The Clerics of the Carmine Dawn have tidally locked the planet. The sunlit side will boil. The nightside will freeze. Only a band of twilight will remain habitable unless a scratch team of heroes can infiltrate the Clerics’ Tower.
THE CLERICS OF THE CARMINE DAWN
A celebrity religion which flatters the egotism of the upper classes. Arresting the rotation of the planet will let them rule it as sorcerer-kings. They wear pink chokha and garnet pins shaped like swords. Each has a death curse that fires when they die.
1: LEMOLO THE PSYCHIC
The brains of the operation. He dislikes the Triplets but likes their Slave Gladiators, who do what they’re told without editorializing. He can doom one target each round, the victim has two rounds before they die instantly. When he dies, the sphere in the ALTAR breaks containment.
THE TRIPLETS
Superfluous nobles. Brought along by Lemolo for their bloodline, which allows them to operate the magic devices of the Tower.
2: Gadwynna
Wants an honorable fight until she loses, then demands her underlings crush the offender. Her glowing sword mutates those she strikes. On death her sword breaks, she becomes a berserk and tumorous giant.
3: Toshimo
The leader of the triplets. Overfond of drink, drugs and flattery. His two handed sword is ordinary but he wields it skillfully. His gauntlet of authority forces people to kneel. On death he expels a cloud of flowery fog that brings pleasant hallucinations to those who breathe it.
4: Yoshida
Yoshida has the keenest tactical sense but the others rarely listen to his advice. His pink lantern lets him fire destructive beams of grapefruit colored energy when he stands in the light of dawn. On death the lantern bursts with a brilliant flash and blinds anyone in eyesight.
THE SLAVE GLADIATORS
5: Beck and 6: Bell are slaves the Triplets got as a birthday present. Gadwynna is their favorite, she never harms them outside of training. Their electric halberds briefly scramble the nervous systems of those they strike. When they die their implanted bombs explode.
1: LEMOLO THE PSYCHIC
The brains of the operation. He dislikes the Triplets but likes their Slave Gladiators, who do what they’re told without editorializing. He can doom one target each round, the victim has two rounds before they die instantly. When he dies, the sphere in the ALTAR breaks containment.
THE TRIPLETS
Superfluous nobles. Brought along by Lemolo for their bloodline, which allows them to operate the magic devices of the Tower.
2: Gadwynna
Wants an honorable fight until she loses, then demands her underlings crush the offender. Her glowing sword mutates those she strikes. On death her sword breaks, she becomes a berserk and tumorous giant.
3: Toshimo
The leader of the triplets. Overfond of drink, drugs and flattery. His two handed sword is ordinary but he wields it skillfully. His gauntlet of authority forces people to kneel. On death he expels a cloud of flowery fog that brings pleasant hallucinations to those who breathe it.
4: Yoshida
Yoshida has the keenest tactical sense but the others rarely listen to his advice. His pink lantern lets him fire destructive beams of grapefruit colored energy when he stands in the light of dawn. On death the lantern bursts with a brilliant flash and blinds anyone in eyesight.
THE SLAVE GLADIATORS
5: Beck and 6: Bell are slaves the Triplets got as a birthday present. Gadwynna is their favorite, she never harms them outside of training. Their electric halberds briefly scramble the nervous systems of those they strike. When they die their implanted bombs explode.
THE TOWER
A
fortress pregnant with power of a past age. Lit by glowing orbs on
stalks of metal. Furniture is bolted to the ceiling. Scaling the
exterior provokes an attack from the Giant Scorpion that lives in the
parapet. Its venom is not fatal but the momentary paralysis precipitates
a nasty fall.
ADOBE
A two story roundhouse. A staircase connects the second level to the Tower’s GARDEN. Four Dawnlanders guard it, awed by the power of the Clerics. The primitive desert dwellers wear scant clothing of red-dyed monster leather and fight with flint arrows.
GARDEN
Humid and heavy with pollen. A hole in the floor leads to a MIDDEN. A trellis with vines allows access to the ARMORY above. The Caretaker slithers through the undergrowth, a creature of flower and fungus. Intruders who cut vines or pick the fruit of the chamber earn its ire. It crushes their bones and tosses them into the midden to compost.
MIDDEN
A windowless pit of heaped junk and mulch. The soft lights of the tower shine dimly beneath the refuse. Three Mutants lurk here, Dawnlanders warped by Gadwynna’s shining sword. Promised restoration for faithful service they attack intruders from behind. Their grasping claws and questing tentacles can immobilize enemies.
ARMORY
A room full of racks, empty save two needle-throwers ignored by the Clerics. The dawn does not shine here. Gadwynna spars with the two SLAVE GLADIATORS. A partition separates the armory from the SLEEPERS. A hole in the ceiling leads to the FACE, allowing Yoshida to fire down through the hole from above.
SLEEPERS
The ceiling is lined with glass faced coffins, holding skeletons. The most honored of the dead is buried in full panoply. An interior wall separates this room from the ARMORY. The Triplets can command the suited skeleton to aid them. The Animated Armor housing the corpse is clumsy but nigh-indestructible.
MIRRORS
Mirrors on the walls display other worlds. Suns and planets and alien landscapes. The images hypnotize unwary spectators. Toshimo smokes flowers of the dreaming tree and gazes at the visions.
FACE
The ceiling glows under the gaze of an upside down head. It shouts a command each round, cycling through a list of orders intruders are psychically compelled to obey.
HOLD YOUR POSITION (cannot move)
HOLD YOUR FIRE (cannot attack)
HOLD YOUR [UNINTELLIGIBLE] (cannot cast spells).
The Triplets are immune. Yoshida organizes surviving siblings here.
ALTAR
A hole in the wall lets in the dawn. A midnight orb hovers in a cradle on the ceiling, annihilating anything that contacts it. Mirrors focus its black essence on the low hanging sun. LEMOLO maintains this apparatus, perpetually annoyed by deviations. Destruction of the mirrors restores the rotation of the world but the sphere expands until it devours the entire tower, then collapses into nothing.
ENCOUNTERS
If the players dawdle or rest in the tower, the surviving Clerics team up with the Animated Armor for a merciless assault while the Mutants attack from behind.
A two story roundhouse. A staircase connects the second level to the Tower’s GARDEN. Four Dawnlanders guard it, awed by the power of the Clerics. The primitive desert dwellers wear scant clothing of red-dyed monster leather and fight with flint arrows.
GARDEN
Humid and heavy with pollen. A hole in the floor leads to a MIDDEN. A trellis with vines allows access to the ARMORY above. The Caretaker slithers through the undergrowth, a creature of flower and fungus. Intruders who cut vines or pick the fruit of the chamber earn its ire. It crushes their bones and tosses them into the midden to compost.
MIDDEN
A windowless pit of heaped junk and mulch. The soft lights of the tower shine dimly beneath the refuse. Three Mutants lurk here, Dawnlanders warped by Gadwynna’s shining sword. Promised restoration for faithful service they attack intruders from behind. Their grasping claws and questing tentacles can immobilize enemies.
ARMORY
A room full of racks, empty save two needle-throwers ignored by the Clerics. The dawn does not shine here. Gadwynna spars with the two SLAVE GLADIATORS. A partition separates the armory from the SLEEPERS. A hole in the ceiling leads to the FACE, allowing Yoshida to fire down through the hole from above.
SLEEPERS
The ceiling is lined with glass faced coffins, holding skeletons. The most honored of the dead is buried in full panoply. An interior wall separates this room from the ARMORY. The Triplets can command the suited skeleton to aid them. The Animated Armor housing the corpse is clumsy but nigh-indestructible.
MIRRORS
Mirrors on the walls display other worlds. Suns and planets and alien landscapes. The images hypnotize unwary spectators. Toshimo smokes flowers of the dreaming tree and gazes at the visions.
FACE
The ceiling glows under the gaze of an upside down head. It shouts a command each round, cycling through a list of orders intruders are psychically compelled to obey.
HOLD YOUR POSITION (cannot move)
HOLD YOUR FIRE (cannot attack)
HOLD YOUR [UNINTELLIGIBLE] (cannot cast spells).
The Triplets are immune. Yoshida organizes surviving siblings here.
ALTAR
A hole in the wall lets in the dawn. A midnight orb hovers in a cradle on the ceiling, annihilating anything that contacts it. Mirrors focus its black essence on the low hanging sun. LEMOLO maintains this apparatus, perpetually annoyed by deviations. Destruction of the mirrors restores the rotation of the world but the sphere expands until it devours the entire tower, then collapses into nothing.
ENCOUNTERS
If the players dawdle or rest in the tower, the surviving Clerics team up with the Animated Armor for a merciless assault while the Mutants attack from behind.
THE MAKING OF
This is my entry for the 2026 Appendix N Jam. Since this is the Appendix N jam it's based on stories I like. When I got the prompt I immediately thought of a tidally locked planet because of the Carmine Rig from Brigador Killers, which is pink colored to blend in on the tidally locked planet Volta. A tidally locked planet immediately reminded me of the Grand Khan's plan from Donjon: Twilight, to stop the world from turning so it wouldn't explode. The technological ruling class bullying the helpless peasants at the twilight of Urth immediately evoked old man Wolfe's Solar Cycle, which begins with an evil wizard tower that's actually a rocket ship..
You can find the downloadable version of the dungeon here.
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