Nobody has returned from the tower of silence at the edge of the plain. That means any treasure inside has yet to be looted.
- A Sword
- A Backpack
- A Lantern
- 2 Provisions
- No Potions
- Whatever they kept from Into the Nest if they played that adventure.
THE TOWER OF SILENCE
The Tower of Silence is where the ancients disposed of corpses. It's a pit dug in a cliffside where bodies could be left exposed to the elements and to hungry birds, disposing of the dead without polluting the water, fire or earth. An Elf lives in the tower now. He's a bitter and vengeful sadist who lures people to his den with rumors of treasure, captures and tortures them to death.
Players arrive in 8 as the sun is setting. After one hour of play, light no longer falls inside the structure except in room 7. At that point the GHOULS leave room 1 and begin hunting the players.
The ELF is aware of the players' entry into the Tower. He stays invisible and torments them as they move around. He breaks invisibility and attacks lone characters.
BOTTOM FLOOR
1: GHOUL DEN
A stone room with shelves in the wall, scattered with gnawed bones and musty cloth.
Three GHOULS nest here amid the old gore. Unless intruders have meat for them they attack. Amid the trash is a jeweled main gauche dagger which adds 1 point to the user's damage when held in the left hand.
2: THE SHRINE
This room reeks of sweet tallow. There's a mound of something in the wall alcove, like an enormous half melted candle. The top is sculpted in the shape of a crown.
The ELF made this religious object from the rendered fat of his victims. Humans who touch the statue are aged 2D6 years. Threatening the statue causes the Elf to attack.
3: STATUE DUMP
Your light falls on a natural cave filled with statues. Horned men and prancing revelers. How did they get in here?
The room is cramped, characters must squeeze between the statues to traverse it. If a fight breaks out, they can't gang up to fight a single foe. A DOLL stands motionless disguised as a statue. It waits and attacks the weakest looking adventurer. It carries the key to the chest at 9. The GHOULS can move freely through the room on their hands and knees, squeezing through tight spaces.
4: TOWER OF SILENCE
Corpses lie in cells on the floor of this circular pit, held in place by chains so the effluvial grime from their decomposition drains into a central pit. Several doors ring the walkway around the pit, watched by statues in wall alcoves.
The statues depict Gods of Elfkind. The Queen wears a gold crown worth 1 GP. She's hollow, filled with blinding dust that she exhales when the crown is taken. One of the bodies has a ring worth 1 GP. The corpse is covered with adhesive solution and slides into the hole when someone gets stuck to it. The GHOULS cannot pursue adventurers here until the sun goes down.
5: THE SPIKE
A staircase ascends around an ominous vertical spike coated with strange slime. Braziers light the room. A large object like an enormous melon is impaled on the spike one story above you.
The floor is slippery with wax and cerebrospinal fluid. One of the pots is full of the stuff.
6: THE GIANT
A giant trapped in the room beyond peers through the door at you. It drools on the floor and tries to bring its mouth in alignment with the door, lashing the frame with its tongue in a pitiful attempt to slurp you up.
The Giant can't fit his face through the door, only slurp with his huge tongue if the players get too close. He can see the invisible ELF and starts talking excitedly about being fed when the little sprite shows up. The players will probably think he's talking to them. Then the Elf shoves someone into the Giant's mouth. The Giant has 9 GP in its digestive system.
TOP FLOOR
7: THE WINDOW
This adorable room is full of art and curios. A circular window looks out over the plain.
On the shelves are
- Ammonite Fossil. If it falls off the shelf it breaks in a puff of ominous shimmering light. No other effect.
- Enormous worm eaten heart in a jar. If the jar is broken the worms crawl out looking for new organs to devour.
- Aluminum sword. Worth 3 GP but useless in a fight due to its light weight.
- Book of Curses, held shut with knotted rope. Curses reader if opened. Pages can be carefully removed without viewing and placed like mines.
- Curse of Lethargy (move slowly, act every other turn in battle)
- Curse of Masochism (always hit in combat, even on successful attack)
- Curse of Bravery (cannot retreat from battle)
- Three Potions in clay jars
- Potion of leprosy, removes D6 fingers
- Healing potion that completely restores Stamina
- Three day blinding potion
On the table is a knife driven through a page from a shredded prayer book, taken off one of the Elf's victims. At the east end of the room is a secret door leading to 9. There's no mechanism on this side but it can be opened with a crowbar into the wall seam.
8: THE PIT
You stand on a walkway at the rim of a two story pit. Below you is a hole with corpses arranged in trays. Above you is the mesa and the desert. A couple buzzards perch on the edge of a crumbling walkway transiting the circular space.
The gaps are easy to hop over. If the players do this the ELF waits until the character with the lowest Stamina jumps, then commands the BUZZARDS to attack them in mid air. The victim must test Luck or fall to the level below, losing D6 Stamina and Skill from the uncontrolled fall.
9: THE HOARD
The room is filled with heaped junk and decorated with faded artwork. There's a door with a peephole which permits clandestine viewing of the adjacent room.
On the wall is a skin tapestry of Elves playing in the sun which the Elf put in here to stop it bleaching. The chest is locked, the Doll in the statue garden at 3 has the key. Inside is 21 GP in treasure taken from visitors to the dungeon. The shelf is mostly stacked candles and other adventuring junk. The bucket on top is full of Farmer's Blight, a deadly fungus harmless to Elves. The ELF knocks it over and fills the room with suffocating spores. A reliquary box amid the stacked junk holds a cursed bone of a Starved Saint. When wielded as a club it deals an extra point of damage, but the bearer cannot heal by eating provisions.
10: THE POND
Clear water flows from a statue and fills this natural cave. Stepping stones allow passage from one entrance to the other.
2 GP in coins glitter at the bottom of the pond. The ELF pushes you in if you reach for them. Characters with a heavy load of equipment sink and drown without help.
11: THE SPIKE
A giant head on a spike leers at you. The eyes follow you but there's no other sign the thing is even alive. Fluid oozes down the skewer to the room below.
The head is kept alive by magic but is nonresponsive.
12: THE BED
This windowless room is lit by candles on the ceiling. The circular bed has an ominous chain attached to the headboard.
The rug hides a simple punji trap, a plank over a shallow depression filled with barbed spikes. The Elf is too light to break the boards. There's a small OTYUGH under the bed. It keeps the sheets clean by slurping up any messes left in the fabric by the Elf or his victims. The ELF can command it to attack the players. The drawers hold a whip, a goad, and a wand that inflicts painful but nonfatal static shocks.
13: THE GARDEN
This chamber is filled with glowing plants. It's humid and it reeks of mulch. A man hangs spread on a frame, skin peeled open, filled with tubes connecting him to jars of pulsing organs. A woman dangles upside down in a crow cage.
The prisoners are captured adventurers.
- Graham has been vivisected and his organs placed in jars while he's still alive, connected to his body with fleshy tubes.
- Lucy is suspended upside down and forced to watch, which the Elf likes more than actually hurting people.
They are kept immobile and mute by the Hand of Glory smoldering on the shelf. Remove it and they beg for help. Graham cannot be put back together without magic, which the Elf could do but won't. Lucy can be released from the crow cage, it's not locked. She is naked, unarmed and so terrified of the Elf that she will betray the players at his command to avoid further punishment.
14: THE SKINS
This tannery reeks of dung and quicksilver. Flayed skins in various states of preservation hang on racks or drape across clothing shop dummies under the light of a caged orb that shines white like the sun.
When the Elf is done with captives he skins them and makes things from the hides. One of the dummies is an animated DOLL that waits to attack the weakest adventurer. The ELF likes to initiate fights by pushing intruders into either the vat of dung or the vat of mercury. The magic lamp on the ceiling casts light as though it were day, letting the Elf work with color accurately. It works if detached from the ceiling and even wards off the GHOULS. The Elf's enchanted shears take both hands to wield, but on a successful hit they have a Luck roll's chance to sever one of the target's limbs.
MEN AND MONSTERS
BUZZARDS
The buzzards once fulfilled a constructive purpose at the Tower of Silence, excarnating the dead left by the faithful. Elves only respect nature in the sense that a craftsman respects his tools. They cultivate ecologies of animals they can command.
3 Skill, 3 Stamina, 1 Attack
The buzzards only attack when ordered by the Elf. Left to their own devices they pick at corpses and fly away when threatened.
DOLL
The dolls are animated by the Elf's magic, imbued with life energy extracted from victims of his torments. They silently follow adventurers and attack when the group is spread out.
5 Skill, 3 Stamina, 1 Attack
Pick a victim and make a Luck roll for them. On a failure the Doll grabs them and begins strangling them silently. Don't tell them this happened until they try to do something or another player asks them something.
ELF
The Elf is a tiny sadist who lures people to the dungeon, tortures and kills them. He's invisible. He can shove people and interact with objects without breaking cover, but if he attacks and deals damage he becomes visible that round.
7 Skill, 7 Stamina, 2 luck, 3 Attacks
When the adventurers use a clever trick on the Elf, like spreading dust to spot his footprints or setting a trap to capture him, he can spend a point of Luck to make a saving throw and avoid it. When he successfully pranks an adventurer, he gets a point back. Characters dropped to zero Stamina by the Elf's attacks are knocked unconscious. He wants at least one of them alive.
GHOULS
Ghouls are blind undead creatures, they hunt by sound and smell. They are always about as smart as a dog. They are always hungry but prioritize easy meat over anything they have to fight for. They fight each other over the juiciest kills. Sunlight melts them instantly.
5 Skill, 6 Stamina, 1 Attack
Getting hit by a ghoul paralyzes the victim so they lose their next action. They can make a saving throw with Luck to shrug off the stun. Each Ghoul carries 2 GP, one over each eye socket.
GIANT
The guileless Giant is stuck in a confined space thanks to the Elf's trickery, but doesn't realize this. The Elf feeds him and promises that he'll find a way to rescue him. If he somehow escaped he'd be a force to be reckoned with, even with his body twisted and his muscles atrophied by disuse.
4 Skill, 20 Stamina, 1 Attack
Stuck in the little room, the Giant can only bite things that move within reach of his tongue. Anyone he bites is instantly killed.
OTYUGH
Otyughs are three legged detritovores, normally harmless unless their space is invaded. The little Otyugh under the Elf's bed eats trash and cleans his belongings. When commanded to attack by its owner it rasps its tentacles across anyone who comes near.
5 Skill, 5 Stamina, 2 Attacks
The Otyugh is impossible to hit under the bed unless the characters have a long enough weapon. They can hack off its exposed tendrils. Those caressed by the tentacles contract a disease that makes them sweat profusely, impairing their grip and balance.
THE MAKING OF
I created my last Fighting Fantasy RPG dungeon about a year ago. When I playtested it the game ran less than an hour. I created this one so that you can run them as a double feature. Also, this dungeon lets the players use all the cool stuff they found in the Nest, including all the goodies they'll probably buy from the merchant at the very end.
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