- Bubbles. There are bubbles. Permeable. Air pockets. They collect in a secret place. Transport.
- The Floor is Lava. Actually is. Stone statues here half submerged and colossal. They hold secrets as does the far side.
- Milk Bath. The floor of the room curves inward and ends in a bath of cave milk. A sump. Nutritious if drunk but will blind and albinize you and turn you cave-denizen like over time. Heals skin imperfections, lesions. The breasts of the cave are here.
- Flower Maze. Maze of long-stemmed floral speleothems of all colors 5-8 feet high. Fragile. Sharp. Gradual loops. Drop items or use chalk to mark paths. Pale yellow sweet haze a mild soporific. Bats snoozing on ground, some fall from ceiling to be impaled on flowers. You can tell you're getting sleepy. Roll under Con at end of each turn to avoid passing out. -2 cumulative penalty each turn. A sculptor-gardener bare stone cottage in center. Bag of bright green seed pebbles (2d20). Plant them shallowly in the rock and a flower will grow. Breathe on it to color it.
- Symphony of Dissonance. Awful dissonant woodwind sound. Large central column. Coming up through hollow stalagmites like a distributed organ. Cover some of the pipes, even with your hand (the air is warm and moist) to silence them and so produce music. Teaching the room a tune no matter how simple shakes the cavern and dislodges rock from the central column, where a creature of otherworldly beauty has been imprisoned in the rock. At first only the stone around her feet is dislodged. More complex or beautiful compositions dislodge the her hands, arms, hair, legs, face. She wakes up at this and asks for a song to be played that would soothe a child. She then relapses into coma. If request granted, she falls out of the stone and grants a wish to the most compassionate before disappearing in fire. Not with words does she communicate. She will grant a wish for anything that is good and can be lost again. Otherwise she gives what she thinks the character needs most as a person.
- Cavern Heart. The shape of a massive hollowed egg. A heart of magma beats here. Its booms are deep and loud and painless. The magma is suspended in the shape of a heart by forms of thick glass. Tubes of glass carry the magma elsewhere, out of sight. A narrow tube of glass (no magma) empties into the opening of this chamber. It can be chimney climbed. A pleasant temperature throughout. The tube exits beneath a seat of glass. Armrests. The left contains a mace cut with images of beasts spiraling down in complexity to plants and dirt. When a human sits in the seat or touches the mace, the heart of the cave shows you all the horror it has seen since the beginning. It will then ask permission to sleep, as a vassal to a lord. Not in words but concepts. If granted, all magma in this cave begins to cool rapidly, starting with the heart itself and shooting down the tubes. By the time you leave the room, all magma is cool in this cave. If not granted, the whole cave resounds with a groaning, and the heart beats faster and brighter for days. Triggers the **high lava flow** condition of the relevant areas. Whatever you decide, you will be in shock for 2d20 days. Nonhumans cannot take the mace. If they touch either chair or mace, magma obviously begins to flow toward the chair from above. It will fill the chair and spontaneously combust anyone touching it or the mace. As soon as a nonhuman stops touching the chair/mace, the magma begins to recede.
- Heartbeats. Convex glass floor pressing up into the cavity; so slick; no purchase. Below are flares of magma, saturated orange. A deep boom as the unobservable heart of the cavern beats. **Do not tell the players what the booming is. Do not say it sounds like a heartbeat.**
- Inconvenient Lava. Lava flows around a stony protrusion on which a fantastic treasure rests. The heat from the lava is too much. Without protection from heat, starting 80' away, and for each 10' closer, you are warm > sweating > screaming > 1st degree burns > 2nd degree burns > 3rd degree burns > on fire > ash. If the lava has cooled, that's cash money.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Caves
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cave
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