A couple months ago, I ran a session of ANGUISHEDWIRES, a dungeon I created while doing a FATAL and Friends readthrough of How to Host a Dungeon. Dungeon is a solo game by Tony Dowler. ANGUISHEDWIRES was an experiment, to see how much work it took to convert a map from that game into something playable in an RPG. The answer was “a lot!”
I used my own system for the playtest. It’s my attempt to preserve the stuff I like about old school dungeon crawling, while stripping out the parts I find tedious. In addition to playtesting the dungeon, this was also an opportunity to playtest the rules.
The playtest game had three players
- Thomas Fatherd the Mercenary
- Monty the Loveable Thief
- Kamilla the Witch
The setting was the colony city of Brazenkragg, on the frontier of the Commonwealth.
The job was simple:
Sam Sump, one of the Trade Wardens of Brazenkragg, meets you on the balcony of his cafe in the upper shambles. Sam is an old school criminal, utterly ruthless but honest. He is considered a safe person to take jobs from, provided you plan on completing them.
“Look, it’s simple. Some people went digging on the West side of the river, by the old tower. Southwest of the logger camp. Then a couple days later I get a courier with a shopping list and a down payment on some items. So I need you to take the stuff back across the river and deliver it to them, then bring back the rest of the payment. Delivery goes in, 1,000 silver pieces come out. Then I give you 100 of those pieces and we’re square. Maybe more work waiting when you come back.”
I elided the journey through the wilderness, other than telling the players a little about the route they took (a ferry to the logger camp, then a two hour hike through the forest to the tower). The game began as they reached the adventurer camp by the base of the tower.
The camp was abandoned. All the valuables were gone, but the tents were still up, and there weren’t any signs of violence. The biggest tent had a six foot diameter hole in the ground, perfectly circular, which descended into a smooth tunnel. Monty and Kamilla recognized this as the work of a shamir - a magic worm that burrowed on command. The adventurers had obviously dug this. With no other prospect of finding their meal ticket, the players descended into the dungeon.
The gang explored the statue garden first. They knew enough dwarven to decipher the runes above the doors, leading to the DRINKING HALL, DORMITORIES and VAULT. The Vault sounded like the most profitable option, so they investigated it first. But before they could go into the strongrooms, Thomas had the idea to douse the torch and see if there was any light coming from anywhere. Without the harsh glow of the torchlight, they could see light coming from one of the dormitory entrances, from under a heavy curtain hung over the door.
Monty snuck up to take a listen. He could hear the rattle of mail links and the sound of a push broom. He poked his head inside, and found a woman in a completely ridiculous chainmail bikini, pushing a broom around a room filled with candles, beautiful furniture and incense. He introduced himself and asked if she was one of the four adventurers who ordered the items from the Trade Warden. She confirmed that this was the case, but that the arrangement had changed. Luria was the boss now, and had to approve any financial transactions. Then she began obsessively fawning over Luria, who was currently out in the dungeon somewhere with the other three adventurers.
Luria came up the stairs from the second level and ran right into Kamilla and Thomas, who were waiting outside the curtained room for a cue from Monty. She introduced herself, along with her three compatriots: a trio of ensorceled adventurers in similarly absurd garb as the first. Luria invited everyone inside for a rough but edible meal of crackers and spicy mustard. The players explained that they were here to drop off the items the adventurers ordered, and take payment of 1,000 silver pieces back to Brazenkragg. Luria gleefully admitted to enslaving the adventurers with magic, and told the players she had no interest in any financial transactions her thralls had agreed to. The players would have to find the money somewhere else. Then she kicked them out of her abode.
The players weighed their options. Their chances of victory versus a Fiend and her four servitors were not good. Sam Sump, the Trade Warden they had taken the job from, would kill them if they came back without the thousand silver pieces. Returning the delivery to him was off the table, he had already written them off. They needed to find the money elsewhere.
So they got exploring.
SCAVENGING THE DUNGEON
The drinking hall to the North of the statue garden was empty, looted long ago. The gang slipped into the employees only door and checked out the bar storeroom, which was similarly bereft. They couldn’t believe the place was completely bare, and their persistence was rewarded when a thorough search of the storeroom turned up a loose brick in the back of a shelf. Nobody wanted to stick their hand into the scary hole and feel around for treasure, so they used their crowbar to pry out the bricks over the next half hour. They grabbed the 500 SP bottle of Dwarf Gin hidden in the stash, and avoided the now-exposed poison needle trap.
The door North of the drinking hall led to a raised walkway over a natural cave. The walkway led to an old dwarven tomb. The sarcophagi were overturned and empty. The murals on the walls told the story of the fortress:
- The Dwarves were sent from the Mountainhomes to raise a fortress that would link the underground highway
- The Dwarves abandoned the surface after an outbreak of the Wasting Plague
- The Dwarves tapped the Magma Lakes for power, and the coal beds for fuel
- The Dwarves built a road of metal in the ancient tunnels, to link the fortress to the Mountainhomes.
- With the fortress’ purpose served, many of the Dwarves moved on, carried by the wondrous engines that traveled the road of metal.
- The Mountainhomes began sending their best scientists and engineers to the fortress. (The murals end here)
The players searched the room for treasure. They scooped up a cool hundred SP in burial jewelry scattered around the room, apparently abandoned when the coffins were overturned.
They noticed a couple irregularities in the murals during their search. A section of wall in the Northwest of the room was inscribed with a dire warning not to breach it, since plague waited on the other side. And a section of wall in the Southeast corner was inscribed with much cruder murals than the rest of the walls. The texture was different too, like dry, spongy wood rather than stone. It wasn’t even stone at all, it was just rock dusted to have the same color as the other walls. The players decided to break it down, but tied cloths around their noses and mouths before doing so. They struck the material with the crowbar, then inserted the shaft into the hole and peeled back the material. A cloud of spores spilled forth from the hole. There was a mushroom man on the other side. The players turned and ran.
A single dwarven skeleton blocked their path on the walkway through the cavern, but they quickly dispatched it. Thomas took its two handed maul, reserving his sword as a secondary weapon.
In the drinking hall, they weighed their options. Their improvised masks had stopped them from inhaling the spores. How tough could a mushroom person be? They went back into the tomb, where two fungaliths were inspecting the damage to the false wall, which hung open like a door into a secret passage beyond. The mushroom people brandished their spears, but didn’t attack, instead shooting more spores at the players. The masks blocked these, and the players brandished their weapons right back.
The trio tried talking to the mushrooms, but the fungaliths didn’t understand a word. Kamilla was able to use crude sign language to communicate with them. The fungaliths wanted the players to take off their masks. The players refused. The players asked if the wall they broke belonged to the mushrooms. The mushrooms said yes. The players turned around and left, rather than risking a war with whatever fungal civilization existed in the secret tunnel. They explored the cave below the walkway, and identified a second entrance to the fungus cave, which they likewise decided not to enter.
The players explored the abandoned vault and dormitories. The place had been looted long ago. There were a bunch of traps, sprung long ago, and only 19 silver pieces in loose change that the previous vandals missed.
Having exhausted the easy options on level 1, the players descended the stairs to level 2.
The checkpoint was assembled from mortared slabs, rather than carven from native stone. The players walked out into the exploratory mines, a grid of tunnels which extended in all directions. They found a supply cache, filled with mining equipment but also a few useful items: dust masks, hooded lanterns, and an abacus with semiprecious beads worth 100 silver pieces. They explored to the West and found an access tunnel leading to a metal vault door with a big valve. They could hear a rushing waterfall on the other side. Thomas rotated the valve and the door was instantly forced open by the water, which came up to the characters’ knees. Thomas could see an elaborate waterworks inside, with the water cascading down from above, deflected along different channels by stone buttresses and catchbasins, before tumbling down through a chrome steel grate to the level below.
The players decided against flooding the second dungeon level, and between the three of them they were able to push the door closed again. Unfortunately, the noise had attracted a trio of ghouls - dead dwarves reanimated by an endless hunger for meat. Fortunately, Monty and Kamilla convinced them that there was a far easier and tastier target to be had: the servants of Luria the Fiend up on level 1, who weren’t even wearing armor. The ghouls bought it, and raced upstairs to claim their prize before Luria returned. The players followed behind at a safe distance, not sure if they wanted to intervene in the conflict, or seize the opportunity to loot the room.
They arrived to find the three ghouls devouring the bodies of the two adventurers Luria had left in the room. Decision made for them, they began looting the place. The silks, furniture and rugs were heavy, but would fetch a decent price if hauled to the surface. Monty peered into a curtained closet and saw a big pile of treasure and items, but wisely avoided grabbing it when he noticed it sparking with electricity in the dark room.
BACK ON THE SURFACE
The players carried as much stuff back to the surface as they could. It wouldn’t cover the payment they owed Sam, but it would come close. And they didn’t want to go back in the dungeon, out of fear that the Fiend would retaliate for the ghouls and looting. So they came up with a new plan: Monty would sneak into the city with the money and the delivery items, pawn them somewhere, and hopefully the total would be enough to cover the debt. The others would make camp in the woods, rather than waltzing into the city and attracting the Trade Warden’s ire.
Monty snuck across on the lumber ferry back to the city, without incident. He couldn’t find any buyers in lower Brazenkragg for the goods (the adventurers had ordered shamir fuel and pellets for their flameless lantern), but he was able to sneak into the upper city and hock them to a mage in Elftown for 200 silver total. That took him over a thousand, so he promptly arranged a meet with one of Sam’s accountants and paid off the debt. Rather than go back across the river and wander around in the woods after dark, he used some of the leftover money to grab a room for the night.
Thomas and Kamilla camped in the woods outside the dungeon for the night. They saw a pair of owlbears, thankfully engaged in some complicated owlbear mating ritual and uninterested in eating people. It wasn’t until they went to snuff the fire and go to bed that they were accosted by five constables of the Brazenkragg militia. The sentinels wanted to know if the players had seen a group of adventurers, who went missing in the area around the big tower. The Trade Warden Hiram Xavier was specifically worried about one of his wizards, who had been among the four.
Kamilla had an idea. She told them she knew where the four adventurers had gone, if they’d just follow her. She led the group back to the adventurer camp at the base of the tower, down into the first floor of the dungeon. She told the militiamen that the adventurers were behind the mysterious curtain. The officers went into the Fiend lair. Kamilla heard shouts, the clash of blades. Then two of the constables came running out. Kamilla cast Sleep and knocked them both out. Thomas came running down after, and together they tied the officers up. They then left them as an offering to the Fiend, to make up for getting two of her thralls killed - and stop her from going after the players as a replacement. Then they went back to camp and slept until morning.
They noticed a couple irregularities in the murals during their search. A section of wall in the Northwest of the room was inscribed with a dire warning not to breach it, since plague waited on the other side. And a section of wall in the Southeast corner was inscribed with much cruder murals than the rest of the walls. The texture was different too, like dry, spongy wood rather than stone. It wasn’t even stone at all, it was just rock dusted to have the same color as the other walls. The players decided to break it down, but tied cloths around their noses and mouths before doing so. They struck the material with the crowbar, then inserted the shaft into the hole and peeled back the material. A cloud of spores spilled forth from the hole. There was a mushroom man on the other side. The players turned and ran.
A single dwarven skeleton blocked their path on the walkway through the cavern, but they quickly dispatched it. Thomas took its two handed maul, reserving his sword as a secondary weapon.
In the drinking hall, they weighed their options. Their improvised masks had stopped them from inhaling the spores. How tough could a mushroom person be? They went back into the tomb, where two fungaliths were inspecting the damage to the false wall, which hung open like a door into a secret passage beyond. The mushroom people brandished their spears, but didn’t attack, instead shooting more spores at the players. The masks blocked these, and the players brandished their weapons right back.
The trio tried talking to the mushrooms, but the fungaliths didn’t understand a word. Kamilla was able to use crude sign language to communicate with them. The fungaliths wanted the players to take off their masks. The players refused. The players asked if the wall they broke belonged to the mushrooms. The mushrooms said yes. The players turned around and left, rather than risking a war with whatever fungal civilization existed in the secret tunnel. They explored the cave below the walkway, and identified a second entrance to the fungus cave, which they likewise decided not to enter.
The players explored the abandoned vault and dormitories. The place had been looted long ago. There were a bunch of traps, sprung long ago, and only 19 silver pieces in loose change that the previous vandals missed.
Having exhausted the easy options on level 1, the players descended the stairs to level 2.
The checkpoint was assembled from mortared slabs, rather than carven from native stone. The players walked out into the exploratory mines, a grid of tunnels which extended in all directions. They found a supply cache, filled with mining equipment but also a few useful items: dust masks, hooded lanterns, and an abacus with semiprecious beads worth 100 silver pieces. They explored to the West and found an access tunnel leading to a metal vault door with a big valve. They could hear a rushing waterfall on the other side. Thomas rotated the valve and the door was instantly forced open by the water, which came up to the characters’ knees. Thomas could see an elaborate waterworks inside, with the water cascading down from above, deflected along different channels by stone buttresses and catchbasins, before tumbling down through a chrome steel grate to the level below.
The players decided against flooding the second dungeon level, and between the three of them they were able to push the door closed again. Unfortunately, the noise had attracted a trio of ghouls - dead dwarves reanimated by an endless hunger for meat. Fortunately, Monty and Kamilla convinced them that there was a far easier and tastier target to be had: the servants of Luria the Fiend up on level 1, who weren’t even wearing armor. The ghouls bought it, and raced upstairs to claim their prize before Luria returned. The players followed behind at a safe distance, not sure if they wanted to intervene in the conflict, or seize the opportunity to loot the room.
They arrived to find the three ghouls devouring the bodies of the two adventurers Luria had left in the room. Decision made for them, they began looting the place. The silks, furniture and rugs were heavy, but would fetch a decent price if hauled to the surface. Monty peered into a curtained closet and saw a big pile of treasure and items, but wisely avoided grabbing it when he noticed it sparking with electricity in the dark room.
BACK ON THE SURFACE
The players carried as much stuff back to the surface as they could. It wouldn’t cover the payment they owed Sam, but it would come close. And they didn’t want to go back in the dungeon, out of fear that the Fiend would retaliate for the ghouls and looting. So they came up with a new plan: Monty would sneak into the city with the money and the delivery items, pawn them somewhere, and hopefully the total would be enough to cover the debt. The others would make camp in the woods, rather than waltzing into the city and attracting the Trade Warden’s ire.
Monty snuck across on the lumber ferry back to the city, without incident. He couldn’t find any buyers in lower Brazenkragg for the goods (the adventurers had ordered shamir fuel and pellets for their flameless lantern), but he was able to sneak into the upper city and hock them to a mage in Elftown for 200 silver total. That took him over a thousand, so he promptly arranged a meet with one of Sam’s accountants and paid off the debt. Rather than go back across the river and wander around in the woods after dark, he used some of the leftover money to grab a room for the night.
Thomas and Kamilla camped in the woods outside the dungeon for the night. They saw a pair of owlbears, thankfully engaged in some complicated owlbear mating ritual and uninterested in eating people. It wasn’t until they went to snuff the fire and go to bed that they were accosted by five constables of the Brazenkragg militia. The sentinels wanted to know if the players had seen a group of adventurers, who went missing in the area around the big tower. The Trade Warden Hiram Xavier was specifically worried about one of his wizards, who had been among the four.
Kamilla had an idea. She told them she knew where the four adventurers had gone, if they’d just follow her. She led the group back to the adventurer camp at the base of the tower, down into the first floor of the dungeon. She told the militiamen that the adventurers were behind the mysterious curtain. The officers went into the Fiend lair. Kamilla heard shouts, the clash of blades. Then two of the constables came running out. Kamilla cast Sleep and knocked them both out. Thomas came running down after, and together they tied the officers up. They then left them as an offering to the Fiend, to make up for getting two of her thralls killed - and stop her from going after the players as a replacement. Then they went back to camp and slept until morning.
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