have a different type of spikes-thrower- a weaponsmith, purveyor of fine crossbow bolts, crossbows, spears, short swords, and shields. And regular every day stuff, but there's apprentice/slaves for that sort of work. His need for coal is insatiable.
8. Brewery- The alcohol down here is really, REALLY strong. It can be used as a molotov cocktail with no special preparation, and unwary drinkers may find themselves becoming falling-down drunk much faster than they expected, leaving them easy prey for slavers, and thieves after their metal gear
9. Mayor Carroll's house. Carrol usually wanders about town, and his carven halls are depth 6. There are multiple means of entry to his house via servants entrances, but he doesn't suffer trespassers kindly. The servant's entrances each require different keys, and the main entrance requires the key around Carroll's burly neck.

 Random Street Encounters

1. Gutter Hydra-Actually a horrible knotted conglomerate of 6 Itava parasites that escaped the corpsetakers and now slithers through the streets looking for a host capable or surviving 6 parasites at once. Unique.
2. 1d4+4 Giant Vampire Bats- They sneak about and suck blood from people not protected by skullmoth lights. Killing them earns the ire of the Bat Man.
3. 2d4+1 Underfolk. This should be wererats, a werebear, and hellhounds, and ogres, and skum, but I think a pack of people who might be out to get some free surfacedweller slaves or might just be going to church or just shopping fulfills pretty much the same encounter possibilities. Besides, every player I've ever seen has wanted to become a werewhatever anyway so the 'threat' of lycanthropy is no threat at all.
4. Undead Streetwalker. Gives mummy rot and is very lonely and clingy, so trying to simply bribe her to go away will pretty much only ensure repeat encounters. Naturally this is in replacement of an actual mummy encounter, but with a hooker with a heart o' gold instead of King Tut. She's probably undead because she was sacrificed, and is missing a few teeth that turned to gold and were removed post-sacrifice. Unique.
5. Streetsweeper Ooze- Less hairy and more dangerous than the ones from depth 3, this one fills an alley-street-corridor and advances inexorably, devouring anything in its way. Probably has some coins and weapons from drunken undermen it ate. (This is basically an ochre jelly)
6. Vengeful Spirit- Combining phase spider, wraith, and shadow mastiff, this is the incorporeal lifedraining encounter. They can't enter homes, but occasionally stalk the streets for indiscriminate vengeance upon the living. Hosting a parasite renders you invisible to them.
7. Mayor Carroll- A hulking man who has performed lots and lots of gold sacrifices to the evil god, and as such despite being 'only' level 4, he has 1000HP.  (as opposed to the Troll encounter he is replacing, which would have effectively infinite HP due to regen). Carroll will invite newcomers to dine with him and ask about the state of the surface world, and seek to extract tribute from anyone living up there, which will then go to the Underking after Carroll takes his cut. He will also sacrifice a virgin on the table after dinner and give the players the GP, because that's just good manners. His house is quite large for an underman domicile, and is an adventure location in itself.
8. Skullmoths. This is, as usual, a replacement for the inevitable call for snakes, scorpions, and various venomous insects. And also for Vargouilles, which are flying heads that turn you into flying heads, and Skullmoths already have a zombification breeding cycle so that's good enough.
9. 5th level human monk NPC. A retired gladiator taken out of the arena, but the arena couldn't be taken out of him. He challenges people for duels for money, an activity sometimes disparagingly referred to as 'mugging.' Could be a replacement character or hired as a hireling if the PC's are sufficiently badass.
10. 5th level kobold sorcerer- Rather than a kobold, lets have it be an annoying underteen with a big head who has stumbled into fantabulous magic powers after surviving a spellplague and now has magic runes evidencing on their skin as a rash. 

No map for this place, I reckon. 

Turning 3.5 Dungeon Encounters into a dungeon, part 4/20

Also a monster zoo is the level 4 dungeon.

The players can actually go here first if they get rope and descend to the bottom of the ravine, which is outrageous deep. Like, 200 feet down, and crooked, so no light reaches the bottom. Bring a torch.

This is a weird place, and might have something to do with the loss of the town. For the bottom of the ravine is PAVED! Yes, it is some creepy subterranean road built by peoples stranger and older than any known.

It will also strongly violate classic dungeon design and be, essentially, a linear set of encounters. The north route gets encounters 1, 3, 5, and the south route gets encounters 2, 4, 6, etc, and they both lead to Depth 5.

RAVINE ROAD NORTH
Barghest and a hound archon. But instead of a demon goblin thing and a dogman angel thing...

An ancient corpse of a dog lies on the road- a dog that fell to its death. In life it wavered between being a 'good dog' and a 'bad dog' and now its soul is trapped. It will act as a normal dog and attempt to please surface humans. If it is called a good dog/good boy/etc 3 times, it goes to dog heaven and will watch over the players and bark at things in the night if they are in danger, but if it is scolded, attacked, or reprimanded 3 times it will go to dog hell and become a hellhound, which will return to 'help' the players.

1d6x100 feet later... Darkmantles and a young adult white dragon? Hmmm...
https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/11/osr-creature-gains-1-hd-every-time-it.html

Let's steal the Parasite Dragon from Skerples. This wretched creature was a guardian of the ravine road and chained in place, and so it couldn't rid itself of the leechlike creatures sapping its strength. Perhaps this dragon was set here with the parasites as punishment. Intelligent players may note that someone must feed it, as its in no shape to get food as it is, and that it rests on a sizable hoard of human bones. Players may also wish to make an elaborate climbing route above and around this creature rather than fight it, which is fair, but the next encounter should probably show up if they try to set something like this up.

Just imagine a dragon wrapped in like 8 of these things.

After that disturbing encounter, we have... a gargoyle and d3+1 ghouls. Well, the north route seems to have a theme of dual choices and punishment, so lets try to work that in here, too.

This is a handcart with d3+1 people tied up in it, being pulled slowly by a gargoyle. These groaning prisoners are slated to be dragon-fodder, and apparently this is not at all uncommon. Good replacement PCs, or simply morality bait. The prisoners have brands and their tongues have been cut out- slaves? Wicked criminals? It's hard to say. As for the gargoyle, it defends its human offerings as best it can and does not speak, though it won't pick a fight until engaged.

Next up is d3+1 grimlocks and a 5 headed hydra. Let's  think about the point of these monsters- grimlocks are humanoid enemies whose gimmick is they don't rely on sight. Hydras are offensive brutes that get less scary as the fight goes on and they lose heads. So something that puts the players at a disadvantage, is initially very scary, but nothing that's supposed to be really mind-bending or anything.

I think this is a gate into the realm of the subterranean dwellers, with 2 visible guards and like 10 more who will pop up from behind rocks in ambush flanking and surprise and all, if the players get fresh. These are the Undermen, who probably took the townsfolk above as slaves when the foolish surface dwellers failed to pay tribute. And speaking of tribute, the Undermen will demand 50 coins from each and every person wishing to pass through the gates, though other payment could doubtless be arranged. Blood sacrifice, for one. Their people likely had a relationship with the wizard, but not with the lord who defeated him and moved in a bunch of filthy surface-dwellers later. If pressed for info, they might mention a 'king below' but won't give important details to strangers.

If the players force their way through, they won't get the vital information from the guards- whether to take the left fork, or the right fork, through the entrance hall. Both lead to the same place, but the guards have a pet monster. The next entries are gray ooze/mimic, and both are a sort of amorphous surprise monster, so I think combining them into a Trapper (the entire floor is a monster big enough to fold over and swallow the entire party in the surprise round) makes sense. A huge, flat, hard grey thing masquerading as the floor. Careful examination may reveal the 'worked stone' doesn't look quite right, but uninformed and unaware players may walk into the devouring monster. The Trapper changes which fork it lurks in occasionally.

Next on the menu is 'owlbear and d3+1 spider swarm.' Dealing with a big brute monster and a lot of swarms could be interesting, but it's gonna be a giant spider +little spiders, not an owlbear. Let's say the halls continue, and there is a sidepassage choked with spider webs. Continuing eventually brings you to an abandoned theatre, complete with chairs, a stage, and a bunch of webbed up corpses. dangling over the stage.

Now, for the record, I think giant spiders are barely ever used right. Not in movies, not in RPGs, not in videogames. Maybe in the Hobbit(book), that was a pretty good scene. In fact, I'm going to make a post about spiders. In any case, here is the deal
1. The spider already knows the players are coming, how many of them there are, and their relative weight and shape from the second the players touched the silked up entry.
2. The spider is lurking above the entrance to the auditorium, behind concealing veils of silk, meaning the player's escape is cut off the moment they enter the auditorium.
3. The spider watched the plays the Undermen put on, and has developed an appreciation for theatre.
4. The spider ate the undermen who put on plays here and now uses their desiccated corpses as puppets to put on plays of its own.
5. The players will be instructed, via large scrolls with written instructions to take a seat in the front row. Anywhere else has sticky webs rather than walkable silk, and will enrage the spider.
6. The players will watch an expert puppet show about a princess, a brave knight, and the wicked and jealous mother who wished to eat the princess, and in fact has already eaten the princesses 600 siblings. By the time the princess eats her brave knight after copulation, it should be clear that this is a play about spiders, by spiders, for spiders, in case it was ever unclear
7. The players must provide a positive but thoughtful and in-depth review of the play. If they demonstrate sufficient aesthetic appreciation, they will be instructed to take an egg sac to the nearest performing arts center. Insufficient appreciation, insincere flattery, or freaking out and trying to kill everything with fire will result in the giant spider playwright descending to block retreat and d3+1 spider swarms appearing to devour the ungrateful philistines, aided by the grappling silk lines of the mother spider.
8. There is a FATTY amount of loot backstage, brought out only in the 3rd act for dramatic effect. Payment could be negotiated for transport of the baby spiders.

Assuming the players escape or ignore this, they will finally come to a vast cavern, where there is a small but overdesigned cathedral adorned with gargoyles and inhabited by a vampire spawn and a minotaur zombie.

Which is fine, as such supernatural inner guardians indicate that there is no good wizard shenanigans about, but I'm going to re-use gargoyle instead of a minotaur zombie, because if there's a petulant vampire spawn stuck on guard duty, her partner better be capable of conversation but also blood-free, and we've used a gargoyle before, so we've got some theme going on again. So the gargoyles can be awoken by a horn the vampire spawn wears, but the vampire spawn will prefer to have all the blood to herself and will avoid blowing the horn unless direly threatened.

In any case, there are several ways to continue- there are exits to the cavern that lead to underground cave system flux space
http://www.paperspencils.com/2017/07/09/flux-space-in-dungeons/
and though finding the correct paths will be strange adventures in themselves, they do lead down to levels 7, 8, 9, and 10!

Alternately, you can head downstairs in the cathedral and enter depth 5, but the vampire spawn can't let you pass unless you convert to her religion, an act that will require you to sacrifice a living being on her altar. Also she appears to be a perfectly ordinary Underwoman Nun, and in fact can offer various simple clerical services to those who convert to her chthonic god of blood and gold. Her god is pretty evil, but undeniably well-aligned with adventurers. Sacrificing helpless victims turns some of their teeth to gold, which you can then harvest for GP=HP (with a x100 for every bonus point, bonus points being +1 per CHA bonus, +1 for innocent victims, and +1 for every 5HD). And then you can sacrifice gold in quick minute long rituals to get HP=GP/100! And this HP can exceed your max HP! Blood to gold and gold to blood, it's perfect! In any case, this bloodstained nun will do her best to convert the players, and to split them up and suck their blood if that fails, and to honk her horn and have them torn apart by gargoyles if even that fails.

The players could disguise themselves as the Undermen guards too, probably, though as a vampire this nun has a keen nose for blood so signs of violence better be scoured clean away. Maybe by a ooze from level 3 or something.

ANYWAY
SOUTH RAVINE ROAD
 This part of the road stops being paved 1d6x100 feet south, and there is a ravine within the ravine, though the ravine continues south as well. Glowing lights wave and bob down there, and those investigating will find a Lantern Archon and a Carrion Crawler, only they won't cuz that's dumb. In fact they'll just find Skullmoths flittering around, because I want to keep their light as potential light sources both for the players and the Undermen. The Undermen don't see in the dark, incidentally- they have torches or skullmoth lanterns. This ravine has a secret, little used door to level 7, and it does have a random dead adventuring party at the bottom, animated by skullmoth grubs, so there's something to loot for those daring the moth lair.

Next up, 1d6x100 feet past the ravine, our encounter chart claims there are d3+1 duegar, (drow dwarves), and a displacer beast. Rather than that, let's have an Underman Illusionist and d3+1 Undermen Guards. They are looking for an escaped princess, but won't reveal this. They might hide behind a glamour and be all 'greetings fellow surface dwellers' to try to figure out what the heck the players are doing in their territory, or just slip on some annoying Mass Mirror Image and attack or pretend to be more numerous than they really are.

Past that, there's a Janni and d3+1 svirfneblin gnomes (drow gnomes). So actually what we have is d3+1 undermen who have a Janni in a bottle, to be popped in emergencies. They are of course related to the previous party, and can signal each other via skullmoth lantern flashes. The Janni hates its servitude and only obeys the letter of instructions given, so players might be able to help it find loopholes if it is summoned to beat them down.

Past this patrol, we have... a Harpy, and a Wereboar (called it). The theme of such an encounter would surely be 'being lured into danger' and 'a hard to kill brute' and I think I can do this theme and maybe explain why these Undermen patrols were out here AND explain the recent inspiration for the spider playwrights current play- they're looking for a runaway princess and her surface-dweller lover who was an escaped slave and the underwoman princess got seduced by stories of stars and felt bad for this swarthy gladiator slave who missed the surface and blah blah blah. Anyway, the princess is adorned in SCADS of jewelry and looks perfectly harmless (she is, as a matter of fact) and is trying to climb up the ravine but has gotten stuck. She will call for help and agree to surrender if the players assist her, and then whammo, the 'not-a-wereboar-but-still-like-a-level-8-fighter-lover-gladiator' will charge around the corner and begin to fight the players as some of them are separated by the climb. Assuming players listen to the princess's weird phrasing(because she is assuming they are undermen), they might be able to forestall this ambush by convincing her (and the listening lover) that they aren't an underman retrieval squad. This will be ruined by the arrival of the actual undermen retrieval squads, above, if the players made friends with them, and then the players will have to choose who to support, if anyone. In any case, the princess's jewelry is really tempting, like, 10,000GP tempting, but she is a haughty thing and won't part with a single ring even if the players save her from the retrieval squads, and her loverboy will support her completely and fight to the death for her honor.

Moving further down the south ravine, dungeon encounters tells us we must inflict a minotaur and an otyugh on the party. We already replaced one minotaur (zombie) with a gargoyle, but lets see... an otyugh would live in a pool of filth, so lets say this is where the town above's sewage fell down to, creating a horrible swamp of garbage and sewage. Nasty. Well, if the Bad Breath imp of level 2 survived, this is a good place to hang out. Let's also put a miasma here- as disease is spread primarily by miasma dwelling demons and not by anything as silly as germ theory, this is prime spot for disease demons to show up. Also, I'm definitely not putting a combat with two sacks of HP here, no way. Instead, we'll have a Disease Demon, the Imp or otherwise, squatting in the filth, and seeing if it can't tempt the players into getting sick by sinning. The ol' "Honest Woodcutter" fairy tale will be my model here- the demon will purport to be a 'returner of lost items' dig up a pouch of coins and ask the players if they dropped this, and escalate its offers with golden jewelry, sparkling (albeit filthy) gems, magic swords, and so on. If the players don't lie by saying 'yeah that's mine' it can't infect them. It will try to get them to take something by saying things like 'well, can you hang onto it until the rightful owner retrieves it?' in which case the players will be infected if they give the loot away to someone who isn't the rightful owner, lose it, gamble it away, sell it, etc. Also if the players swim through that filth they'll be infected for the sin of breaking the laws of hygiene.

Past the pool of filth and the filthy demon(s) within, 4th-level dungeon encounter charts says the only sane thing to include now is trogolodytes and worgs. Maybe this is the excuse for the trogolodyte zombies that were supposed to be on level 3. I don't want to just use more Undermen though, so lets have an inexplicable encounter of skullgrub infested children corpses riding skullgrub infested dog corpses. Zombies are easily glossed over as 'lol whatever' enemies so making them children is a nasty gutpunch to remind people that undead used to be people. Alternately, if any henchmen, named NPCs, etc, have died in the area and their corpses weren't recovered, use them instead- the key is to have there be an emotional attachment to these rotten corpses, and named zombies>nameless zombies. And as for why they're riding zombdogs, well, that's just to make em fast instead of slow and to totally ruin all that junk about making the undead scary by having a stupid circus rodeo theme instead of a somber memento mori. But by god the dungeon encounter wanted 1d3 worgs so it bloody well gets 1d3 unreasonable canine entities.

And finally, where would we be without the obligatory 1d3 snakes and 1d3 spiders. They're LARGE now- they were medium and small before. Whatever, more skullmoths, this side of the ravine is clearly their lair. But this IS a setpiece encounter, lets make an interesting and topical discovery.

So, the players know that the skullmoth life cycle is grubs into skullmoths, and they like rotten flesh. But what if there's another stage, where skullmoths enter a cocoon themselves and emerge as something else, regressing into... that's right, back to grublike form, but larger, longer, as befitting their growth... yes, now they are Parasites, of the sort that bedevil the chained up guard dragon, and this skullmoth hive is no accident, but a designed garden of the Undermen, who use the larvae for light, the moths for incidental guardians of their ravine, and the parasites for punishment.

So at the end of the south ravine, there is a nasty-ass dragon corpse wriggling with glowing maggots, with the lights of flitting skullmoths all round, and hanging from the skeletal wings, slimy cocoons with parasites inside them, that will leap out and attach themselves to players like facehuggers from Alien, draining 1 level per attached parasite and spitting 1d6 acid damage in a 20' cone against everyone if you try to remove it. If you get level-drained to 0 you die, at best. On the plus side, if you have a parasite on you, skullmoths ignore you and undead might too, and pulling them off/killing them gives you your level back right away.

This whole awful 'garden' is behind a clearly pointless bone fence a foot high, that has a little note saying 'apprentice corpsetakers must not enter ivata-stage skullmoth gardens without supervision' so now we know, the atavistic parasite forms are known as 'ivata' and 'corpsetakers' are behind the whole skullmoth mess. And Dragons are somehow involved. This is probably bad news.

But the players may wish to enter regardless, for this is a BIG dragon corpse, and remnant scales, teeth, claws, etc, of such an ancient beast would be worth a lot to the right buyer, and could be used as arms and armor.

Restocking Encounters- The Chimera of depth 3, especially the Cynocephali, may escape down here through magma worm boreholes. Dead humans down here will become skullgrub zombies within a day, more skullmoths in a week, and perhaps into Itava after that. Artistic spiders may overwhelm the place, catching skullmoths and using them for stage lighting. And of course, things from the unexplored caverns or lower Undermen levels may show up. The  nun vampire could take in demon cult survivors and turn them to this cult instead. Maybe the dragon can gain independence and become tyrant of the surface ghost town if freed of its parasites.

Turning 3.5 Dungeon Encounters into a Dungeon, part 3/20

The 3rd level encounters are atrocious. It is the sort of style known as a 'monster zoo' with a massive quantity of random monsters with no rhyme or reason. How will the players get a coherent feeling and adapt to the changing scenery if it could be any old nonsense?

Anyway, the third level is below the keep of the town, sealed behind iron doors. The demon cult has no presence here, and I'm treating this place as a 'sub-level.'
THE ENCOUNTER CHART(Just look at this shit)
Allip- Crazy ghost with no identity that makes you crazier.
Cockatrice- Death chicken that turns you to stone if you touch it.
2d4+1 Dire Rats- Because increasing numbers of angry rats is thrilling
Doppelganger- Not bad, honestly.
1 wyrmling brass dragon- fighting baby dragons is lame and I've never met anyone who fought a 4HD lizard with no breath weapon and then said 'wow we killed a dragon, so cool.'
1d3 drow elves- I like the way drow look like color-inverted normal elves but that's no excuse to put them here.
1 ethereal filcher and marauder, which are just extradimensional assholes.
1 ettercap- like spider-man but gross
1 violet fungus (fungus)- I don't know what that second parenthetical (fungus) means either
1 Ghast (ghoul) Ghasts are stinky ghouls
1d3 gnolls- You know the dungeon has gotten dangerous because now we got arbitrarily 2HD humanoids
1 grick- lame tentacle monster (carrion crawlers are cooler)
1 hell hound- Might keep this actually
1 howler- 's like a porcupine dog from hell.
1d3 krenshars- more dogs with scary faces
1d3 lizardfolk- more 2hd humanoids
1 werewolf- following the progression from wererat, I guess the next floors will go wereboar, weretiger, werebear, possibly with numeric increments
1 ogre- shrek
1 gelatinous cube- these are hilarious and I love em
1 phantom fungus- invisible evil mushroom. No (fungus) for this one.
1 rust monster- we're attacking more than HP now Like inventory slots!
1 shadow- And STR points!
2d4 stirges- And CON points, unless stirges suck HP in 3.5
1 wight- ...and levels!
1 locust swarm- 1 swarm per encounter chart, is that the rule here?
1 yuan-ti pureblood- snakepeople is classic osr but I don't think I'll keep this 2hd humanoid
1d3 trogolodyte zombies- Maybe the lack of any trogolyte presence has sinister implications
1d3 poison snakes- enough with the poison vermin wotc, plz
1 giant praying mantis- thank you
1d3 medium monstrous scorpions- dammit

Well, lets sum up. We got several encounters that come in varieties of invisible and 'after your inventory'

We got several undead of the 'aw hell no' variety and a cockatrice which is also a 'do not engage' sorta thing

A lotta doglike things

And some miscellany.

THE NEW ENCOUNTER CHART
1- Tentacle Monster
2- Chimera
3- Cynocephalus
4- Servitor Ooze
5- Hellhound
6-Undead Wizard
7-Magma Worm- Use sparingly, to change up terrain and provide access to below.

This sublevel is the sub-basement of a wizard, whose tower was knocked down by the ancestor of the lord of the Keep and sealed away. The apprentices were in the basement during the siege and died down there, but some of the magical experiments survived the decades of entombment. Better put some clues up in the Keep about what might be down here, in paintings, tapestries, and statues. Let's talk about what's down here though.

The Tentacle monster is an alchemical construct the wizard used to aid in breeding chimerae. Its body is several clear sacs each the size of a large barrel, with more long, clear tentacles topped with bone needles. Its function is to draw blood and use that blood to create creatures, and now that it has escaped its containment pit, it wanders the halls jabbing things for 1d4 damage and retreats to said pit to gestate and birth a monster composed of a mix of all the blood it has drawn since the last gestation. These homunculi/chimerae are ready in a few dungeon exploration turns and are then added to the encounter chart, and are combinations/clones of the blood taken. These homunculi tend to view the tentacle monster as their deity-mother.

The tentacle monster retreats as soon as it has one or more samples of blood, and should be clearly tough enough, with lots of attacks and HP that the players will be glad to see it go and not keen to follow. Those offering no resistance will lose only 1HP from the blood drawing process, incidentally.
This is my take on the 'swarm encounter,' and stirges only with lots of tentacles instead of lots of locusts or rats or whatever. Also it's the 'doppelganger' encounter in a way. This creature, if the players can figure out what's going on, could be an interesting source for replacement characters or other mad schemes, but as long as it's alive, this sublevel will swarm with weird chimeric beasts.

Speaking of-
Chimera- Rather than the dragon/lion/snake/goat, 'Chimera' just refers to a cloned monster manufactured by the tentacle beast. Since the blood source in this isolated area is pretty much rats, dogs, and humans, most the Chimera are fairly similar.
 roll 5d3, indicating, shape, size, head, body, and limbs
1-Humanoid   1-Rat Sized/headed/Body/limbs
2-Quadruped  2-Dog Sized/headed/Body/limbs
3-Centauroid  3-Human Sized/headed/body/limbs

Anything with any human bits also has human hands and the traits of that human.
Rat and Dog headed chimera do 1 damage if rat sized, d4 damage if dog sized, and d6 if human sized
Rat sized come in packs of 4, dog sized in 2, and humans are solo unless they band together

The chimera have an unnatural ecology of cannibalism, sustained by the procreative powers of the tentacle monster. For the first few years, there were endless clones of the wizard apprentices. Then rat got into the mix, and things got hairy. Literally. In recent times, a dog got past the locked doors in the cellar that led into this sublevel, and so the Cynocephali arose. Larger and fiercer than the rat-men, they had both brains and brawn, and so devoured.those chimerae who had only one of brains or bites, and so have eked out a crude family tribe worshipping the tentacle beast and despising the undead wizards. They are the oldest chimerae to have ever survived in this tiny cannibal prison, and range from 1-5 years old, though they have mature bodies and brains and lack only context and knowledge.

Cynocephali- 2HD, bite for d6. Humanoid bodies, though rather furry. They can talk, but are suspicious, racist, naive, and usually hungry, so negotiation is not as with a rational human. They will offer themselves to the tentacle monster to replenish their numbers if attacked, but try to keep their population at 8- one for each toe of a dog, and a number that can survive decently on the production of edible chimerae. Their priest keeps the mummified paw of their ancestor on a necklace, and it may have become magical with all the faith poured into this trinket. These are my drow, gnolls, lizardmen, and other humanoids.

Servitor Ooze- More alchemical constructs, these are simply janitorial slimes working in overtime to clean up all the dead bones and garbage produced by the tentacle monster. They have multiplied insanely over the years and are very numerous.
They are very corrosive to organic matter, but the sheer mass of  hair and bone by all the furry chimerae eating each other is overwhelming and the oozes look like slithering half-orbs of hair, like giant dustbunnies

But BIGGER

They shy away from movement (a safety feature) and move silently (an anti-annoyance feature) but while they aren't your typical 'chase and eat' style of monstrous ooze, they are still dangerous because they wish to
1-clean dirty things, like, say, bloodstains the wounded wizard is leaving behind
2-pick up garbage, like, say, the inventories of the players.
This leads to them following the players around, cleaning up messes, and stealing anything left unattended. On a bad reaction roll, they will deprioritize 'avoid movement' and attempt to silently pickpocket the players, as the foreign objects like 'backpacks' and 'swords' all register as garbage.

The oozes attempt to flee from movement (when not acting as overzealous maids) and so do not 'fight' in a traditional manner, but they leak corrosive fluids that spray and drool when hit and wounded, and may then attempt to clean up the spilt blood or sundered contents of a dissolved leather backpack, and all in all they are a tremendous pain. If you manage to cut into the storage vacuoles  of the hairy slime though, you'll find various indigestible pieces of 'garbage' like the dead wizard's spellbooks, wands, jewelry, etc.  They are, incidentally, my combination of rust monster, gelatinous cube, and ethereal filcher.

Hellhound- An imp came down here once, got 'sampled' by the tentacle monster, and retreated in fear. As such, there are a few chimera that have demon ichor as part of their creation process. This has given them weird powers and made them prone to malevolence and wickedness, and there are no morally upstanding dog trainers around to lead them onto the path of good. There are 4 hellhounds currently, and both the Cynocephali and the undead Wizards fear them for their demonic resilience and lock them behind portculli doors whenever possible, trying to keep them away from themselves and the tentacle monster. They spend their days eating chimerae and scheming on how to escape their walled off prison.
1- The Howler Inspired One- This Hellhound is a dog with spines like spears. If it flexes, everything within 10 feet is menaced by a bunch of bristling spines. It is very tough due to its spine armor, and can fire spines like javelins. The spines are hollow and make whistling noises, and could become musical instruments with strange potential.
2- The Krenshar Inspired One- This Hellhound can jump out of its own skin, becoming a skinless horror and a flapping, smothering skin-horror. It can even hide inside the skin of others that it flays, though being a dog, this disguise is seen through with the remotest examination.
3-The werewolf inspired one- This Hellhound can eat the minds of those it bites, dealing intelligence damage. Those reduced to 0 intelligence become like dogs themselves, mentally, and view the hound as their master.

In addition to the obvious, these are the nasty but not undead 'solo' encounters like the ogre, mantis, etc. Some doppelganging and alternate attack forms are covered here too.

Undead Wizards

Or rather, Undead Wizard Apprentices. They all met horrible ends down here and became vengeful spirits after their bodies were eaten by oozes. None of them are very sane or very nice.

Shadow/Allip Inspired Undead Wizard Apprentice- trapped in a collapsed part of the basement with just a create water spell, the confinement, darkness, solitude, and starvation over a month left a ghost that can't abide the sight of people having what it didn't. It hates the dogs but they've learned its tricks. Said trick is to cast an illusion, making people think the doors have vanished, and hopefully keep them confined to a room until they die of thirst/hunger/paranoid cannibalism. It has no means of affecting the world in light, but in darkness (say, if a 'trapped' party runs out of torches) its touch makes people hungrier and hungrier. It's very stealthy, looking like an extra shadow attached to someone in the group it is stalking.

Its spellbook is with its buried corpse.

Create Water- Creates drinking water, enough for 1 person for 1 day per [dice^2]

No Exit- Can be cast silently. Up to [sum] targets must save or believe there is no escape from a particular situation- no doors from a room, no ladders up a cliff, no good excuse to leave a dinner party, that sort of thing. Lasts as long as the caster concentrates.

Cockatrice Inspired Undead Wizard Apprentice- Facing being eaten by his fellows, he cast Stone Skin to defend himself and flubbed it in his panic, turning himself to contagious stone. There are several petrified chimerae around, some in the room, who succumbed to this. This ghost is bound to his stone form and wants to share his fate with others out of extreme boredom and idle cruelty. His statue could become very dangerous if broken apart, as even a grain of dust from it contains the petrifying plague- though secondary victims are not contagious.

Stone Skin is as Sand Skin from the Silk Wizard spellbook, though this variant has a unique Doom- that of the petrifying plague. You get +1 AC for each failed save against the plague, and -2 Dex. At 0 dex, you are a statue. Save once per day until you find a cure or die.

Wight/Ghast Inspired Undead Wizard Apprentice- He spent years eating clones of himself and other chimerae, and became a flesh-hungry cannibal monster, the curse of the wendigo grasping him full force. He is physically mighty from his feeding but the loathsome stench of death has repelled the beastmen and they will never accept him as master or even friend despite how many share his face, and so he has become a shunned and loathsome monster even among monsters. His rotten flesh is bloated and putrid, and he shambles about seeking fresh meat at all times, since there's nothing better to do. Maybe he could be given some purpose if treated kindly, but it would take a saint to overlook his monstrous nature.

His spellbook is inside a slime, as he gave up spellcasting along with his humanity, content to overwhelm prey with his claws and teeth. Eating meat boosts his HP, up to what could be maximally rolled, and also gives him boosts to his strength.

Anyway, that about covers all the intended modes of attack, gives some roleplay opportunities, gives the players something to play with in the form of a hybrid clone generating monster, maybe has some puzzle aspects for retrieving treasure from the oozes... oh, and I suppose there should be some surviving notes that direct the players to the bottom of the ravine, which is where the wizard could have learned some of his wacky stuff.

QUICK THINGS TO STOCK ROOMS

We want things that go well with oozes, bestial manimals, nasty undead wizards

1- Pillar with something valuable atop it. Surrounded by oozes trying to reach it.

2-Hallway with hidden portcullis trap. All the portculli are of metal and lock once down. requiring a key. Most keys have been eaten by oozes, but the Cynocephali and the Ghast probably have some.

3-Tunnel to Ravine Bottom, bored by magma worm.

4- Tables with attached manacles

5- Abandoned chimera nest of bones and hair. Cleaner oozes will get rid of it eventually.

6-Rocks left over from magma worm tunnels that the cleaner oozes collect and leave in piles. 

This place could get pretty weird if the magma worm tunnels or the doors are left open and more monsters wander in, depending on what the players do. So long as the tentacle monster is alive it will likely remain a constant battleground of mutant freaks. If the dogs escape, they might become really weird pack leaders of remaining chimera or new wandering monsters. The undead could end up saturating the place with other cursed spirits, which might attract some of the nastier ravine dwellers.

In any case, there should be  a decent amount of weird treasure, and overstuffed oozes should maybe leak some coins to indicate to the players where the treasure is. It was the basement of a pretty adept wizard at some point, so there should be some good stuff in the cleaner oozes, even if the real treasure is the players finding a way to exploit the magical disasters of the place.

 

A rough example- as opposed to the keep level, this place is a free-for all. Players should be running from things, getting cornered, stumbling across chimera battles, spying incoming slimes come to clean up battles, meeting their own chimeric clones after initial blooddrawing encounters with the tentacle monster, and generally going 'this place is a total shitshow, what the fuck man.' I doubt they'll interact with everything, but I think it's a memorable 'monster zoo'

Turning 3.5 Dungeon Encounters into a Dungeon, part 2/20

Alright, level 2 dungeon encounter. We got a lantern archon (a happy will o wisp) a hobgob and d4 subordinate gobs, a bugbear, a choker, several more weak demons, a dire bat, d4+1 fiendish dire rats, d3+1 formian workers, d3+1 halflings, 2d4+1 kobolds, a wererat, d3+1 orcs, a shocker lizard, a owlbear skeleton, a bat swarm, a ratswarm, a thoqqua (like a burrowing flamy drill worm), a worg, a constrictor snake, d4+2 vipers, and a HUGE centipede.

We know that this is inside the ruined keep the demon cultists squat in. So I'm turning all those humanoids into humans and relating 'em to the cult. Less emphasis on multiple factions here- this is what some people call a 'fortress' style dungeon, where you gotta worry about calling down a ton of unwanted attention if you get spotted by sentries.

Hobgob+gobs Into= Top Cultist- has d4 lackeys fawning over him. Claim to fame is that he knows how to activate the demon circle. If he's wandering away from his chambers, it's probably to offer a sacrifice at the demon circle. If he's desperate, it might be one of the lackeys, but it's probably just treasure or a captured dog. Maybe he's gotten in over his head and would give it up if the demons could be dealt with, or maybe he's grown addicted to the thrill of playing 'the dark wizard.' He probably knows things about the nasty secrets beneath the castle, but not THAT much. He carries his diary, which has demon summoning rituals.

The bugbear can be the enforcer, named something like "Raebgub," your classic big brutal torturer jailer guy. He bullies the bullyable cultists and appointed himself jailer so he can bully any captured prisoners. He's obviously bigger, tougher, and meaner than the other cultists and has a whip and club. He doesn't care about demons, he just likes being boss, and could probably be convinced to betray the Top Cultist and become Top Bandit instead. He's probably taken a fair bit of treasure from others though, and has the keys to the mysterious iron door in the barracks dungeons.

The choker is a psycho with a thing for strangling people. The demons love him, the cultists fear him. This guy stalks the players and probably won't call for help, because he wants to pick them off one by one. He might even pretend to join the players with the hopes of betraying them later. His whole thing is that he'll never stand and fight, and he has superior knowledge of the area.

Formian workers, halflings, kobolds, and orcs are just cultist grunts with shovels and pickaxes and  jobs like latrine digging and guard duty. Their discipline is horrible as they don't really expect anyone to come after them, but it doesn't take a genius to shout a warning and double patrols if the players kill a few and then try coming back a week later for round 2. Depending on the reaction check, they could be into the whole demon thing, or just sorta going along with everyone else. On the other hand, if encountered at night or in a dark area, they will have a 'skull lantern' which is not actually a skull, but a regular bullseye lantern with some skullmoth-grub infested meat inside, which they will use to bedevil intruders, cut off pursuit/escape, and make direct confrontation a guaranteed drain on HP unless the players are going around with their own skullmoth light they're attenuated to.

As for the bats, rats, fiendish rats, batswarms, and ratswarms, lets simplify it into rats. FIENDISH rats. How did they get so fiendish, you ask? Well!

"Golly I sure hope our child doesn't grow up to draw daemonic bestiality online" -My Parents

...according to the d20 SRD they're just rats from hell rather than the rat equivalent of tieflings, so all the time I spent drawing this informative diagram of Imp x Rat action was ultimately not lore OR family friendly. Woops.

Anyway, demon rats. Their origin really doesn't matter, but they've got something very important going for 'em- fire resistance. Normally when faced with a skittering horde of tiny beasts, your instinct is to pour oil and throw molotovs, right? Well these things is fireproof (mostly) and that ain't gonna cut it. But you know what WILL kill them- Skullmoth light!
So, these demon rats are basically just mean rats, so they aren't going to hunt the players down or wander looking for adventurers to eat. What they do do is guard their nest, and what the imps did is hide the holy blade of the once pious lord of the castle that can hurt them in this demon rat-infested basement somewhere in the ruined keep so the little beasts would keep any nosy adventurers from blundering into it. Heck, maybe the rat lair isn't even in the keep, but in the rich district.

Hints of the sword's existence are in paintings of the lord with him posing with a glowy blade, and probably a statue of him in the courtyard too. But when the players find the lord locked away in his tower, they will find that his skullmoth-animated corpse wears platemail (and is the replacement for the owlbear skeleton) but his scabbard is empty! It's hard for players to pick up on a single hint, so here's more
1- Imps may be seen flying to the hiding location of the sword to make sure it's safe. It's the only thing they know of that can harm them, after all, so they're paranoid someone will get it. You might overhear them talking about it if you sneak up on them.
2- That psycho strangler definitely knows where it is (he knows everything about this area), but good luck getting him to talk. The cultists may have heard or seen something too, and could be bullied, bribed, etc into revealing what they know.
3-Remember the glowing skullmoth grubs in the lords corpse will light up the windows to his tower. That will probably catch someone's interest after they see painting of the glowing sword. They might even backtrack to investigate Skullmoth lairs, since you never know if the light could be from that sword, right?
4-The Sword has a prayer inscribed on it, and reciting the prayer with some true faith behind it activates the glow, and a constant echo of the prayer repeating until it is sheathed. The imps didn't know how to shut it up, so keen-eared characters might hear the prayer if they're nearby.

 The prayer takes a full round to recite, and once 'active' the sword glows and prays and can smite the normally weapon-immune imps and will probably come in handy against all sorts of evil monsters, but man, forget stealth and subtlety while you're using it in glowy-prayer mode. It's also the 'Lantern Archon' but turned into a goofy magic item rather than an twerpy mascot character or whatever role lantern archons are meant to serve.

 Anyway. There are 4 imps on this floor ripe for slaying with this magic sword, which fulfill both the were-rat, and demon encounters in term of 'dangerous weird thing you can't kill easy and is a tough cookie negotiation wise.' They cooperate, but are disorganized, which they can afford to be since mortal steel can't harm them.


1-The Bad Breath Imp, "Corpselicker"- Imps don't bathe, because the bathing ritual is to ward off disease demons, something imps don't have to worry about. This imp has also taken to eating anything its huge, detachable jaw can fit over, and as such it has become tremendously fat and has 4hd despite still being only like 2 feet tall. The foul smell of this imp's breath and rotten-food covered hands gives disadvantage on making con rolls and rallying minions to confront the stinky beast. Every time it eats its own bodyweight, it gains another HD. Due to demonic constitution, it adds everything it eats to its body at a 1 to 1 ratio. It may vomit to attack, spewing forth a disgusting torrent of plague and random things like bones, pieces of furniture, lanterns, etc. He's eaten the cellar key, and killing him (which releases a veritable volcano of garbage) is the easiest way to retrieve it.


2- The Knife-Throwing Imp "Veindrainer"
It flies, it's immune to your arrows (unless you got like magic arrows or something), and it carries 10 daggers to throw at you from safe distances. Will downgrade to rocks if you steal all its daggers, and upgrade to molotovs if it can get them. It likes blood sacrifices and can be made to buzz off if you slit your hand and pour 1d4 HP into its mouth. It gets one of your abilities whenever this happens though. It may eventually become pretty mighty if the players don't catch on, for it will also try to lick up the blood of everything they kill.

3- Whistling Imp- "Whistler" Is master of the rats and commands them via whistling. This imp likes musical instruments and if it ever acquires a good drum, lute, horn, and flute, it will lead the other imps to create a fiendish metal band that can only be defeated with the power of rock, possibly leading into the ANCIENT GONDWANAN SCREAMLORD arc. This imp is black and white and looks like a member of KISS, and if any player goes beyond the obvious reference and realizes that black+white=two colors=pied=the pied piper, give them a cookie for cleverness.
And yeah, this imp has 1d6+1 rats at all times, and can summon 1d6 more in 1d6 rounds. It can command the demon rats as well, and will do so if the sword is stolen.

4-The Armor Imp- "Mr Sir The Smith" This imp has turned a suit of armor into a deadly piloted armor via clever use of ropes, pulleys, and a support system. This only functions in the abandoned blacksmithy of the keep, and there has to be an imp-sized someone inside the suit operating it, but so long as you don't cut the ropes, it's pretty much invincible to most forms of attack. The armor hangs from a system of pulleys and rails and it's operation is not at all obvious if it is found without its imp pilot. Also the other imps can crawl inside for more powers
Filth Imp adds tetanus to the strikes of the armor and a swarm of skullmoths attracted by the stench
Knife Imp throws knives by peeking through a crack then hucking em, in any direction.
Whistling imp can use rats to supplement the movement systems and make the armor suit fully mobile.
If all imps somehow end up in the armor suit, they'll agree this is definitely the way to go and progressively create bigger and bigger suits until they must be defeated in Voltron-esque combat. The armor imp can be paid gold to work as a regular smith, but can only make armors and weapons that give -1 morale/reaction to your enemies and friends because they all look dark lordesque and spiky.

These imps came from a demon-summoning circle hidden under a rug in one of the servant's quarters. The cult doesn't bother hiding it, but the rug is too tacky to leave anywhere else. People making sacrifices and translating the diary of the Top Cultist can learn to summon demons too.


Finally, we have two oddballs- the Thoqqua and a Shocker lizard. For the Shocker Lizard, let's just go back to those demon rats and say one is from a stormy and ionized hell, and make it a rat that can build up +1d6 lightning damage each turn, which arcs to the nearest source of metal on a 1. It also resists lightning instead of fire.

The Thoqqua is actually something I'm fine with. It's a weird burrowing magma worm that got awoken by shenanigans in the depths, and now it has undermined fort walls and left burrows to lower levels. Every time it shows up it just causes structural damage, deforming the fort and making new entrances to a lower level.  We'll call it 'Magma Worm' though, just in case of copyright or something.
This encounter chart is 1d10, but as unique encounters get whittled down, you can just reduce the dice size instead of restocking. Once the cult is weak enough to be displaced by new arrivals, you could refill the keep with something else.
1-Bad Breath Imp
2-Whistling Imp
3-Knife Imp
4-Armor Imp
5-Top Cultist & Lackeys
6-Enforcer Raebgub
7-Strangler
8-Nameless Cultists
9-d3 Skullmoth (Night), otherwise Namless Cultists w/ Skull Lantern
10-Magma Worm


Incidentally, these might spill out into the abandoned rich district.

And the halfassed map. Remember those paintings and statues that hint at the holy sword! Heck, a questgiver in the nearby settlement wouldn't be out of order. And recall that the worm-tunnels also lead down to the next level, as does the barracks dungeon and the cellar.

The Courtyard usually has 2 encounters in it by day, with a 3rd if you count whoever is in the watch tower. There's roughly 1 area per encounter, so this place, while 'abandoned,' is definitely packed and bustling compared to the rest of the ruins, and the sound of battle and cries for help will almost certainly attract more encounters. Looking at this, I really don't see a good place for the sword to be hidden, so it's either in a basement in the rich district, or somewhere down the worm tunnels in depth 3.

This is a cloister btw