Descent Into Pandemonium

The idea of the #dungeon32 "contest" was to build a megadungeon by creating a brief outline of one room, each day, for the year of 2023, in a particular kind of notebook. This is the result of mine, with an introduction written after it was all done.

Introduction

This presentation of what turned into Descent Into Pandemonium explains, up front in this introduction, some things that became only clear as the design went on. This will hopefull make the megadungeon a bit easier to understand. For the most part, the sections after the introduction remain mostly as they were originally written, so you can sort of see the evolution of the idea. There are a couple of places where an idea from later in the process necessitated changing a prior location slightly, but this was avoided most of the time.

Premise

The #dungeon32 pitch suggested making the dungeon have a level a month, but this one is done a level a week. The rough plan was a decent ever downwards, with order giving way to chaos the deeper you go. By the time you get to the bottom, you're accessing planes of chaos.

Given that, it seemed right to start with a temple devoted to order at the top, abandoned for two millennia. As it turns out, this time frame obliterates a lot of what you might normally see in a dungeon. Some research discovered that, over 2000 years in an underground, slightly damp environment with breathable air…

• …stalactites average about 20cm of growth.
• …all wood, cloth, leather, and organic materials decompose to dust and dirt
• …bones will have decomposed to dust
• …teeth will have fully or mostly decomposed; a few might remain intact
• …most metals (e.g. copper, iron, silver) corrode to dust
• …brass and some other metals may or may not have survived, based on their immediate environment
• …glass, stone, gold, platinum, and bronze remain mostly to fully unchanged
• …some crystals (e.g. quartz) remain intact and some (e.g. salt) do not, depending on their chemical makeup

This last fact led to the early idea that worshippers at this temple were specifically attracted to crystals as expressions of order spontaneously created in nature, making crystals a theme through much of the megadungeon.

Sources

Descent Into Pandemonium was built for high-fantasy, dungeon-delver roleplaying, but not for any specific game. It pulls references from the entire history of the genre, somewhat at random, and various editions, third-party additions, and knock-offs of popular products, some of which have an SRD and some don't. Names of creatures known to be "protected content" have been changed, but the rough idea used. In cases where different SRDs contain very different ideas of how threatening a particular monster should be, likely the more imposing version is intended. In short, the types of monsters listed act as a tropey shorthand, without having to take up space with stats or references. You might need to look some of them up.

Very little thought was given to ideas of "balance" or "appropriate challenge", but this megadungeon isn't intended for beginners and, as high-fantasy, assumes heroic competence. If you port this to a game of choice, you'll need to do a little work to match the threat level of your PCs and the system you are using.

The three chaos gods behind much of this story are never named, always referred to as "a god of strife", "a goddess of discord", and "a god of insanity". Choosing specific versions of such deities never became important as the design went on, so never happened. Feel free to assign whatever specific faces and trappings you want.

The cosmology employed assumes something roughly like the “Great Wheel”, with alignment-centric outer planes, and Pandemonium specifically, but this is not crucial.

Rough History

• The “Kiooliciti” (kiːuˈlɪsɪtiː) refers to a religious movement/culture centered around worship of order and law, particularly in how it manifested in crystals. Though advanced, the Kiooliciti have been forgotten, the Kioolicit language extinct.
• Two thousand years ago, a Kioolicit temple flourished here, on the slope of a temperate mountain forest, part of a magically advanced, but now extinct, civilization.
• Though some activity took place above ground, the bulk of the temple descends, in levels, into the rock.
• Geomantic forces concentrated a potent source of order into a huge geode deep in the rock, with the temple built here to protect and access it.
• The Kiooliciti forged a powerful artifact, The Axiom, to harness and use this source of order, ultimately constructing most of their society around it.
• While the priests spread Kioolicit teaching and culture to extend their influence, the culture’s mages became obsessed with using portals to capitalize on that influence, and built a tesseract connecting their labs across the globe.
• Three chaotic gods bristled at the existence of The Axiom, and became briefly obsessed with the idea of corrupting its power to stabilize a permanent path between the plane of Pandemonium and the center of Kioolicit society.
• The machinations of these gods arranged an unlikely alliance of extraplanar chaotic forces, which breached the temple’s tesseract and moved up to attack the temple.
• Kioolicit defenders managed to stall the invaders before they reached the surface.
• The short stalemate was broken by necromantic plague, turning many of the temple defenders into an undead horde.
• Remaining defenders managed to confine the horde to the lower levels of the temple, then gathered what they could and abandoned the temple entirely, burying the surface entrances, and severing portal connections.
• In time, the invaders shattered The Axiom and absconded with its heart.
• The invaders, having accomplished their actual goal, never breached through to the surface as the Kiooliciti feared and, over two centuries, the garrison guarding the surface faded to nothing, along with what was left of the Kioolicit culture.
• Within the temple’s somewhat humid conditions, two millennia have taken their toll on what was left behind.
• Over that time, most of the potent wards and spells used to seal the temple have also faded.
• The chaos gods, being chaos gods, grew tired of their new link between Pandemonium with the temple and abandoned it within a few decades after the invasion, but the elaborate conduit remains.
• Over two millenia, the location, and the Kioolicit culture are almost completely forgotten.
• The PCs arrive on site, somehow.

Glossary

• The Axiom was a powerful artifact for concentrating and enforcing order. It was shattered, but its shards and heart still retain some power.
• The cthulids are an extra-planar species of psychic malevolence, humanoid with tentacled faces.
• The invaders refers to a loose aliance of chaotic extra-planar creatures who targeted the Axiom and the temple which protected it. Three classes of beings comprised the bulk of the invaders:
  • The many types of demons embody evil and sin, in all its forms.
  • The enropics are a large, frog-like, humanoid species, native to a chaotic outer plane, who reproduce by infecting others.
  • The proteans are a collection of related shapeshifting species, who often take serpentine form.
• The material inertite defies all attempts at magical, physical, or thermal alteration, unbreakable and unalterable. Only disintegration magic is capable of altering is structure at all.
• Kiooliciti (adjective Kioolicit): an ancient, now extinct, multi-species culture driven by a worship of order and law that flourished in this region two thousand years ago.
• The Licytans were a species of giants preceding the Kiooliciti in venerating order in this location.
• A number of polyhedral keys control a set of portal arches; see Appendix A.
• The saurids were a species of lizard-like humanoids, now extinct, used as fodder by the chaotic forces during the invasion.

Themes

• Corruption of order
• Crystals
• Abandonment
• Discovery of lost history as “treasure”

Scale

Until the later months, maps use a scale of one square being a square meter. If you want to say that each is five feet on a side instead, no one will stop you.

The Temple Beneath

(January) An secret and ancient map suggests that a location in remote mountains in the middle of nowhere once, thousands of years ago, formed the center of a mysterious civilization.

A · The Surface

Half-way up a forested mountain, an ancient trail leads to ruins.

1.1 Stone-Capped Well

• Rune-covered
• Repellent

1.2 Feet of the Colossus

• All that remains of a massive granite statue, created by magic.
• Overgrown, no paths remaining.
• Scattered haphazardly on all sides of the left foot are balls of hair and bones (like owl pellets), about volleyball size, as well as larger solitary bones, skulls, and antlers.
• Ancient and weathered

1.3 Buried Entrance

• Large stony opening, built into the slope of the mountain.
• A wide stairwell leading down runs from one end of the opening to the other, but it is completely filled with granite blocks of all sizes, some recognizably part of the colossus.
• Grasses, plants, and trees grow from the blocks, nearly obscuring the whole entrance, obviously grown over centuries.
• Muffled moans and warnings in the extinct Kioolicit language to keep away emanate periodically from deep under the rubble.

1.4 Double Spiral

• Path made from shards of obsidian
• Jarringly barren
• Walking the path exhausting, but provides some protection from chaos for a day.

1.5 Tentacled Horror

• Three tiers, each 2m high and 2m deep. Large granite slabs, broken into huge chunks, supported by large blocks. Many blocks that supported top tier missing, scattered.
• Ruined stairs lead up each side, overgrown
• Grasses grow on all tiers and stairs. Trees on top, but ragged stumps on others.
• A tentacled beast lairs under the top tier, pulling in prey from 6m away.

1.6 Hive

• A tiered temple once like the other, but half has been swept away. In its place, a riot of huge, strangely-colored flowers grow.
• Ruined stairs lead up one side, overgrown.
• Under overhang of middle tier is large hive of strange bee-like insects who love the flowers and hate intruders.

1.7 Kiln

• A large stone kiln for firing pottery, all that remains of a larger stone building.
• A tiny fire elemental hidden and bound within, about as smart as a cat, neglected and pathetic.

1.8 Dire Bear Lair

• Collapsed building, wooden walls long gone, but remnants of slate roof and stone floor scattered about.
• Dug under the east corner is a deep slope, leading down to the lair of a dire bear.
• If all light is extinguished, the glow from 1.11 can be made out through cracks in the back wall, a low point where water also slowly drains. Some force could knock a hole near the ceiling of 1.11.

B · The Public Temple

1.9 Gate House

• North set of massive metal doors open into the room, barred by two cross braces. Stairs to surface beyond lead up (to 1.3), but filled with rubble.
• South set of massive metal door open into 1.10.
• Metal grate in floor, 1m diameter, covers .5m drain leading straight down.
• This room is the lowest point on the level. Water trickling in from 1.3 drains here, leaving a muddy floor.

1.10 Foyer

• Domed ceiling rises to 7m high. Original mosaic art has fallen, haphazardly littering the floor. Slow drips from the ceiling over two millenia have formed stalactites, a few up to 1m long.
• A 3m diameter shaft leads down in the center of the room, wrapped by twin spiral stairs, made of lattices of a strange, untarnished, blue metal, guarded by railings.
• Every minute light shines in this room (or in any landing of this spiral staircase) runs a 1 in 8 risk of attracting 2d4 spectres from below.

1.11 Abandoned Temple of Law

• Curved ceiling glows with heatless continual light, interrupted by stalactites.
• What were once wooden pews form nearly unrecognizable piles of decay. A species of shrub grows from these piles. They have thorny seeds, colorful flowers, and emit a pollen that causes hallucinations. Some of these plants are over a meter tall.
• Alcoves in walls once held statues of lawful gods, but are now empty.
• Two large, intangible prayer strips written in the Kioolicit language hover above an altar on a raised dais. If deciphered, one is a prayer of asking for forgiveness for having to abandon this temple, and the other prays for protection to keep the enemy sealed below forever.
• Water from the low point of 1.8 leaks from high on the wall. A bit of force could open a connection between the two.
• Part of the floor in the entry has collapsed, exposing a drainage system similar to the one in 1.9.

1.12 Prayer Rooms

• Six durable wooden doors, locks filled with lead, engraved with symbols of law and painted with a blue preservative resin.
• If the doors are forced, each room filled with ashes and soot, burned long ago.
• One of the rooms (determine at random) contains a flaming ghost driven to senseless rage by intruders. If defeated, or the rooms cleaned, the ghost, the ashes, and even broken doors will reappear on the rising of the next half moon.

1.13 Preparation Rooms

• Two rooms connected to temple for preparing rites “behind the scenes”.
• Piles of decayed tables and cabinets. Broken glass bottles. Among the rubble is a purple octahedral key.
• Walls engraved with instructions for religious rituals important to the Kiooliciti, valuable to historians.

1.14 Balcony

• Stairs lead to a balcony overlooking the temple.
• A small gold holy symbol to a law god rests incongruously in the exact center of the balcony.

1.15 Secret Room

• Only accessible from stairs behind a secret door in the level below.
• Large brass bed frame, blue-green patina but mostly intact, the bedding itself decayed into a pile below.
• A large bronze artwork, something like an oversized round shield, celebrates the erotic life of a god of law in exquisite detail.
• Other piles of what used to be furniture conceal around 100 gold coins.

C · Celebratory Spaces

1.16 Event Rooms

• Two rooms, once used for small gatherings, now have surprisingly spotless mosaic title floors, the colors of the tiles that remain faded entirely.
• A hibernating gelatinous cube blocks the large entranceway to the west room.

1.17 Banquet Hall

• A large, bright banquet hall with stages on either end, gorgeously decorated, with many tables covered with white tablecloths, fancy dining ware, and piled with gigantic flower arrangements, but strangely still.
• A ghost bride maintains the illusion of the party, vainly awaiting guests and her love.
• The fountain in the south wall is real, though dry, containing a scattered collection of coins.

1.18 Foricae

• The height of public toilet design two thousand years ago, now mostly a hole in the floor, surrounded by broken porcelain. The 20cm hole drains into the same drain shaft as 1.9.

1.19 Kitchens

• Two kitchen spaces, filled with patches of large red mushrooms the size of buckets.
• A meter-high block of clear crystal runs the full width of the southern wall. If touched the entire crystal will generate heat without flame, reaching about 200° C.
• Mushrooms will immediately react to heat from the crystal, swelling until they explode, spreading infectious spores.

1.20 Public Bath

• Large pool about 1.5m deep. Water evaporated. Mosaic tile floor. Murals.
• Column in center has fountains all around it, conceals (and feeds into) drain from 1.11.
• Crystal plate around column intended to heat water still glowing hot (200° C)

1.21 Ritual Room

• Revenants endlessly go through the motions of long lost rituals.
• Marble murals on north wall conceal door to storage of now ruined relics, though some gold and crystal cups and vessels can be found, as well as 57 platinum coins.
• Alcove cuts into the side of the well (1.1)
• On south wall, double crystal doors (pink) have been smashed, but only stone behind them. A small symbol (🜂) inlayed in gold on floor. Might be repaired to restore connection to 3.26?

1.22 Gravity Lab

• A room 17m high spans several levels. About 5m from the floor (on level D) an observation deck cuts into the corner of the room.
• Gravity in the room changes at random every d100 seconds. Roll d12:
  • 1: weakly towards wall
  • 2: heavy down
  • 3-4: normal down
  • 5: weakly down
  • 6-8: zero gravity
  • 9: weakly up
  • 10-11: normal up
  • 12: heavy up
• Three wraiths distract themselves in this room

D · Library/Scribing

1.23 Library

• Shelves of magically formed stone hold the dust of what used to be books. Some shelves show battle damage.
• Crystal columns emit a dull red glow, enchanted to suppress all fire in the room.
• Numerous shadows of various kinds are drawn to the glow, unless called by brighter lights in the spiral staircase.

1.24 Reading Room

• Once opulent, now decomposed to unrecognizability.
  

• Tipped over on the floor, worn but intact, is a petrified marilith, left after the battle causing the abandonment of the temple.
• Like fountains in library, this one is dry but, if filled, will run and purify the water.

1.25 Rare Books

• Doors are made of a translucent white crystal, with a seal.
• Much dryer, magical environment has preserved hundreds of mundane books, valuable to historians, archeologists and information seekers, intact but fragile.
• Bookshelves conceal secret doors to 1.26.

1.26 Rarer Books

• Same dry, magical environment, meant to hold magical books.
• Over centuries a purple slime has been slowly digesting the magic, growing to take up about half of the room.
• Only 1d4+1 books remain intact.

1.27 Junior Scribes

Tables and materials of this scribing space have degraded into piles. A few intact glass and bronze items remain, particularly inkwells, including two magical inkwells that will not spill and never run out of ink (one black, one blue).

1.28 Scribes

• A more advanced scribing space, with platforms of magically worked stone, heavily damaged, but recognizable.
• Two crystal columns prevent fire, as in library.
• A concealed bronze vault contains a dozen magical scrolls.
• A freestanding crystal archway used to stand between the columns, but it has been smashed. The translucent keystone contains an orange cubic occlusion (see 3.11).

1.29 Alchemy Labs

• Stone work tables and some glass, bronze, and brass equipment remains intact.
• Wall in center room covered with carved illustrations of the process for making the blue resin used in 1.12.
• Each room contains a clay golem which only understands the Kioolicit language. Each reacts differently to intruders.

The Last Stand

(February) The highest floors of this section mark the furthest penetration of the main invasion force into the temple.

E · Studies

In the invasion of the temple, a fast-acting, contagious necrotic curse from below reached as high has the public section of this level. The curse has long dissipated, but the undead it created remain, though even their animated flesh has rotted away over two thousand years. What remains are crypt corpses — potent skeletal undead — mostly dormant, but alerted by the presence of the living.

1.30 Blockade

• The spiral stairs leading down have been severed, seemingly disintegrated.
• A magically conjured wall of stone surrounds the stairwell from floor to ceiling.
• Writing in blue resin warns of “curse” and “contagion” in the Kioolicit language.
• Alcoves once held guardian golems, but their remnants are scattered on the floor throughout this section.

1.31 Classrooms

• Students of various ages were afflicted and quarantined on this level.
• Each of the classrooms contains 2d12 crypt corpses at any given time.
• Among the piles of decay (books and furniture, mostly turned to dirt) and broken glass, some scattered coins can be found. One of the corpses wears an amulet that hides the wearer from divination magic.

2.1 Pool Rooms

• Behind blue crystal doors. Intended for both lessons and rituals involving water, the pools have long dried up.
• Thousands of timy, low-value gemstones, enchanted to continually glow, are embedded in the walls of the pool and in murals opposite the door, giving the impression of a star-filled night.
• The murals are stunning bas-relief artworks, depicting various deities of law interacting with water.

2.2 Lost Coffin

• An alcove at the top of steep, secret stairs, containing an ornate coffin, filled with dirt; a high ranking member of the temple was secretly a vampire.
• Concealed drawers in the coffin’s base are extra dimensional-storage spaces. Divination can reveal the command words to empty the drawers, revealing a yellow tetrahedral key, 400 gold coins, bags of gemstones, lots of makeup and perfume, a small painting of a man in ancient fashions, and a silver dagger enchanted to slay members of a particular family.

2.3 Clockwerks

• A lab filled with brass gears, mostly broken glass vessels, bronze pots, and a half-assembled bronze automaton.
• A small forge still burns, though clearly hasn’t been used in centuries. The fire elemental bound within has lost all grip on sanity.
• Two still clay golems look down into the back of the stairwell, from the corners.

2.4 Golemwerks

• A ruined factory for producing golems. A rune covered iron golem stands watch at the top of a wide stairwell.
• The stairs are covered by a sheet of strange, transparent stone, fused to the floor and strong as steel.
• Trapped below the covering, skeletal crypt corpses litter the stairs, dormant. If the living touch the clear stone, they rouse and claw ineffectually from below.
• The golems here and in 2.3 have an interest in ensuring the cover is not breached.

2.5 The Range

• The top of a two story room, with faded blast marks and scars on the walls.
• Only platforms to the east and west, and a smaller one in the north wall are on this level.
• The rest of the space below is mostly clean.
• On the east platform, a large, strange apparatus lies in ruins.

F · Transit

This level once connected the complex to four other locations via permanent portals, functioning as a transit and warehousing center. Now, the portals are no more, and the level contains a horde of dormant crypt corpses, who will revive in the presence of the living.

2.6 Visitor Bedrooms

• Once bedrooms for favored visitors. Doors and furnishings long since decayed.
• Each room has a “window” looking out onto a landscape, really a permanent illusion.
• Each room contains 2d4 dormant crypt corpses

2.7 Visitor Bunkroom

• Once communal accommodation for less important visitors.
• Contains 2d6 crypt corpses and 1d3 shadows

2.8 Visiting Family Bedroom

• Once single family accommodation, with small toilet.
• Crystal door, blue, intact, locked.
• Victims here, a family, fused together into a corpse mound.
• Scattered around room are 500 platinum coins.

2.9 Visitor Suite

• Once a suite for visiting VIPs, with its own bathhouse. Part of the bath’s floor has collapsed into the level below.
• Crystal door, blue, intact, locked.
• A dormant flameskull rests in center of room; will ignite after a minute in the presence of the living.
• An ioun stone floats inside the skull’s brain cavity.

2.10 Portal Room

• The large square central column mounts broken portals on each face. The anchor crystals at the corners of each have been removed, and the structure of the frame damaged. Carved writing above names the destination of each in the Kioolicit language.
• Built for storage, it was wiped clean in the evacuation. Now contains 4d6+12 dormant crypt corpses.

2.11 Storage Rooms

• Built for storage, only refuse remains. And 3d4+6 crypt corpses in each. One of these carries a green dodecahedral key in a fist closed tight for two millennia.
• In the west room, a permanent illusion conceals the archway leading to 2.2, a full 2m above the floor.

2.12 Cold Storage

• Successive crystal doors, blue, intact, unlocked.
• Temperature inside about -5° C.
• A captive ice elemental stirs and gets grumpy if anyone lets heat in.

G · Residences

Most of this level used to be housing for the temple priesthood and workers; now it is an undead wasteland. Among the undead are also a species of lizard-like humanoids (saurids), forward forces from the chaos invasion who fell in the fight and were subsequently reanimated when the curse was unleashed.

2.13 Bedrooms

• Each room contains 1d6 crypt corpses or 1d3 undead saurids.
• In the remnants of the furniture, each room contains 1d3-1 small pieces of simple gold jewelry.
• One room has a collapsed ceiling, leading to 2.9

2.14 Priest Bedrooms

• Crystal doors, blue, intact, locked
• The two high priests of the temple were killed and dumped in their rooms, cursed to rise as desiccated spellcasting undead if their rooms are disturbed.
• In the bodies of the priests can be found desecrated gold holy symbols. One holds a purple octahedral key. The other holds a shattered orange cubic key.

2.15 Barracks

• Each holds 2d6-2 crypt corpses, 1d4-1 specters, and 1d6-1 undead saurids.
• An undead saurid in one of the rooms wields an anarchic greatmaul and armor that protects against law.
• Activity other rooms may attract undead from the barracks.

2.16 Mess Hall

• A dried out fountain, once dedicated to law, now desecrated and radiating chaos. If filled, liquid randomly transmutes every hour or so into: 1=oil, 2=acid, 3=poison, 4=water, 5=soup, 6=blood. Each time, there is a 10% chance it will animate into a weird of that liquid.
• Alcoves, smashed statues of law deities.

2.17 Senior Mess Hall

• Alcoves, smashed statues of law deities.
• In the center of the room, a paladin of the temple was petrified, then smashed to pieces. One hand still wraps a magical shield with a symbol of law, while the other holds an axiomatic longsword.
• Disturbing the petrified remains rouses the utterly mad ghost of the paladin.

2.18 Kitchen

• Like the other rooms, furnishings here had decayed into piles of unrecognizable gunk. Unlike the other rooms, the gunk piles are animated by necrotic energy, effectively three undead shambling mounds.
• Some bronze cooking equipment remains.

2.19 Laundry/Workroom

• Once a versatile workroom for a number of mundane tasks.
• The corpses of a dozen bat-like creatures known to come from the plane of Pandemonium are fused into an undead amalgam, held together by a transparent ooze, radiating chaos and flashing slowly with kaleidoscope colors.

H · Hospital

A century ago, The Virtuoso — a malevolent embodiment of chaos with a strong interest in combining necrotic and chaotic energies—snuck up to this level and converted each room of what used to be a hospital level into an experimental workshop for producing a particular type of monstrosity. Each room hosts a litany of shifting implements of unknowable purpose, some growing from the floors or walls.

2.20 Chatterbox

• Huge brass and glass cube, filled with jawbones of different creatures.
• Every turn something alive is in the room, 2d4 tentacles of ectoplasm, filled with jawbones joined into biting, chattering, mouths reach from the vessel to bite and wrap. They retreat, heal, and reform each turn.

2.21 Pelvistars

• Five bone constructs, made solely from joined pelvis bones, spin and float.
• When the living are present, they act randomly:
  1. blink to a different location
  2. Shoot 1d4 bolts of a random element
  3. Scintillate with a hypnotic pattern
  4. Unleash a chaos hammer

2.22 Bone Chandeliers

• Rib bones dangle from ceiling, surrounded by twinkling lights.
• Two elaborate, hypnotic chandeliers, also made from rib bones, dominate the room.
• Each chandelier is the center of a lurker, which will fall to wrap victims, rib bones pointed inward as it wraps.

2.23 Socket To Them

• Hundreds of jawless skulls float aimlessly, every eye socket filled with a random color of glowing gel.
• When someone advances far enough into room, all skulls stop and turn to look.
• When enough people are in room, skulls fire gel from eyes, everyone suffering 2d3 random effects.

2.24 Centitradere

• Nine centipede-like creatures, made from joined arm and shoulder bones, crawl along the floor, ceiling and walls. The “spine” is lined in glowing ooze, with the glow reflecting how they experience time.
• Red glow = slowed, green glow=normal, violet glow=hasted.
• Glow of each changes at random each time they are hit.

2.25 Stomp

• At thirteen points on the walls and ceiling, sequences of leg bones connected end to end are folded, accordion-like.
• Each extends to the opposite side of the room at random, crushing anything in its way.

2.26 The Virtuoso

• A seething mass of brightly colored tentacles and wings, The Virtuoso assembles foot bones into an intricate construct in the west half of the room.
• Thousands of vertebra swarm on gelatinous pseudopods, shuttling phalanges from a pile in the east half of the room to the Virtuoso.

The Caves

(March) Much of the cave system existed before the temple, with the temple built to take advantage of them.

I · River

2.27 River

• An underground river flows through this level, having widened through erosion since the temple’s heyday. The water is fresh and cold, ultimately fed by snow pack from high in the mountains. Level is mostly constant over time.
• Higher part: deeper, slower current
• Lower part: shallower, faster current

2.28 Cistern

• Water diverts out of river into a cistern.
• Underwater glowing crystals enchanted to purify the water.
• The shaft of the well (1.1) comes through the ceiling.
• Three chuul were ordered to guard the cistern when the temple fell, and have remained ever since. Over time, they have become resistant to law.

3.1 The Falls Cave

• The river hollowed out an impurity in the rock, now a natural cavern, illuminated by continual light.
• A dramatic waterfall cascades 4m into the cavern.
• A worn stone bridge crosses the river in front of the falls.
• Since the bridge was made, the falls have eroded upriver.

3.2 The Experiment

• An outlet from the cistern flows down a carved incline back into the river.
• Remnants of some magical apparatus of unknown purpose used to harness the water flow here, but lies in ruins. Occasional arcs of magic still erupt from it.
• Drains from complex above come through ceiling, emptying into river. Bottom of stairwell shaft covered with bronze grate in ceiling.

3.3 Guardroom

• A permanent illusion cloaks the door from the stairs.
• Crystal door, blue, intact, double locked
• Two iron golems guard opposite corners of this room, as well as four crypt corpses in enchanted armor.

3.4 Vault

• Two crystal vault doors, securely and magically locked. For one to open, the other must be closed. If a magical trap in the first door is not disabled when the door is unlocked, when it closes, the space between the doors will fill with fire until all the oxygen is burned out of it.
• All easy to carry valuables were looted when the temple fell. Several large bronze statues remain. Stray coins.

3.5 Mushrooms

• The arcane mushrooms once cultivated in these caves have now grown gigantic and wild.
• All spells cast within become intensified and uncontrollable.
• Eat a mushroom, roll d10, +1 for each dose taken today. On 1-5, restore expended spell. On 8-10, a prepared spell goes off uncontrollably. On 11+, ingested dose erupts with arcane energy.

J · Cathedral/Geodes

Several gigantic geodes formed on this level from magical, rather than volcanic, activity. At their center was the formation of a crystal of order: The Axiom. This artifact led to the formation of the temple above this place.

3.6 Geode Cathedral

• Massive amethyst geode, once an impressive cathedral, but now defiled.
• Once, a wall of force formed a floor at the equator, but it has long been dispelled.
• Some shards of a shattered crystal octahedron lie at bottom of geode, a unicorn horn mounted on a sword hilt shoved through the largest chunk. Once The Axiom, a potent artifact of order. Destroying this allowed the invaders to proceed further upward, while capturing and using its heart was a central aim of the invasion itself.
• Under the broken Axiom is a half meter shaft leading to 4.3.

3.7 Corrupted Shrine

• A smaller, but still huge, celestine geode.
• A shrine to a god of justice and law, corrupted by invaders.
• A xill matriarch and six xill examine a shard of The Axiom.
• Each of the xill have a potion of strength, and two have a potion which lets them see invisible creatures. A stone floats around the matriarch which allows her to comprehend languages.

3.8 Corrupted Shrine

• A smaller, but still huge, citrine geode.
• A shrine to aShedros, god of truth and order
• A broken kolyarut body, covered in symbols of chaos etched into its metal was tortured and sacrificed here to desecrate the shrine, which now radiates chaos.

3.9 Axiom’s Will

• Concealed by secret door, a crystal door: blue, intact, locked, trapped.
• Appears to be filled with thousands of floating staffs, though all but one is an illusion.
• The real staff is The Corollary, a companion artifact to (and cracked in sympathy with) The Axiom. Though weakened, it remains a potent force for order.

3.10 Ground Zero

• A shrine to Thiodite, god of crystals, pattern, and order, now corrupted.
• Scouts from the invading force carved lines on floor to anchor a gate, through which the bulk of the chaotic forces invaded.
• Corner of room covered in illusion to conceal a secret door, but now the rest of the room has decayed, making the illusion really obvious

3.11 Octahedral Arch Room

• Crystal door: blue, intact, reinforced, magically locked, trapped.
• Corner dominated by large crystal arch, both magical and dormant. A fist-sized, purple octahedral occlusion floats in the center of the arch’s clear crystal keystone. On the left haunch are ~25mm indentations meant to receive the four other Platonic solids. Should crystal polyhedral keys be found, they can activate arches like this to travel to similar arches in the complex.
• The corner opposite the arch shimmers, a weakness between ethereal and normal space.

3.12 Incursion

• Crystal door: blue, smashed. Room heavily damaged with signs of ancient battle.
• Damage to wall gives away the permanent illusion concealing downward stairs.
• In corner of the room, a iron flask containing a nalfeshnee captured during the invasion is concealed by a pile of rubble.

K · Twisted Caves

Weird feedback from breaking of The Axiom has given this whole section a chaotic aura, twisting both the caves and their inhabitants.

3.13 Animated stalagmites

• A gigantic ethereal ooze blocks the midpoint of the tunnel leading to 3.6.
• The cave slopes down about 20°, low point to the north.
• Floor covered with strange stalagmites that move like kelp in an ocean current. The largest dozen of these are semi-aware, acting much like ropers, but fixed in place.
• Illusion conceals wide hall leading to stairs down to 3.27.

3.14 Webs

• Cave filled with webbing, with watermelon-sized cocoons suspended throughout, like faintly glowing grapes.
• Many phase spiders jaunt in and out of view, each tainted with chaotic energy.
• Inside each cocoon is a spherical shell of fine gold mesh, with a glowing spark of chaotic energy at the center. The spiders eat the brightest of these, discarding the shredded mesh, which forms into a small gold bug that skitters into 3.15.

3.15 Gold Harvesters

• Low ceiling cave.
• Stalactites near the center converge unnaturally to a single point, from which a softball-sized pearl-like growth hangs.
• The growth slowly transforms the water collected by the stalactites to a very think honey. Once a season, a drop of this honey falls to the ground, transforming into gold.
• Below, gold bugs devour this gold, incorporating it into their bodies. The largest of the bugs are cocooned by the spiders in 3.14.

3.16 Masticator

• Crushed and ripped phase spider parts can be seen on both the floor and ceiling.
• The chaotic aura has mutated this room, animating the whole chamber into a primitive form of giant mimic. The ceiling and floor cannot quite reach each other, but they can “chew” with their stalactites and stalagmites.

3.17 Living Spells

• Three spells made sentient when The Axiom was broken have made this cave their home ever since: a living grasping hand spell, a living roaming pit spell, and a living wall of light spell. These spells are usually dormant, but react in the presence of visitors. All have been tainted by the chaotic environment.

3.18 Shard Storm

• A swirling vortex of razor sharp crystal fills most of volume of this cave.
• In a calm alcove farthest from the entrance, a chaos emerald has congealed out of the ambient chaos of the cave system.

3.19 The Barricade

• The south entrance to this cave was once plugged by a wall of iron over half a meter thick, which the invaders penetrated with acid. Now only heavily rusted perimeter remains.
• The north entrance once plugged by a thick wall of stone, smashed through from the other side.
• A number of crystal golem defenders were shattered here. The chaotic energy warps their animating force into mindless crystal tentacles in the presence of intruders.

L · Caves

3.20 Waterfall

• Tall shaft, where water from 3.2 cascades past openings leading to 3.19 and 3.22 before draining into 3.21.
• Rusted holes are all that remains of iron ladders to the 3.19 (about 10m from floor) and 3.22 (about 3m from floor) openings.
• Several large crystals with continual light cast on them rest haphazardly beneath the water, once suspended by now-corroded iron brackets on the walls.

3.21 Hypnotic Cave

• Water fills the tunnel from 3.20, with little room between surface and ceiling.
• Banks of the river in this cave are steep and uneven.
• Crystals in the ceiling glow with a random hypnotic pattern.
• A mad spirit naga, head-wounded and washed down the river into this chamber, has spent the last century obsessed with “deciphering” the ceiling’s pattern.
• Any chaotic creature climbing the stairs out of this room is subject to a permanent symbol of fear hidden in the ceiling. Naga terrified of going into room 3.26, but doesn’t remember why.

3.22 The Giving Tree

• Brightly lit cave full of flowers, grass, birds, dominated by a huge tree in the center.
• The tree will present each visitor with a glowing acorn. While they possess the acorn, if they take it, they gain blindsight and some resistance to enchantment.
• This is all an illusion. The tree is actually a colossal telepathic mushroom. Anyone taking an “acorn” is really accepting a fungal polyp that grafts to the middle of their back. It does grant the abilities, but also allows the mushroom to perceive what is around the polyp. The mushroom wants creatures to carry the polyps so it can perceive a broader experience.

3.23 Reincarnation Chamber

• A massive, empty stone sarcophagus with its lid floating above it rests before a towering quartz crystal, glowing with white light. Drawings carved into the sarcophagus show a dead body being put into the sarcophagus, a quality diamond placed on the body, the lid lowering, the quartz glowing, the lid opening, and the body being resurrected (and the diamond being consumed).
• Unfortunately, millennia of chaotic contamination have corrupted the sarcophagus such that it actually casts reincarnate instead of resurrection.

3.24 Cave of Skin

• Chaos has mutated the rock in this cave into a chamber of living skin and hide, of a myriad of species.
• The cave is protected by a quadrupedal, regenerating, carnivorous leather golem.

3.25 Fissure

• The river breaks up among columns and rocks before draining into a long, deep, and increasingly narrow fissure, so this spot accumulates most large objects drifting in from upstream, including blind fish of all sizes.
• The naga from 3.21 may be found here, visiting her “pet”, a chaos-mutated cave fisher which lairs here, mostly eating fish.

3.26 Tetrahedral Arch Room

• Center dominated by large crystal arch. A fist-sized, yellow tetrahedral occlusion floats in the center of the arch’s clear crystal keystone. (See 3.11)
• Double crystal doors, pink, intact, unlocked, leading into tesseract (see 5.1). Small symbol inlayed in gold in front of each door.
  • North door (🜁) pulses, periodically spouts sparks, random destination (roll d12, 1-2=5.6, 4-8=5.19, 9-11=5.24, 12=6.2).
  • West door (🜂) dead. Opens to stone behind it. Might be repaired to restore connection to 1.21?
  • East door (🜃) glows steady, leads to 4.15
  • South door (🜄) glows steady, leads to 5.1

M · Cyclopean Crypt

Much different architecture from an even older extinct culture, a species of 4m tall giants the Kiooliciti referred to as the Licytans (ˈlisətənz), also worshippers of order. Licytans possessed intrinsic arcane abilities (on par with storm giants), and based their culture on the orderly rotating influence of six schools of magic (abjuration, conjuration, enchantment, evocation, illusion, transmutation). Each Licytan expressed only one of these schools of magic, depending on the year of their birth.

The Kiooliciti discovered the Axiom long after this older culture died off, and respected Licytans. This section is a crypt for the mummified remains of six influential leaders of that species (“The Six”), so they could rest near the lawful energy of The Axiom, which they initially discovered, a foundational moment in their culture. The breaking of the Axiom has been slowly corrupting the occupants, and intrusion by the living will cause them to rise.

3.27 False Vestibule

• Wide stairs built for giants lead down. Down the center, narrow steps have been added for human-sized creatures.
• Stairs end unnaturally at a mismatched wall, with a human sized crystal door: blue, intact, locked, trapped. Wall covered with Kioolicit writing, allowing only scholars of the Licytans to pass.

3.28 Vestibule

• Huge stone double doors may not be opened or passed without The Corollary (see 3.9).
• All walls carved with design of interlocking cubes, much different than rest of temple.
• A massive bronze relief, opposite of the entrance, depicts the cycle of six magical schools at the center of Licytans culture.
• The floor is a detailed mosaic map of the world known to the Licytans, of interest to historians and possibly revealing locations of lost ancient places.

3.29 Remembrance Halls

• Double stone doors: intact, locked, magically trapped
• Alcoves in all walls containing tribute to the Six. Most decayed, but some valuable stone sculpture, gold trinkets and a few minor magic items.
• Illusions of various people, mostly Licytans retelling short memories of the Six in Licytan. At random intervals, the illusions stretch and ripple unnaturally.

3.30 Legacy Room

• Illusion cycling through story of the Six discovering the Axiom, constructing a portal to their capital, focussing the energy of the Axiom through the portal, and the golden age it triggered in their civilization.
• Illusion provides insight which may aid in repairing the Axiom
• Even the mere image of the Axiom seems to stave off the chaotic background.

3.31 Memorial

Illusion cycling through each leader on their roc mount, demonstrating each wielding a different school of magic and associated with a particular type of element:

• Bajin: abjuration, fire
• Keja: conjuration, wood
• Nuenvan: illusion, acid
• Shaktilar: enchantment, cold
• Tanjin: evocation, lightning
• Zunabar: transmutation, water

4.1 Necessary Servants

Mummified corpses float in stasis fields through the entire volume of this room:

• Near ceiling are six dinosaur-like mounts and three aurochs.
• Near the floor are sixty hobgoblins and three minotaur.

4.2 The Six

• Double stone doors: intact, locked, trapped. Open onto the mid hight of room, with stairs going down and up.
• The far wall holds two rows of three stasis fields, each holding the mummified remains of one of the six Licytan heroes. The top left is shattered.
• Since the breaking of the Axiom, the six have slowly become mummy lords, each immune to their favored element, but vulnerable to another.
• The Licytan mummy lord Bajin lies prone near center of floor, coming to grips with its existence.
• The others will fully awaken for the first time in the presence of living intruders.
• Each buried with an implement they used in life.

The Apparatus

(April). The lawful energy of The Axiom was once channelled from the geode cathedral (3.6) to a series of factory levels below. This apparatus allowed the Kiooliciti to create a number of miraculous objects, making the culture rich and influential. The temple above largely existed to support the production efforts in the Apparatus.

The fracture of The Axiom greatly damaged the Apparatus, and the energies created strange elementals.

N · Gem Production

Half of the power pulled from The Axiom was diverted into this level, its lawful energy harnessed to create perfect crystal lattices, slowly creating flawless gems, fully cut and polished. Now, various crystal elementals wander the broken factories.

4.3 Dodecagon Locus

• Built to channel half the Axiom’s powers in the four directions, and the other half down a 3m shaft running through each level of the Apparatus.
• Columns of dim light, 1m wide, run through all levels of the Apparatus. Two allow feather fall down to the levels below (☋), two allow drifting upward (☊).
• Large snail-like crystal elemental, with three shards of the Axiom at the tips of tendrils. Tough, magic resistant, scintillating.

4.4 Emerald Synthesis

• Long, mangled, beams of a coppery metal jut at all angles.
• Thousands of scarabs made of shards of stone and metal, flecked with shattered emerald, swarm in intricate, almost mathematical patterns over the entire room. If their patterns are disturbed, they viciously swarm.
• A green dodecahedral key hides in the rubble.

4.5 Corundum Synthesis

Panther-sized, armored crystal elementals patrol this room in strangely fixed patterns. Six patrol 1m wide ranks of the room, east-west. Others patrol 45° diagonals. All move slowly, stopping only to reverse directions or avoid collisions. Each has a tail somewhat like a manticore, shooting spikes of emery. At the heart of each of these creatures is a corundum gem (ruby, sapphire).

4.6 Jadeite Synthesis

• Three large piles of jadeite shards swirl into whirlwind crystal elementals when other creatures enter.
• Part of each is an un-hilted jadeite short sword blade, enchanted, corrupted to be opposed to law, and supernaturally durable. Each channels an element: the red blade fire, the green blade acid, the lavender blade lightning.

4.7 Infusion Room

Filled with stone workstations for enchanting gems into magic items, bronze tools and corroded copper remnants scattered everywhere. Among the rubble:

• 2d6 intact, but non-magical gemstones of various kinds.
• 1d4 spell-storing rubies, tainted with chaos such that, when a stored spell is cast from it: 25% the spell works as planned, 50% the spell works but is accompanied by side effects, 25% a completely different spell emerges.
• 1d3 emeralds that, when broken, release a crystal elemental.
• A gem of true seeing that has been infused with a chaotic intelligence.
• An octahedral key and a tetrahedral key.

4.8 Tanzanite Synthesis

• Filled with water, floor to ceiling, but it doesn’t flow out the doorways.
• Every round someone is in the water, they are subject to a random transmutation spell: 1=flesh to stone, 2=gaseous form, 3=haste, 4=polymorph, 5=slow, 6=water breathing, 7=enlarge, 8=reduce.
• Among the rubble on the floor are 1d6 sizable tanzanite gems and a tetrahedral key.

4.9 Diamond Synthesis

• Filled with roiling black smoke, which doesn’t flow out the doorways.
• An elemental sentinel, something like a smoke dragon, lairs within.
• Among the shredded contraptions and scattered charcoal which once fed them, a number of diamonds created here to be perfect components for various spells can be found. Most are for low-level spells, but 1d3 can power resurrection and one can power true resurrection.

O · Noble Metal Production

4.10 Octogon Locus

• Half of the Axiom’s power would be channeled here through the ceiling, with half of that (1/4 total) diverted to power this level, the remainder going down.
• A shard of the Axiom is embedded point-first into floor. Around it, a golden dust runs through an endless cycle of shapes that almost complete, then collapse in on themselves: a octahedron, an elf in robes, a complex equation, a mechanical winged centaur, a three dimensional shadow of a hypercube, an intricate winged helmet, a complex symmetric pattern that vibrates with a faint pure musical note, a giant spider. The cycle stops if the shard is freed.

4.11 Orichalcum Synthesis

• The vast tangle of shattered, massive chunks of bronze and brass mechanisms once built a perfect magical structure from atoms of gold and copper, creating orichalcum.
• At the center of the room is a single orichalcum ingot. The wreckage in the room tries to protect it by moving, working somewhat like a black tentacle spell.
• The shattered remnants of several gold ingots can be found in the wreckage.

4.12 Orichalcum Workshops

In each room, metal and stone debris has been concentrated into an unnatural tall cone, with part of a matched set of oricalcum plate armor on top. If the piece is moved, the cone collapses and the debris starts moving at high speed. Movement varies by room, but stops if the piece leaves that room. If all the pieces are gathered together, all the debris from all rooms assembles into a swarming golem that will travel anywhere to get it back.

• helmet: debris becomes large, inverted, whirlwind.
• cuirass: debris smothers around the piece and whoever is holding it.
• bracers: thin spears of debris extend from center, and retract, repeatedly.
• greaves: debris spills to cover floor evenly, then bounces from floor to ceiling at speed.
• pauldrons: debris scatters in every direction, bouncing off every wall.
• cuisses: debris seeks out the head and crotch of all in the room.

4.13 Mithral Synthesis

• A massive functional assembly of gleaming brass and bronze is fed by three shackled priests, once haughty but now broken and enslaved. Each dumps buckets of a different type of material (alunite, proustite, charcoal) into a separate intake. Fed by a beam of light from the ceiling, the machine makes a perfect magical structure from atoms of silver, aluminum, and carbon, forging ingots of mithral. A lower ranking priest, an elf woman, lords over the slaves and process.
• This is all illusion, the breaking of the Axiom giving life to a disgruntled priest’s fantasy in the form of a banshee illusionist wielding a mithral wand. The real machine is smashed.

4.14 Mithral Workshops

• Each of these rooms is filled with an illusion of a different idyllic paradise (forest glade, breezy beach, tropical waterfall, star-filled desert night, sunset on mountain lake, field of flowers).
• Around 15 seconds after someone walks into any of these rooms, they are targeted by a compulsion to never leave this place. While under the effect, they utterly ignore the real world, even being hurt. Should they shake off the effect, on exit they are targeted with magical dread that they will never reach a place as wonderful.
• The rooms are actually filled with useless debris, but a green dodecahedral key can be found in one of them.

4.15 Link to tesseract

• Crystal door entrance: blue, intact, reinforced, magically locked, magically trapped.
• Double crystal doors, pink, intact, unlocked, leading into tesseract. Small symbol inlayed in gold in front of each door.
  • North door (🜃) glows steady. Leads to 3.26.
  • West door (🜉) glows steady. Leads to 5.1
  • South door (🜌) glows steady, leads to 6.2

4.16 Dodecahedral Arch

• Crystal door entrance: blue, intact, reinforced, unlocked.
• Center dominated by large crystal arch, both magical and dormant. A fist-sized, green dodecahedral occlusion floats in the center of the arch’s clear crystal keystone. See 3.11.

P · Item Production

Being further from the cracking of the Axiom, the infrastructure on this level isn’t quite as destroyed as those above, merely damaged.

4.17 Hexagon Locus

• A quarter of the Axiom’s power would be channeled through the ceiling, with half of that (1/8 total) diverted to power this level, the remainder going down.
• Two shards of the Axiom spin like tops, slowly strolling around the room. Over the millennia, they have etched a complicated pattern in the floor which seems meaningful, but defies analysis. If both tops are picked up, the pattern glows, and the shards attempt to imprison all chaotic beings in the room within themselves. All lawful creatures are protected from chaos while in this room.

4.18 Shackle Production

• Cold iron used to be fed into the machinery to create dimensional shackles. Now, all metal within has been turned to rusty dust.
• Should any metal enter the room, a rust elemental rises from the dust. It will rust mundane metal, and can disenchant metal magic items.
• No extradimensional travel (e.g. teleport, blink) functions in this room, and the elemental cannot leave.

4.19 Crystal Sword Production

• Filled with various colors of sand, about a meter deep, spilling into the hallway.
• No machinery remains, except for a large articulated brass arm attached to the ceiling, with an orange crystal at the end.
• Every minute, the arm jerks and fires a beam into a random 2x2 square area of the room. Anything solid in the area that isn’t stone or magical is transmuted to randomly colored sand.
• Hidden deep under the sand are 1d3+1 crystal axiomatic longswords.

4.20 Mischief Managing Collar Production

• The hall leading into this room is filled with an antimagic field.
• A chain golem slowly writhes within. At the end of twelve of its chains are cursed collars which prevent the wearer from casting spells. Eight of these (with a blue sheen) prevent arcane spells. Four (with a green sheen) prevent divine spells. This room was built to make such collars, supplied to prisons.
• The golem will attack any who enter, trying to attach the collars to anyone. It has no ability to detect spell casters, so will attach collars at random.

4.21 Censer Production

• Scattered around the somewhat damaged machinery are 2d4 gold censers, their inner bowls made of a clear, magical crystal.
• Any of these censers which are moved immediately fill the room with a magical cloud (replicating a random cloud-based spell or incense). After this they function as originally intended, augmenting the effects of incense burned within them.

4.22 Crystal Mace Production

An intangible spirit animates twelve enchanted light maces with crystal heads. Six are axiomatic, retaining their intended enchantment. The rest are corrupted such that three are anarchic, one is vampiric, one is frost, and one is all three. The spirit can cast some spells which enhance melee attacks.

4.23 Inquisitor Badge Production

• On a stone slab in the center of the damaged machines lay 1d3 mithral amulets which provide protection from chaos when worn, and allow wearer to cast magic circle against chaos once a day. These are also holy symbols to a god of truth and order (3.8).
• Jaggedly pacing around the slab (for so long that it has worn a track into the floor) is a malfunctioning zelekhut inevitable. It ignores everything, unless attacked or someone touches or takes an amulet.

Q · Door Production

Machinery on this level is only slightly damaged, and could be made to work again fairly easily, given a power source.

4.24 Cubic Locus

• An eighth of the Axiom’s power would be channeled through the ceiling, with half of that (1/16 total) diverted to power this level, the remainder going through a now-deactivated portal, marked by a magic circle engraved on the floor.
• Five shards of the Axiom are scattered on the floor.

4.25 Pink Door Production

• While mostly intact, all the machinery (and everything else in the room including a large pile of pink sand), is under the effects of a shifting displacement and flickers strangely.
• Whenever anyone moves through a square of the room, they may be transferred. Each time entering a square, roll d12 to see where they end up: 1-8 = no change, 9 = same square, but random facing, 10-11 = random square in room, random facing (this triggers another roll), 12 = hall to 4.24. Momentum is conserved.

4.26 Blue Door Production

• Each room contains a massive mound of fine sand, machinery to feed it into, and 1d6 detached blue crystal doors in a pile.
• In one of the rooms, the sand animates into a sand elemental which regenerates all damage not caused by electricity, and can manifest as a swarm, a squad, or an individual. Within the elemental is an orange cubic key.
• In the other room, the sand is inert, but all the doors lay flat on the ground. If a door is moved, the magical trap in it will go off.

4.27 Green Anchor Production

• While most machinery is intact, some has melted to surround a strange rectangle on the floor, filled with a shimmering emerald light.
• Entering this light shifts a person’s gravity 90°, in the doorway to a sentient magnificent mansion spell. The mansion can shift its layout and contents, if it wishes. Three zealot wraiths of the priests who oversaw this room now roam the mansion.
• Scattered within the mansion are the 2d4 anchor crystals produced in this room that remain intact, which may assist in repairing the portals in room 2.10. If all these crystals are removed from the mansion, the spell ends.

4.28 Bathhouse

• The dozen water spirits bound to serve bathers have kept the pool filled, pure, and warm for two thousand years. They are pleasant, efficient, and grateful for company. When the temple was active, they often gossiped with the workers in the apparatus who came to bathe, so know quite a bit about the temple, the apparatus in particular.
• Though their binding prevents them from asking, they will be generous to any who free them from their long service, which is controlled by pearls found in 4.30. Until then, they are bound to this room.

4.29 Workroom

• A fire elemental is bound to this room, once used to heat a small clay oven. The surge from the destruction of the Axiom broke the oven and infused the elemental with order, giving it powers against chaos. Since then, it has grown significantly, and its flames are strangely symmetrical. It loves visitors and wants to embrace them.
• Pink double door (🜍) glows steady, leads to 5.11.

4.30 Mess hall

• Among the decay of wood and cloth, decorated ceramic dishware can be found. While many of the pieces are broken, these are rare examples of the work of the period of the Kiooliciti, valued by antique dealers.
• Scattered among both rooms can be found 1d4 magical rings or other metallic, minor magical items.
• In one of the rooms, twelve identical pearls can be found in a pile of debris, the bag that held them long disintegrated. If given to the spirits in 4.24, or destroyed, the spirits will go free.

Up to this point, Euclidian geometry reigns in this this megadungeon, for the most part, so the whole thing can be represented in a 3D model. In order to ensure that the stairways lined up, the room heights worked, and so on—and also to practice with the software—the complex was crudely modeled in Cheetah3d.

This is an isometric rendering of the model, with each floor given a different color. At some point, isometric images of each level might be added here, but don’t hold your breath.

If you want to play with it, you can download the model.

From here on in, things get non-Euclidian, so no more 3d modeling was done.

The Tesseract

(May). From the completion of the polyhedral portal system, it only took a century for the Kiooliciti to hone their mastery of crystal and The Axiom into the development of their pink doors. A pair of these rose quartz devices could be connected to a similar pair, creating endpoints of a stable portal that could be separated by any distance. Some of these doors have been further enchanted into purple doors, which function the same, but only activate when touched by potent lawful magic, such as The Corollary (3.9) or a shard of the Axiom.

The arcane researchers who invented the doors first used them to build a globe spanning complex for themselves, connecting remote and isolated areas to conduct increasingly dangerous research “in safety” and, more to the point, in secret from the religious order in charge of Kioolicit society. It is possible the growing power of the arcane factions would have brought down that society, had the chaotic invaders not beaten them to it.

To those invaders, the tesseract was a mere novelty, a bridge to reaching their true goal. While it was abandoned shortly after the invasion, various beings that remember it occasionally use it for side projects or respite from their superiors.

This map was produced using dot. An appendix below lists the meaning of the alchemical symboles used to label the edges of the tesseract. Yellow nodes are sets of pink doors within the temple complex itself. Blue nodes are locations spanning the globe that are accessable from the outside world (that is, potentially alternative entrances into the tesseract). Red nodes are trapped. The colored nodes at the bottom are locations pierced by the invading forces, ultimately leading to the outer planes. Using GraphViz Online, you can play with the graph of the tesseract that generated this image:

R · Vistas

Early work on the tesseract involved connecting several difficult to reach locations around the planet to the temple complex. Most of the nodes here could be ways into the complex from outside, but are very hard to find, and harder to reach. Many have also since been usurped by others.

5.1 Threshold

• At the center of the room is an amnizu, an ambitious devil ordered to defend this room (the price of a favor done for its archduke by the temple invaders). To assist in this task, the amnizu has been gifted with an amulet invested with some its archduke’s power. Unbeknownst to the amnizu, the amulet also contains a curse which slows time down to one second per year within any room the wearer finds itself, but only when no one else is in that room. From the fiend’s point of view, just over half an hour has passed since it took its post after the invasion.
• Pink double door (🜄) glows steady, leads to 3.26
• Pink double door (🜉) glows steady, leads to 4.15
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 5.17 malfunctioning.

5.2 Crossroads

What was once a conversation pit now filled with a shallow pool of oily muck (actually a huge grey ooze). Sets of pink double doors, all glowing steadily:

• (🜩) leads to 5.8
• (🜪) leads to 5.15
• (🜘) leads to 5.11
• (🝊) leads to 5.20
• (🝕) leads to 5.29
• (🝞) leads to 5.22
• (🝣) leads to 5.27

5.3 Ice Lab

• A freezing chamber carved high into an arctic cliff, one side open to a sheer drop.
• An ice devil and six imps prepare a raised circle platform to ease the summoning of other devils.
• The devil carries 2d6 soul coins and a blue icosahedral key. The imps make use of many infernal reagents in their work.
• Pink double door (🜖) glows steady, leads to 5.7

5.4 North Desert Observatory

• At the tip of tall, unclimbable spire in the desert, an open-air view of the stars. It now is the perch of a flight of five wyverns. Rotting remains of several camels are strewn about.
• Two inches of dirt conceal a blue crystal trapdoor, which opens to reveal an astrologers telescope on a raising platform.
• Pink double door (🜳) glows steady, leads to 5.4
• Pink double door (🜬) glows steady, leads to 5.8

5.5 South Desert Observatory

• At the tip of tall, unclimbable spire in the desert, an open-air view of the stars. It now is the nest of a roc, mostly made of smashed caravan wagons.
• Three eggs are nestled into the nest.
• While the telescope once here is long gone, coins and other minor treasure from the smashed wagons can be found.
• Pink double door (🜳) glows steady, leads to 5.5
• Pink double door (🜢) glows steady, leads to 5.8

5.6 Deep Ocean Lab

• A hemispherical dome of force sits sideways, like a blister, on the side of a cliff deep under the ocean.
• Two millennia of continual light from the dome and locations in the water of have spawned a unique ecosystem outside the dome, which has been claimed as a lair by an aboleth. It will take interest in any who arrive inside the dome.
• Should the dome be dispelled, the inrush of water would likely crack the pink doors.
• Pink double door (🜔) glows steady, leads to 5.7
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 3.26 malfunctioning.
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 5.17 malfunctioning.

5.7 Crevasse Falls

• A cave, opening deep down a narrow crevasse. Water from mountain runoff cascades down this crevasse, past the cave entrance, leading down (eventually to 2.27). The path up is sheer, extremely narrow at times, and filled with rushing water.
• An adult mist dragon uses this cave as a lair, continuing at pact between its grandsire and the Kiooliciti, to keep the doors in the cave safe. The dragon has rarely seen anything come through the doors, and only ever demons at that.
• Pink double door (🜖) glows steady, leads to 5.3
• Pink double door (🜔) glows steady, leads to 5.6
• Pink double door (🜏) glows steady, leads to 5.17

S · Danger Labs

Dangerous laboratories in isolated locations dominate this section of the tesseract.

5.8 Orrery

A magnificent orrery of crystal and brass, with rings slowly moving within rings, intended to divine the future, has been perverted by demons who are using it as a torture device which slowly pulls apart various intelligent beings. Each of the demons have a small malachite disk on their person (7.6).

• Pink double door (🜩) glows steady, leads to 5.2
• Pink double door (🜬) glows steady, leads to 5.4
• Pink double door (🜢) glows steady, leads to 5.5
• Pink double door (🜺) glows steady, leads to 5.13
• Pink double door (🝢) glows steady, leads to 5.25
• Purple double door (🜜) glows steady, leads to 5.31

5.9 Chimera Synthesis

• Magic circles in the four corners each contain clear crystal chambers. Arcane patterns inlaid in gold on the floor connect each to a circle in the room’s center, containing a larger crystal chamber. The right ritual merges up to four creatures into one.
• A four-headed amalgam of a shadow demon, a barigura, a chasme, and a vrock has been tasked with guarding the room.
• Pink double door (🝉) glows steady, leads to 5.13
• Pink double door (🝩) glows steady, leads to 5.28

5.10 Velocity Lab

• A classic infinite fall, with a portal at the bottom of a 200m shaft opening back at the top. The hall with the doors is at the halfway point of the shaft.
• A somewhat fresh zombie tyrannosaur falls endlessly.
• Among other objects falling is a glowing blue icosahedral key.
• Pink double door (🜿) glows steady, leads to 5.16
• Pink double door (🜑) glows steady, leads to 5.17
• Pink double door (🝟) glows steady, leads to 5.24
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 6.1 malfunctioning.

5.11 Magma Lab

• A river of magma flows through this cave. The air is both superheated and lacking in oxygen.
• Bases of a collapsed bridge sit on either bank of the magma.
• A zodar hovers over the magma, near the southeast corner.
• Pink double door (🜍) glows steady, leads to 4.29.
• Pink double door (🜘) glows steady, leads to 5.2
• Pink double door (🜕) glows steady, leads to 5.21
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 5.17 malfunctioning.
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 6.1 malfunctioning.

5.12 Secret Workshop

• An elaborate, magical secret door leads here, to the unsanctioned workshop of one of the tesseract project’s wizards.
• Pink double door, dark, no symbol. Once led to room in wizard’s (long since destroyed) tower.
• A crystal preserving cabinet, with a puzzle lock, has spared the contents from the ravages of time. Many journals and logs within.

5.13 Cells

• Several cages, once for lab animals, now contain shifting and squelching pods that will hatch into naunet soon.

• Pink double door (🜺) glows steady, leads to 5.8
• Pink double door (🝉) glows steady, leads to 5.9
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 5.17 malfunctioning.

5.14 Vacuum Lab

• The hall to 5.13 is an airlock with rudimentary controls to fill it with air (in which case, only the door to 5.13 opens) or vacuum (when only the door to 5.14 opens).
• A perfect vacuum, which has recently attracted a color out of space.
• Metal stairs spiral up around the room, with observation platforms in every stretch.
• Splayed on the top platform is a well-preserved, mummified corpse of a Kiooliciti sorcerer, wearing a cloak of displacement and a ring of spell storing, and carrying a bloodwell vial, a blue icosahedral key, and a number of magical trinkets.

T · Demonstration

Most of the rooms in this section were used to demonstrate research breakthroughs, teach, plan, and so on.

5.15 Decontamination

• The symbols of chaos painted in blood over all of the walls has given the room a chaotic aura and corrupted the effect of eight monoliths. Each removes a particular type of malady (disease, curse, poison, enchantment, etc.). But roll d6 when using: 1–4: works properly, 5: transfers malady to someone else, 6: makes malady worse.
• Pink double door (🜪) glows steady, leads to 5.2
• Pink double door (🝠) glows steady, leads to 5.23
• Pink double door (🝁) glows steady, leads to 6.3
• Pink double door (🝅) glows steady, leads to 6.4

5.16 The Bunker

• Concealed in side of mesa, looking out over a vast wasteland. Intended to observe high power experimental spells. Now a breeding ground for manticores.
• Doors are protected by concealing illusions and symbols of repulsion.
• Pink double door (🜿) glows steady, leads to 5.10
• Pink double door (🜚) glows steady, leads to 5.19
• Pink double door (🜾) glows steady, leads to 6.4
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 6.1 malfunctioning.

5.17 Icosahedral Arch

• Corner dominated by large crystal arch, both magical and dormant. A fist-sized, blue icosahedral occlusion floats in the center of the arch’s clear crystal keystone. On the left haunch are ~25mm indentations meant to receive the four other Platonic solids. Should crystal polyhedral keys be found, they can activate arches like this to travel to similar arches in the complex.
• Pink double door (🜏) glows steady, leads to 5.7
• Pink double door (🝤) glows steady, leads to 5.26
• Purple double door (🜶) glows steady, leads to 5.31
• Pink double door (🜑) glows steady, but roll d12 when opening: 1-4=5.10, 5-7=5.11, 8-9=5.1, 10=5.23, 11=5.29, 12=5.6

5.18 Deep Geode

• This perfectly, almost disturbingly, symmetric quartz geode rests dead center below the geode cathedral (3.6), about 58 meters down.
• Any damage to the crystals repairs itself over time, including the hallway cut to 5.17, which is now sealed over.
• This chamber was instrumental to the creation of The Axiom, and key to restoring it (see Appendix B).

5.19 Purple Worm Nursery

• This room’s prior purpose has been obliterated by the digging of purple worms, with tunnels leading out in every direction for miles.
• Near each door are 2d4 large purple eggs.
• At any given time, there is a 10% chance an adult worm will be in or near the room.
• The air in this room is dense and humid, but low in oxygen.
• Pink double door (🜁) glows steady, leads to 3.26
• Pink double door (🜚) glows steady, leads to 5.16

5.20 Procedure Amphitheater

• At the center of this amphitheater, two Kioolicit mages dissect a Kolyarut, demonstrating to an audience. A number of other Kioolicit mages—in ridiculously ornate robes—catcall and ask self-important, nonsense questions.
• These are all bored imentesh proteans, shapeshifted and passing the time.
• Pink double door (🝊) glows steady, leads to 5.2
• Pink double door (🝎) glows steady, leads to 5.27
• Pink double door (🜛) glows steady, leads to 6.1
• Pink double door (🜸) glows steady, leads to 6.4

5.21 The Helix

• A 2m helical platform spirals 12½ full rotations up the walls of this cylindrical chamber. Large spheres of stone have been placed at various parts of the ramp, with several dretch assigned to release down the ramp at invaders.
• Pink double door at top (🜕) glows steady, leads to 5.21
• Pink double door in middle (🜨) glows steady, leads to 5.30
• Pink double door at bottom (🜫) glows steady, leads to 6.1
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 6.1 malfunctioning.

U · Deathtraps

All of the paths connected to these rooms have symbols either of alchemical processes or equipment. Stations in each room illustrate the ritual used to create the Axiom. This ritual can be used to repair it (see Appendix B):

5.22 Chaos Lab

• Squares in the room are numbered 1 to 64, in a random order.
• If the doors are open, stepping on the squares in front of them teleports you to a random square (8*(d8-1)+d8), and the doors shut.
• A number of trinkets are scattered around the room, always one more than the number of people in the room.
• Every 12 seconds (when someone is in the room), a subset of the tiles activate, subjecting any standing on them to the same wand of wonder effect. Trinkets held by anyone not affected teleport to a random square. Roll d8 to determine subset:
  • 1: odd numbers
  • 2: even numbers
  • 3: prime numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61)
  • 4: perfect squares (1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49)
  • 5: numbers <= 32
  • 6: numbers > 32
  • 7: fibonacci numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55)
  • 8: triangular numbers (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55)
• Murals on the walls depict a costly battle between order and chaos, won only because a primal inevitable sacrificed itself. The heart of this being is shown falling deep into the earth.
• Pink double door (🝞) glows steady, leads to 5.2. From the inside, the door only opens if all the trinkets are touched to the door at once. This stops the cycle for three minutes and scatters the trinkets to random squares.

5.23 Protean Orb

• A 1m diameter orb floats in the center. Protean invaders have altered this room so that any time anyone moves to a new square inside the circular portion, there is a 10% chance the circle part of the room shifts its form. If the orb is destroyed, the room reverts to original state. Spells based on law are twice as effective. Roll d6 when the room is first entered, and each time it shifts:
  • 1: Original state: an ornate meditation chamber. Murals on the walls depict the detection and mining a particular type of near-perfect crystal. Both doors accessible. Orb casts one of the following on a random target: disintegrate, polymorph, flesh to stone, regenerate, greater restoration, maze.
  • 2: The walls and floor warp and swirl. Effectively, each person in the circle is moved to a different square at random. The orb shifts into something like a melting wax ball. Swirled wall parts obstruct the pink doors.
  • 3: The circle becomes a cavern, the murals a writhing mass of stalagmites. The orb transforms into a rocky face, with rubies for eyes and a mouth dripping magma. In this state, the orb is a commune conduit to a chaotic deity. Curtains of magma obscure the doors.
  • 4: Remains in prior form, but each occupied square has a 25% of opening up into a pit filled with something nasty (spikes, tar, acid, gelatinous cube, etc.)
  • 5: The space becomes frozen, the murals depicting an arctic hellscape, damaging with cold. The orb becomes a block of ice and casts compulsion to force targets closer. One pink door freezes over with ice.
  • 6: An idyllic glade, murals filled with prancing creatures. The air, however, becomes poisonous. One door covered with thick plants.
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 5.17 malfunctioning.
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 6.1 malfunctioning.
• Pink double door (🝭) glows steady, leads to 7.31
• Pink double door (🝠) glows steady, leads to 5.15

5.24 Entropy Gallery

• The stark contrast between the polished black granite floor and white marble murals once made this room an ideal place for psychic research, but entropics have converted it into a bizarre statue gallery. Each statue is a splice (5.9) of a mimic, a grick, a bulezau, and either a red or blue entropic. Each takes the form of a statue of a humanoid species in various stages of entropic infection. Once intruders are near the center of the room, they attack with long, infectious tentacles.
• Murals on the walls depict a ritual, where acolytes walk the mined crystal through a chamber at the center of a labyrinth (see 5.31), chanting. As they reach the center they join to make a large octahedron. The octahedron solidifies to perfection on the walk out.
• Might arrive from malfunction in 3.26 door.
• Pink double door (🝟) glows steady, leads to 5.10
• Pink double door (🝑) glows steady, leads to 6.5

5.25 Inverted Angel

• The entire floor of this room has been disintegrated, down 3m, with wicked spikes installed at the bottom. The entire volume of the room is filled with barbed chains, converging in the center to suspend an archon, hung upside down. It is possible to squeeze through the web of chains, but any vibration on them wracks the archon with agony. They are also barbed and poisoned.
• Murals on the upper half of the walls depict a group using a large octahedral crystal to track down and recover a crystalline heart hidden deeply underground. Carved by claw marks next to each image of the heart, in Abyssal, is the word “mine”.
• Pink double door (🝢) glows steady, leads to 5.8
• Pink double door (🝪) glows steady, leads to 7.3

5.26 Curiosity Lab

• This is room 45 in Grimtooth’s Dungeon of Doom. Originally a small collection of rooms (40-45) to distract delvers, Evinrood found this room in isolation and expanded his entire complex from it.
• Invader replaced the amulet in the alcove with a Pyxis of Pandemonium.
• Pink doors and walls covered with stucco. Entering will destroy a section. If it is all removed, carved murals underneath depict a double spiral surrounded by hundreds of people doing a complex dance. A large octahedral crystal walked to the center from one side, a crystalline heart heart from the other. They join in the middle, the heart sinking into the octahedron.
• Pink double door (🝤) glows steady, leads to 5.17
• Pink double door (⍚) glows steady, leads to 6.1

5.27 Levitation Lab

• Only the three squares in front of each door and dark squares are solid; rest of floor is an illusion concealing a large pit, 25m deep. The dark squares are held up by long columns.
• The center dark square actually extends to the ceiling, but from the floor up is invisible.
• The invading demons made this worse by flooding bottom with 1m of acid and throwing a bunch of hydroloth in, collared to suppress teleportation.
• In the acid pool, a glowing blue icosahedral key can be found.
• Murals on the walls depict a ritual inside a geode, centered around a captured, oversized nabasu. The ritual drives all chaotic energy in the geode into the demon, causing the demon to evolve into a vrolikai, and the geode to shift to be perfectly symmetrical. The vrolikai is teleported from the geode, then hunted and killed.
• Pink double door (🝣) glows steady, leads to 5.2
• Pink double door (🝎) glows steady, leads to 5.20
• Purple double door (⍝) glows steady, leads to 5.31
• Pink double door (⍢) glows steady, leads to 6.2

5.28 The Pit

• This room is the “Illusions” trap from Grimtooth’s Traps, pg. 4, where a huge pit, deep and spike-filled, occupies the center of the room, with wide side aisles and space near each door appearing safe.
• This is an illusion. The “pit” is actually solid floor, and the ceiling above the aisles covered with spikes. Once more weight is on the aisles than the space by the door, the aisles will spring up to smash delvers into the spiked ceiling.
• Murals on the walls depict two rituals conducted at once, one deep beneath the other. The upper ritual places an octahedron with a heart inside into the center of a grand geode. The lower one shows acolytes in an impossibly symmetric geode, focussing its power to the upper one. The two connect bring order to a grateful world.
• Pink double door (🝩) glows steady, leads to 5.9
• Pink double door (⌱) glows steady, leads to 6.3

V · Control

5.29 Disposal

• Halls from a plain circular room lead to two deep circular pits, used to dispose of hazardous material, failed experiments, and dangerous failures. Crystals on the wall control two walls of force in each hall, much like airlocks.
• In each is a splice (5.9) of an otyugh, a shambling mound, a rust monster, and a myconid sprout. The resulting mindless consumer in each pit devoured anything thrown down to it and each has grown enormous and immortal. Spores in each pit allow telepathic connection to the pit’s occupant.
• Should spores from the two pits connect the two to each other, they become highly motivated to mate/join.
• Pink double door (🜘) glows steady, leads to 5.2
• Pink double door (🜠) glows steady, leads to 6.2
• PCs may arrive here due to the door in 5.17 malfunctioning.

5.30 Sky Lab

• A grand ballroom carved into a large rock floating 4km above an ocean, overlooking a coastline, open to the (thin) air.
• A jabberwock currently nests in the space.
• Pink double door (🜨) glows steady, leads to 5.21
• Pink double door (🜼) glows steady, leads to 6.4

5.31 Labyrinth Center

• A ritual chamber at the center of a pocket plane, a symmetrically shifting labyrinth. Here the Axiom was made, and here is where it can be repaired (see Appendix B).
• Roaming the labyrinth are four marut inevitables with no sense of humor or tolerance for intruders.
• The purple doors leading here will only open when touched by a force for order (such as the Corollary, or a shard of the Axiom).
• Purple double door (🜜) glows steady, leads to 5.8
• Purple double door (🜶) glows steady, leads to 5.17
• Purple double door (⍝) glows steady, leads to 5.27
• Purple double door (🝃) glows steady, leads to 6.1

6.1 Staging Area

• Stations for cooking and stone platforms for assembly.
• Stone platforms are covered in dried blood.
• A human spellcaster (actually a shapeshifted green entropic) dressed in Kioolicit robes conducts a ritual in an intricate magic circle carved into the floor, aiming to curse Rimkegaa the Ravenous (7.1) for his own gain. The circle makes rituals more powerful, if harnessed properly.
• Pink double door (🜛) glows steady, leads to 5.20
• Pink double door (🜫) pulses, random destination (roll d12, 1–6=5.21, 7–9=5.23, 10=10, 11=5.11, 12=5.16)
• Pink double door (⍚) glows steady, leads to 5.26
• Purple double door (🝃) glows steady, leads to 5.31

6.2 Crystalography

• A curved bronze desk sits in front of a large cylindrical pit, covered in strange controls and a raised plate in the center.
• If a crystal is placed on the plate, the space of the pit fills with illusion that shows structure of crystal, allowing user to zoom in and out, etc. Basically a 3d microscope.
• Naturally, the invaders have sabotaged it to randomly cast symbol spells of various kinds.
• Pink double door (🜌) glows steady, leads to 4.15
• Pink double door (⍢) glows steady, leads to 5.27
• Pink double door (🜠) glows steady, leads to 5.29
• Might arrive from malfunction in 3.26 door.

6.3 Forensics

• Large stone platforms dominate the room, drains in the floor between them.
• At the big platform in the center, a blue abishai performs an autopsy on a bizarre chimera creature. She has been experimenting with the chimera creating machine in 5.9. She will become invisible at first signs of a door activating.
• Pink double door (🝁) glows steady, leads to 6.3
• Pink double door (⌱) glows steady, leads to 5.28

6.4 Tesseract Monitoring

• Four steps lead up to a central platform, from which you can see illusions describing the state of the tesseract. One shows the symbol of each connection with commentary of each in Kioolicit. Another shows an abstract map of the whole tesseract. Another indicates a serious problem with the arch network (1.21). Another shows a globe with the locations of each node.
• Three drow in Kioolicit robes (actually yochlol demons) appear to monitor the illusions. Each carry a small malachite disk on their person (7.6).
• Pink double door (🝅) glows steady, leads to 5.15
• Pink double door (🜾) glows steady, leads to 5.16
• Pink double door (🜸) glows steady, leads to 5.20
• Pink double door (🜼) glows steady, leads to 5.30

The Entropic Reach

(June). Prior to the invasion, each of the three main groups (entropics, demons, proteans) had a rough location for one of the rooms in the tesseract. This created something of a race, each group aiming to connect their own plane to their assigned room. The invaders collectively conquered a demiplane, named The Intrusion, and used it as a bridge from their own plane. From there each group created their own planar gate, creating a foothold in close proximity to the tesseract room they knew.

Once they formed their gate, the frog-like entropics relied on crude divination magic to guess direction to tesseract room 6.5, and used disintegration magic to build a series of straight halls connecting circular rooms, in a crude iterative “walk” towards the tesseract, homing in of its location and, eventually, breaching into the room at an awkward angle.

After the invasion was over, the entropic “reach” into the tesseract was abandoned and forgotten. Ten years ago, the emerald dragon Illuzan discovered its large central chamber while tunneling, and used the space as an alternate lair.

Two years ago, an ambitious entropic known as Rimkegaa the Ravenous came across both Illuzan and a magical amulet that allowed the entropic to bind the dragon to its cause. The dragon revealed the reach, and Rimkegaa transformed it into a staging area to launch raids on a coastal area, capturing hosts to breed an army. Rimkegaa has largely ignored the tesseract itself, though some of its more ambitious minions have been investigating it.

Each red and blue entropic has a random mutation:

1. Gland shoots hallucinogenic neurotoxin.
2. 1/day: spider climb
3. One claw also deals fire, cold, acid, or shock.
4. 1/day: jump.
5. 1/day: comprehend languages.
6. 1/day: blink.
7. One claw is magical weapon.
8. 1/day: alter self.
9. Bite deals additional poison damage.
10. 3/day: feather fall
11. One resistance is actually immunity.
12. Has third claw.

Green, grey, and death entropics each have an additional random mutation:

1. Any fire damage is instead cold, acid, or shock.
2. 1/day: greater invisibility
3. 1/day: gaseous form
4. 1/day: levitate
5. 1/day: haste
6. 1/day: stone shape
7. 1/day: passwall
8. 1/day: spike growth

W · Entropic Discovery

This chain of rooms, cut through with disintegration magic, is the final leg of the invasion root of the entropics, cutting into room 6.5 of the tesseract. Now the invasion is largely forgotten and this section is now the dregs of the base Rimkegaa has built here, where the diseased and refuse are taken.

6.5 Corpse Pool

• Immediately notice a different environment: very humid air, swampy mildew smell, thin fog. This room also reeks of decaying remains.
• A pool of murky, putrid water fills most of the room. Three corpse flowers are submerged in the pool, feeding on the remains of hosts.
• Pink double door (🝑) glows steady, leads to 5.24

6.6 Quarantine

• A dead-end corridor shoots off from the center of the room, in which are crammed four red and two blue entropics, each infested with a fungal disease, alive, but barely able to move.

6.7 Cesspool

• A deep pit has been dug, filled with excrement.
• An otyugh feeds on the contents.

6.8 Tadpole Gestation

• Dozens of shackles chained to the floor, 1d4 of which are occupied by naked people in final stages of entropic egg gestation.
• Keys to the shackles hang on a high hook, beyond the reach of the humanoids.

6.9 Phage Hospice

• Six oversized, disgusting cots, 1d4 of which are occupied by naked people in final stages of chaos phage, with heavy weights on wrists and ankles to hold them down. Each has a 5% chance of being a spell caster, who will be hooded and gagged as well.

6.10 Sorting

• Two blue and two red entropics control this room, and the entrance to 6.11.
• The dead-end hallway of this room is filled with a gelatinous cube. The floor contains a line of glyphs the cube will not cross.
• Captives to be used for breeding more entropics are first brought here and separated from their belongings. Clothes and other mundane goods are fed to the cube. Coin, jewelry, magical items and the like are stored in 6.11. The guards here trade items taken from captives with other entropics.

6.11 Trove

• The tunnel leading to this room is a steep angle, with a rope anchored at the top.
• A roughly organized treasure hoard, mostly a large pile of copper coins and a small pile of silver coins, along with scattered jewelry, gems, and gold and platinum coins.
• A handful of magic items, which the entropics cannot use, or cannot figure out, are strewn about as well.

X · Accidental Mines

Chain of rooms, cut through with disintegration magic.

6.12 Study

• A green entropic uses this chamber as a place to study different phenomenon. It is currently dissecting a dead xorn.
• Will come to aid of other entropics, if it hears signs of struggle or alarms.

6.13 Exhaustion Room

• 4d6 ragged people sleep on the floor. All are either egg hosts or infected with chaos phage.
• Two entropics may be in here at any time, adding or removing someone.

6.14 Feeding Room

• Two barrels, one filled with water and another with a glowing, potato-like vegetable.
• 2d6 infected people sit near walls, eating and whispering.
• Two entropics stand guard at the southern hallways.

6.15 Crystal Mine

• Six blue entropics smash huge picks into the walls, each strike chipping off a very small shard.
• A dozen infected people, blindly pick up the shards into buckets and, when full, bring the buckets to 6.16.

6.16 Umbrite Extraction

• Six red entropics sift through the buckets, working bronze tools gently on the chips, extracting tiny umbrite gems. A large barrel holds their findings.
• Six infected people clear the waste rock, and pour it into a perfectly circular pit in the center.

6.17 Inertite Search

• A hall 8m wide extends for nearly a kilometer, the result of repeated castings of stone to mud.
• Mud is cleared away, leaving occasional octahedrons of intertite behind. These have been increasing in size as the hall grows longer. Rimkegaa believes a huge chunk of intertite will be found.
• While spell is active, wooden molds are filled with the mud, which turns back to stone when the spell ends. Resulting blocks (1m x .5m x .5m) are slid down to 6.20. Each spell generates ~6,900 blocks, and the process takes about 8 hours.
• Another big mold is used to built reinforcement to the ceiling in the cleared out space.
• One grey entropic orders a crew of a dozen other entropics at the far end. The crew herds several dozen infected people, who shuttle rocks and wooden molds.

6.18 Umbrite Processing

• Three green entropics chant around a spiral of tiny umbrite gems occupying most of the floor. They will ignore alarms, but will react to intruders.
• Eventually, their ritual will form the umbrite into much larger and potent gems.

Y · Raid Support

Chain of rooms, cut through with disintegration magic, then enlarged to be a mustering area. North side of a central chamber. Home of controlled gem dragon.

6.19 Inertite Experimentation

• A grey entropic experiments on inertite octahedrons of various sizes.
• It possesses a magic wristband, which controls the functioning of 6.20, and a greatsword of wounding.
• Room filled with disorganized apparatus.

6.20 Transfer Room

• Large room with intricate patterns on all surfaces.
• With the controlling band (6.19), contents of the room can be teleported to a similar room far away on the surface, where entropics have been raiding villages and build a fortress (using bricks from 6.17).

6.21 Captains’ Den

• 2d4 green entropics plot and argue here while, they wait for action.
• Each carries 1d3 scrolls with abjurations for enhancing themselves or other entropics.

6.22 Ritual Room

A preparation room where captains “organize” squads and enhance them with scrolls prior to raids.

6.23 Armory

Disorganized piles of weapons, to be picked up by entropics from 6.25 as they head to 6.20 for a raid.

6.24 Lair

• The lair of Illuzan, an adult emerald dragon being controlled a geas placed upon her by Rimkegaam, which forces her to be fiercely loyal to the entropic.
• This loyalty would end violently should Rimkegaam lose control of the device which enforces the geas.

6.25 Central chamber

• Various training, contests, and preparation. Many pools.
• Overlooked by opening in 6.24, high on wall. Rimkegaa can whip troops into frenzy, dispatching them to raiding site via 6.20.
• 3d6+6 red entropics, 3d6+6 blue entropics.

Z · Raid Command

South side of central chamber, mostly lair of Rimkegaa the Ravenous, a formidable death entropic who has advanced his physical and spell casting abilities. He also has an amulet that allows him to command the emerald dragon.

6.26 Platform

• A sloppily constructed, but sturdy, wooden platform, overlooking 6.25 and 6.27.
• Two grey entropics and their pet destrachan monitor the proceedings below.

6.27 Forge

• The cave floor rises steeply to form this platform, on which are various blacksmithing stations.
• 1d4+2 red entropics, 1d4+2 blue entropics, and a green entropic forge weapons here, some more crudely than others.

6.28 Entropic Gate

• A large portion of the floor is carved in chaotic, magical designs, anchoring one end of a gate which connects to 9.4.
• Only a cube now held by Rimkegaa the Ravenous can open this gate.
• Two entropics, one red, one blue, “guard” this chamber, but mostly just argue.

6.29 Planning

• Looks out over 6.25 so General Tozgol, a death entropic, can incite is troops below for raids.
• Also serves as a “war room” of sorts, with maps and such on tables.
• A pool constantly scries the invasion site and the fortress being built (see 6.20).

6.30 Horror Chamber

• 2d6 people, all infected, are detained here as “amusements” for General Tozgol and Rimkegaa the Ravenous, who often shapeshift into human form to torture and abuse them.
• Various implements of pain and torture are strewn about the chamber, and the smell is abominable.
• Victims very close to turning or hatching are often taken by Rimkegaa and never seen again. Its minions think it eats the victims (hence the name Ravenous), but they are actually taken to 7.2 and sacrificed.

7.1 The Ravenous

• Opulent, unmatched furnishings, home to Rimkegaa the Ravenous, a death entropic on its way to becoming an entropic lord. It has all mutations from the green/grey/death list.
• He holds a dancing greatsword, and a small cube which controls the gate in 6.28, and the amulet which maintains the geas on Illuzan (6,24).

7.2 Ravenous’ Pool

• Stairs decent to a pool of orange liquid which appears to be digesting the remains of several entropics.
• A twisted monolith rises from the center of the pool, an artifact which allows Rimkegaa to consume life energy from entropics to fuel its ascension.
• Rimkegaa must soak for an hour daily. If all seems lost, it will flee here, grab the artifact, and plane shift.

The Demonic Reach

(July). The invasion demons had a head-start, a better idea where their target tesseract room (7.3) was, and got their gate closer to it than the other groups did, but in-fighting and drama derailed their efforts, leading them to lag proteans and entropics in breaching the tesseract. Their main tool in finding their target was to disintegrate cubes 8m on a side, until they found the room they sought.

This demonic ”reach” was abandoned once the invasion ended, starting a cycle of occupation and abandonment that repeated over the millennia as various fads and fashions cycled through what passes for demon “culture”. Often, the occupiers were demons aiming to escape the tyranny of more powerful demons, attempting futilely to use the reach to build their own power. Others turned the place into something of an experimental artistic installation, to impress other demons. In some incarnations, it served as a trendy hot spot for demon socializing, entertainment, and alleviating boredom.

In current years, demonic interest in the reach has been declining, somewhat like a resort no one goes to anymore. Some effort from earlier demons still works as designed, but the demons who remain either follow their own obsessions, or have nowhere else to go.

Å · Demonic Discovery

This section contains the point where the demonic arm of the invasion breached a room of the tesseract, providing their foothold into the temple. At one point, long after the invasion, demons who rediscovered the tesseract made a point to fill some of the rooms in this section with traps and other effects intended to dissuade other demons from crossing into the tesseract. While this section has been abandoned again, these effects remain.

7.3 Specimen Room

• Stone shelves hold spectacular specimens of various forms of crystal, though many have been smashed or stolen.
• Part of the east side has been disintegrated.
• Glyphs in the ceiling create a field that repulses demons, left here by demons strong enough to resist it, to keep others from entering the tesseract.
• Pink double door (🝪) glows steady, leads to 5.25

7.4 Rare Specimen Room

• The secret door leading into this room is very difficult to detect.
• Stone shelves hold spectacular specimens of very rare expressions of crystal, some magical, and most very fragile.
• These samples were the “crown jewels” of the crystal research done in the tesseract.

7.5 Breakthrough

• Represents the first breach of the demons into the tesseract, disintegrating a portion of 7.3.
• A central stone column runs from floor to ceiling in center. Radiating from it are many cold iron spiked chains running to the walls, each of which is difficult for a demon to cross over.

7.6 The Idyl

• A powerful illusion creates the impress of a vast heavenly paradise of green fields, and angelic music, appalling to the senses of demons.
• Hidden by the illusion is an ornate inlay of malachite in the floor, making the whole room hallowed (though those who carry special malachite disks can ignore the effects).

7.7 The Hermit

Vretiel, a powerful disgraced angel fell two centuries ago. Rather than become a demon lord, it now hides, broods, flagellates, and pities itself here. It torments itself with proximity to 7.6, which it cannot enter (even if given a malachite disk, it will convince itself it is not worthy). The fallen angel will fight formidably if attacked, but will not leave the room for any reason.

7.8 The Suitors

When Vretiel fell, three demons were sent, instructed not to return until they had converted the fallen angel to the cause of Abyss. So far, they have failed, but remain, vigilant for new opportunities to influence the angel.

7.9 The Debaters

• In the center of the room, a single leafless tree reaches to the ceiling.
• Two humanoid demons, each with several physical ailments, calmly argue with each other. They will notice and interact with visitors, but generally digress to arguing with each other.
• Often, their arguments unravel with a realization that the arrival of a particular third demon, expected any time now, is required.

Ø · The Sins

Infighting among the demons gave rise to the odd arrangement of rooms here. During the invasion, passwall spells connected 7.10 and 7.16, but these rooms have since been turned into something like a loyalty test, where passage can only be earned by giving into sin.

While the PCs will start in one of the rooms together, they will advance individually, randomly moving to a sin room they have not yet been in. Only wrath (7.10) and sloth (7.16) connect to other rooms.

7.10 Wrath

• The room wants to temporarily transmute those who enter, giving them claws and a maw of teeth. PCs can resist.
• Filled with shadow demons who taunt and poke, dealing no damage, but wearing away resistance to the transformation. They are immune to magic and most damage, only hurt by claws and bites backed by vicious rage.
• Any who savagely rend a demon in anger are moved to another sin room, the transformation dispelled.

7.11 Gluttony

• A massive spread of food, wine, booze, and drugs, of all varieties, and filled with enthusiastic (if phantasmal) revelers of unrecognizable species.
• Any who indulge themselves to the point of debility are moved to another sin room, though the debilities remain.

7.12 Greed

• A PC finds themselves at a gambling table with five damned phantoms, each with a pile of coins and all cheaters.
• Periodically phantom beggars accost the players, only leaving when given a coin.
• To move on, the PC must come to own all the coins, by hook or by crook, including those of the beggars.

7.13 Lust

• The PC is surrounded with pleasures of the flesh most likely to tempt them, ready and willing.
• Those who give in move on, just prior to climax.

7.14 Envy

• A demonic councillor sits behind a desk, the PC on a couch. The councillor confronts the PC with illusions of their own memories, of times when they felt inferior to someone else.
• To get out, they must truthfully admit to still being envious of another being.

7.15 Pride

• An arena is surrounded by a phantasmal audience.
• Each PC finds a non-lethal challenge within the arena that is difficult, but plays to their strengths.
• To get out, they must repeat the challenge until they succeed brilliantly, and take pride in the resulting adulation from the crowd.

7.16 Sloth

• Wait to handle any who arrive here until all arrive here.
• Filled with incredibly comfortable chairs.
• To exit the chairs, the group must first pass up an opportunity that would help them, in order to remain in the chair in comfort.

Œ · Temples

Renegade demons once spurned their archdemons, and created temples to chaos gods. Cults have occasionally risen and fell using this space over the millennia. Currently, a failed renegade demon, Rolgrinath, commiserates with his dwindling minions, abandoned by the gods he once courted.

7.17 Rolgrinath’s Minions

• Two hezrou sit here because, a century ago, Rolgrinath told them to and has given them no commends since.
• Four chasme lurk on the walls and ceiling, filled with self-loathing over deserting their own lords.
• They will come to the aid of Rolgrinath when needed.

7.18 Rolgrinath’s Throne

• The disgraced balor Rolgrinath claims to be “praying” to the chaos gods of the nearby temples, but mostly just mutters, feeling sorry for himself. While he has the power to summon demons, none respect him enough to answer his call.
• His massive iron throne has become a vessel for his doubt and insecurity, affecting any who sit in it.
• The large room is filled with exquisite carpets (burned), intricately detailed pottery (smashed), and other types of ruined art and treasure.
• Rolgrinath has lost track of his weapons (in 7.19 and 7.22) and has a 10% chance of being under the influence of the temple to insanity (7.21).

7.19 Temple to the Strife God

• The entire chamber is both unhallowed and chaotic.
• A bronze statue of a god of strife stands in the eastern section, holding a cup in one hand, containing several coins. A chaotic creature putting a coin in the cup becomes resistant to fire for a day. A lawful creature putting a coin in the cup become vulnerable to fire for a day. Stealing the coins from the cup offends the strife god.
• Rolgrinath’s longsword has been casually tossed into the south side of the room.

7.20 Temple to the Goddess of Discord

• The entire chamber is both unhallowed and chaotic.
• A marble statue of the winged goddess of discord dominates the north of the room, an apple in one hand and shears in the other.
• A compulsion fills the room, driving occupants to irrational argument.
• Three babau argue with each other, careful not to attract the attention of Rolgrinath.

7.21 Temple to Insanity

• The entire chamber is both unhallowed and chaotic.
• East side has been stone shaped into an abstract statue that is difficult to look at, a representation of a god of insanity. The statue acts as a symbol of insanity, with effects lasting 1d4 hours.
• Any who succumb to the symbol are also blessed and aided for while mad.

7.22 Temple to the Gods of Anarchy

• The entire chamber is both unhallowed and chaotic.
• Thirteen obsidian statues line the walls haphazardly, representations of the gods of anarchy. At any given time 1d12 of them lie in shattered ruins.
• Three branded fire giants toil endlessly, using needles of mending to repair the statues. Their brands geas them to stay in the room until all the statues are repaired. Rolgrinath periodically shatters them in anger before they can finish their work.
• Rolgrinath’s whip has been casually tossed in hallway to this room.

7.23 Hall of Skulls

• West ceiling has collapsed
• Room full of skulls from every imaginable species, in a huge pile. Many large dinosaur skulls.
• Movement difficult

Æ · Shame

This section is ruled by Bralmoxon, a molydeus whose weapon was stolen, leading to banishment by its lord. It has wound up in this forsaken section of the demon reach, having exhausted all leads to finding his lost weapon, immortal and eternally shamed. While replacing a molydeus’ weapon is possible, Bralmoxon has been forbidden to do this. Bralmoxon wears a ring of djinni summoning.

7.24 Treasury

• Because 7.23 is effectively blockaded, Bralmoxon uses this room to store its only possessions, with walls of force that the demon can walk through at will, across both entrances for good measure.
• A nine-headed hydra had been sequestered in the corner, released if either of the force walls fail.
• A dwindling collection of chests, full of coin and gems, is scattered around the room, along with an incongruously organized and extensive rack of scrolls.
• There is a 10% chance Bralmoxon is here, trying to find something in the mess, or reorganizing scrolls.

7.25 Wolf Harem

• Five fiendish dire wolves are compelled to stay in this room.
• There is a 10% chance Bralmoxon is here, polymorphed into some gender of dire wolf, in congress with the others.

7.26 Snake Pit

• A writhing mass of fiendish giant snakes are compelled to stay in this room.
• There is a 10% chance Bralmoxon is here, polymorphed into a giant constrictor, choking the life from other snakes.

7.27 Bralmoxon’s Baths

• Seven scrying pools of various sizes look upon very different scenes.
• An elaborate gold and platinum stand holds a crystal ball of telepathy.
• There is a 50% chance Bralmoxon is here, trying to find his lost weapon.

7.28 Pit of Manes

• Large pit, very deep, filled with manes piled on top of each other, which Bralmoxon uses as raw materials.
• There is a 20% chance Bralmoxon is here, brutally transforming manes into materials for weapons.

7.29 Broken Weapons

• Huge pile of once magical weapons, broken by Bralmoxon when they didn’t measure up to its lost weapon.
• A handful of manes are always lazily digging and picking through the pile for some component or another, on Bralmoxon’s orders.

7.30 Demonic Gate

• The southern half of this room is part of a the demiplane created for the invasion (leading to 9.11).
• Three hell hounds are bound to the north half, tasked to eat any manes trying to escape.

The Protean Reach

(August). The protean arm of the invasion, always the least reliable, breached the tesseract before the demons did purely by luck. From their initial inroad into the material plane (9.3), they transformed into tunneling creatures and spread out at random, eventually intersecting the tesseract (8.6). During the full invasion, many of these tunnels had to be collapsed to prevent the proteans from wandering off. Some wandered off anyway, while others created chambers within the tunnels for their own inscrutable purposes.

Since the invasions, the proteans have mostly stayed out of this reach; however, their chaotic nature tainted the place enough that, over two thousand years, life within the tunnels has mutated in horrifying ways.

Ç · Enchantment Lab

This node of the tesseract once housed a suite of labs dedicated to enchantment magic, one of which was breached by the protean leg of the invasion. Now, it is the domain of the Proctors, unholy mixes of the ghosts of the original lab staff, chaotic voidworm residue, and enchantment magic, churned slowly over two millennia. The Proctors are barely sentient, each driven to work a specific enchantment, and feed on the emotions it produces. They are mostly tangible, mostly invisible, usually levitating, and always amorphous.

7.31 Observation

• Pink double door (🝭) glows steady, leads to 5.23.
• Walls of force, transparent looking into other rooms, mirrors for those rooms looking in.
• Proctor Quest lurks near the ceiling, hoping to geas visitors into life-changing quests. These burn in their mind while in this room, but fade into the background (but never disappear) as visitors disperse. The proctor feeds on inspiration, and favors quests like:
  • Learn everything there is to know about enchantment magic.
  • Seek out enlightenment from protean lord Dalisi, the Chord of Farming Swords.
  • Build an entourage of thralls to your will.
  • Find the song that can bewitch the world.

8.1 Mass Trials

• A massive room, with furniture-sized, brightly colored blobs of wax scattered throughout. Occasionally, a gob of wax slowly drips from the stone ceiling. Coins, weapons, and other items of interest can be seen strewn haphazardly on the floor.
• Proctor Choreography lurks in the far corner. When living creatures advance far enough into the room, he starts spirited, happy music, and begins the irresistible dance, hoping to feed on joy.
• From the blobs of wax, skeletons will rise, and dance in unison to the exclusion of all else, as they did when they lived.

8.2 Individual Trials

• Much of this lush lounge has been preserved from the ravages of time, but all strangely warped.
• Proctor Confession lurks above the mirror, radiating a zone of truth and a compulsion to answer questions whispered from the room. It feeds on guilt and feelings of betrayal, and tries to get visitors to reveal secrets of others in the room.

8.3 Secret Trials

• A huge, opulent bedroom, strangely warped, dominated by a large bed, but also featuring numerous furnishings with erotic purpose.
• Proctor Lure remembers only a desire to get subjects to the bed, but not why, so the bed itself is the center of sympathy aimed at all visitors.
• Three very muscular, naked hobgoblins (actually shapeshifted naunet) kneel next to the bed, entranced, touching and fawning over it as if it is the greatest treasure in the world.

8.4 Monster Trials

• A spartan stone room, but with random swirls on the floor and walls, as if the stone was made liquid, scrambled, and turned solid again.
• Odd, dangerous-looking contraptions of wood and metal, strangely warped, are wired to obvious (but compelling) trigger mechanisms, ready to drop weights, sweep out a spiked arm, open trapdoors in the floor and so on.
• Proctor Turmoil radiates an aura of confusion, and feeds on painful surprise. It aims to have visitors plow through the traps.

8.5 Monster Cages

• The doors of these three barred rooms have been knocked away, and lay on the floor, both bars and doors mangled into impossible shapes.
• Once anyone enters this area, Proctor Proposition makes a mass suggestion on everyone in 8.4 and 8.4 to run blindly down the passage (8.6) waving their hands in the air and screaming.

8.6 Protean Discovery

• This tunnel clearly broke into 8.5 at some point long past, worked much differently than the rest of this area.
• Proctor Perplexity waits in the tunnel, feeding on desperation and longing, casting feeblemind on any who pass.

Þ · Mutated Remnants

Millenia of slow chaotic influence have mutated the microorganisms in this section to gigantic size, evolving a self sustaining ecosystem.

8.7 Staph web

• Crammed full of a web-like network of nodes (mutant staphylococcus) connected by sticky strands.
• Contact with the webs can spread skin disease.
• Mites (from 8.9) occasionally wander in and get stuck, slowly digested in the web.

8.8 Tardigrade Pond

• Entire area filled with moving blobs of water, very few gaps.
• Chaos has mutated microorganisms in water to huge size. Mutant tardigrades feed on anything that enters the water.

8.9 Skin Cave

• All surfaces have transformed into a type of regenerating skin or hide.
• Mutant giant skin mites feed on the walls, and anything else that enters.

8.10 Pseudoscorpion Lair

• A giant pseudoscorpion lairs here, feeding on the mites in the next room.

8.11 Cnidarian Gallery

• A mist-filled room, lit by the glow (from 8.12).
• Floating giant algae drift in and out of the room.
• Mutant cnidarians, anchored on all surfaces, consuming not only the floating algae, but (slowly) the rock of the room.

8.12 Algae Growth

• The walls glow with bright continual light.
• A narrow, but steady, stream of water falls from the ceiling, into a small crack in the floor below. Enough splatters around to make the room damp, with wet spots on the floor.
• Large quantities of giant floating algae drift around here, absorbing water and light.

8.13 Barbs in the Rain

• The ceiling drips constantly, almost like rain, water trickle out of the room and down the tunnel.
• Various colorful seams run through the rock of the walls, floor, and ceiling.
• Large mutant cone snails slowly feast on the seams. The venomous barbs in their proboscises are made from diamond.

Ð · Unnatural Menagerie

After the invasion, a keketar tethered undead into this section along with earth elementals, reshaping a reality that became permanent and mutated further in the ensuing two thousand years. While some can become intangible, they never stray far.

8.14 Crystal Garden

• Plant-like tendrils fill this room, crystals growing at their tips.
• A creature combining the worst traits of a giant xorn and a bodak tends to the tendrils, eating their crystals.

8.15 Scintillating Cave

• The walls of this chamber are like abstract stained glass, with pieces falling out every few minutes, littering the floor.
• Eating the scraps are three creatures mixing traits of flail snails and allips. Three others incorporeally wander this section (and sometimes beyond).

8.16 Ushkono’s Lair

• The floor of this room is covered, about a half meter deep, with all manner of helmets. Perhaps one of them is magical.
• Writhing through the helmets is Ushknoo, a hydra-like form of living rock, with ten heads, each with a single eye socket, containing a gem. Each of the eyes fires rays, like a death tyrant.

8.17 Armored Brain

• A suit of plate armor has been grafted onto a menacing creature of stone, an earth myrmidon. The master it serves rests securely hidden in the myrmidon’s chest cavity, a brain in a jar. Over time, they have fused into one.
• This malevolent entity waits in suspension until it detects the living.

8.18 Honeyed Walls

• The floor, walls, and ceiling are coated in a thick layer of something like honey, which continuously circulates over the surfaces. The substance is sticky and hard to move through.
• A devourer grafted into an earth elemental festers here, starved of souls since being created two thousand years ago. It is very hungry. The creature moves just fine in the honey, but becomes paralyzed if it looses physical contact with it.

8.19 Singing Chamber

• Large crystals vibrate, producing a hypnotic chorus of sound.
• Tethered to the room as a creature combining a wight with a carnivorous crystal, eager to drain life when it drifts intangibly into the room.

8.20 Hall of Dust

• Dozens of creatures mixing together the most unpleasant traits of shadows and dust mephits cram into this room, often churning in and out of life.

Ħ · Fungal Menagerie

Water drips heavily from the ceiling in this section, enough to create small creeks of water running downhill toward area 8.23. This makes is a terrific environment for fungus, which has mutated here for two thousand years. The main danger in this section comes from a wide variety of fungal spores of various kinds floating, undetectable, in the air. Many can create magical infections, often with long incubation periods. Some may cause more immediate hallucinations.

8.21 Violet Field

• This chamber is filled with violet fungus and a number of bat carcasses and other creatures on which the fungi feed.
• Hidden among a group of larger fungi is an eye of the void

8.22 Prismatic Fungi

• The ceiling is covered with wide phosphorescent fungal disks, about 2m across, in a dazzling array of colors.
• The entrance of any living creatures triggers the generation of a prismatic wall blocking progress. The connection between the wall and the disks is not clear.

8.23 Lost Troglodite

• All water from the other chambers in this section drains through a tiny hole here, covering the floor in a pool weak acid.
• Suspended in air in the center of the room is a troglodite skeleton surrounded by a vortex of shredded fungus (similar to an autumn death), the corpse of of someone who got lost in these tunnels centuries ago.

8.24 Talaromyces

• Filaments of Talaromyces flavus made their way into this once iron rich chamber, and the chaotic energy has mutated them into slow-moving acidic tendrils that hunger for metal, which fill the space of this room.
• Water moving through this chamber picks up acid from the fungus, washing it downstream.

8.25 The Bizarre

• Each person who enters this chamber perceives it as a busy market of their own culture, one with particularly appealing food.
• Anyone who eats the food becomes infected with a fungal parasite.

8.26 Mushroom Forest

• Filled with gigantic mushrooms of various colors. One of these is a shrieker, whose alarm summons one or more confused oshageros proteans from their home plane.

8.27 Pierced

• Water raining from ceiling down strands of orange fungus hanging from ceiling.
• Chaos has mutated a roper to an absurdly huge size, barely fitting in the room. It clings to its stealthy habits, but is too large to pull them off.

Ŧ · Endless Approach

The central room in this section is where the proteans breached into this plane during the invasion. The corridors leading to this room are all gimmicked to move people further away from the room as they get close, using a warping sort of teleportation. To the PCs, it will appear as if the hallway in front of them is warping and moving when, in reality, they are moving from hallway to hallway. Every corridor to this room has four features:

• The warp zone. Everyone in this area (outlined with dashed lines) is teleported when the warp is triggered.
• A warp trigger, a point in the hall (marked with a T), like an intangible wall, which triggers the warp when anyone crosses through it.
• A trap of some kind, usually set right in front of the trigger.
• A target, represented by a number in a diamond, the destination of a warp.

When the warp occurs, roll a d6, and find the target with the result. This is where that warp will lead. Each time a 1 is rolled, add +1 (cumulative) to subsequent rolls. Target number 7+ has no warps or traps, leading into the actual room.

8.28 Symbol of Weakness

• A symbol of weakness fills the hall, nearly invisible, triggered by any who step on it.

8.29 Symbol of Insanity

• A symbol of insanity fills the hall, nearly invisible, triggered by any who step on it.
• One end of the corridor is filled with rubble and rock for 50m, intentionally collapsed, before terminating in a dead end (containing another symbol of insanity).

8.30 Confusion of Glass

• The warp zone is filled with sharp glass protrusions jutting from the walls, ceiling and floor, filling the area like a 3d maze.
• The area inflicts confusion on all within.
• This corridor ends in a 30m deep natural pit.

8.31 Symbol of Pain

• An obvious pit, filled with spikes, with a symbol of pain on the side wall.
• An invisible wall of force spans the corridor on the far side of the pit, the warp trigger a meter of so beyond.

9.1 Symbol of Death

• Between the target and the warp zone is a symbol of death.
• One end of the corridor is filled with rubble and rock for 20m, intentionally collapsed, before terminating in a dead end. In the center of the rubble, about a dozen of the ”rocks” are dormant mimics.

9.2 Symbol of Fear

• Past the warp trigger is a symbol of fear, that triggers just prior to the warp trigger being reached.
• This hallway extends about 100m, sloping slightly downwards, until gradually filling with rubble and water, having collapsed centuries ago.

9.3 Protean Gate

• Walking into the column of green fog takes you to the Intrusion (9.18).
• Each creature stepping foot into this room summons an oshageros protean, likely polymorphed.

The Intrusion

(September). The Intrusion is a demiplane constructed by the invaders to act as both a bridge to the material plane, and a staging area for the unlikely alliance of the three groups of invaders (entropics, demons and proteans). This area allowed them to coordinate without their forces mixing much. The entire demiplane is anchored around a thanatotic titan, now the target of a cabal of alien outsiders trying to unravel how the demiplane was made.

Entropic Stage

This large area (1 square is 5m) was formed as a swamp-like biome, surrounded by an impermeable barrier of orange mist, marking the edge of the demiplane. The large force of entropics gathered here from Limbo for the invasion is no more, but some of the detritus of their efforts has taken on a life of its own, and others now use the space as a sanctuary.

9.4 Entropy Gate Tower

• This impossibly tall tower contains only a single room, the floor covered in chaotic designs.
• If the designs are activated with a particular cube (7.1), moving to the center takes you to the material plane (6.28).
• Unused for millennia, the air in this room has turned toxic, though will clear if the large doors are opened.

9.5 The Swamp

• This entire area is formed as a strange shifting swamp, similar to areas on Limbo entropics call home.
• A few pools containing entropic tadpoles throughout.
• Occasional gobs of matter or energy slowly float at random.

9.6 Gibbering pit

• A colossal, amorphous creature made entirely of mouths of all kinds writhes in a pit surrounded by high embankment.
• The mouths create disturbing noise, heard throughout.
• The creature can form long tentacles and will chew on anything it can reach.

9.7 Entropic Platform

• Messy spiral carved into raised granite platform, 30m diameter.
• Ritual stage to which entropics were gated during invasion.
• Now decaying back into chaos matter, making it extremely dangerous.

9.8 The River

• A deep water section, where water flows with a current like a river, though actually a circulating closed loop (down deep, the water moves the opposite direction).
• A gigantic, insane aboleth/entropic never leaves the water, but reacts viciously to any who enter or stand on the banks.

9.9 Nest

• A mated pair of chaos dragons stand watch over a roiling sphere of shifting matter and energy. Inside, their eggs incubate.
• The pair know how to use the platform (9.7) to return to Limbo and survive.

9.10 Entropy Threshold

The huge iron doors to this imposing, asymmetric building are barred from the other side, and protected by infernal traps and wards, a post-invasion attempt by the demons to keep the entropics away from the titan (9.25).

Demonic Stage

This large area (1 square is 5m) was formed as stark stone chamber, surrounded by an impermeable barrier of purple mist, marking the edge of the demiplane. During the invasion, the platforms in this area were destinations for one-way portals from various layers of the Abyss, intended to allow the troops for the invasion to muster here. The whole area is now a work site for Researchers (a collection of weird, inexplicable, alien/extraplanar species, e.g star spawn, gugs, etc.). Each of the platforms now acts as a center for a particular research aim.

9.11 Demon Gate

• The north half of this building leads to the material plane (7.30).
• The large door in this building has been barricaded from the inside, and is guarded by hell hounds controlled by Bralmoxon.
• The Researchers have no interest in this building, and avoid it.

9.12 Demonic Platform to 156

• Ritual stage to which demons were gated from layer 156 of the Abyss during invasion. The sending end is intact, but hard to reach.
• A team of Researchers experiment on the platform itself, attempting to make it a two-way portal.

9.13 Demonic Platform to 272

• Ritual stage to which demons were gated from layer 272 of the Abyss during invasion. The sending end is being examined by a team of Researchers on layer 272.
• A subordinate team of Researchers remains on this end, the low end of the social order within the space.

9.14 Demonic Platform to 389

• Ritual stage to which demons were gated from layer 389 of the Abyss during invasion. The sending end has long been destroyed.
• A team of Researchers experiment with large vats of black blood (taken from the titan, 9.25) in a bewildering variety of experiments with inexplicable purpose.

9.15 Demonic Platform to 466

• Ritual stage to which demons were gated from layer 466 of the Abyss during invasion. The sending end has been buried.
• A team of Researchers obsess over hyper dimensional geometric drawings and a strange language.
• A scale model of room 9.25 dominates the center of the platform. Illusions modeling hyper dimensional energy flows surround it.

9.16 Demonic Platform to 517

• Ritual stage to which demons were gated from layer 517 of the Abyss during invasion. The sending end remains in control of the lord of that layer, but has been largely forgotten.
• A team of Researchers experiment on small samples taken from 9.25, including skin, various fluids, mites and other microscopic fauna scraped from it, etc.

9.17 Demon Threshold

• A team of Researchers plot, plan, and analyze interactions with the titan (9.25), and generally lord over the other teams.

Protean Stage

This large area (1 square is 5m) was formed as vast empty space (proteans can all fly), punctuated by floating platforms, surrounded by an impermeable barrier of green mist, marking the edge of the demiplane.

9.18 Protean Gate

• A floating rock, anchored to the mist. The top is flat, with a short chasm leading down to a green glow. Descending down leads to the prime material plane (9.3).
• The vertical height of this platform is considered “height zero” for this section.

9.19 Aerial Battle

A battle between a keketar protean and a lilitu demon rages, the pair maneuvering through the whole space. Their battle originated on Limbo, but both came through the gate (9.21). Both may take more pleasing shapes and try to convince PCs to help them, should they be noticed. Neither of them should really be here.

9.20 Azata Pyre

• Down 200m, a large blob of molten rock with its own gravity floats, rotating.
• Chained to the rock is the corpse of a brijidine azata, slowing being consumed and transformed by hellfire.

9.21 Protean Platform

• Ritual stage to which proteans were gated during invasion. The sending end of the one-way portal drifts at random in Limbo, still active.
• Several confused voidworms float over and around the platform. Occasionally, a new one materializes from Limbo.

9.22 Sentient Warpwave

• Up 50m, a huge, pointy, shifting, crystalline sentient warpwave floats and ripples.
• Approaching creatures that aren’t outsiders may be hit with warping rays.

9.23 Lost Shard

Down 100m, millennia of chaotic energy has defensively accreted around a large shard of the Axiom (3.6), like a pearl around a grain of sand, into a plasma ooze. Vague remnants of one of the heroes who chased the invaders back to this point have been pulled and transmuted into the ooze.

9.24 Protean Threshold

• Up 200m, a platform fixed to the green mist.
• A building once stood here, but it has clearly been demolished by violence.
• Remnants of demonic traps litter the area, destroyed by proteans.

Demiplane Anchor

This section anchors and stabilizes the demiplane by drawing power from sleeping thanatotic titan, bound into service by the demons for the invasion. Demonic plans for the titan after the invasion never materialized.

9.25 Titan chamber

• The center of this huge chamber is a deep pit, stairs leading into it, holding a chained thanatotic titan.
• Three colors of mist (orange, purple, green) divide this room, encouraging outsiders to keep to their own lane.
• On four pillars at the top of the steps leading to the pit, the remains of the four heroes who eventually chased the invaders out are chained upside down. They were finally killed in this room.

9.26 Entropic Filter

• Glowing orange motes float in the air, getting thicker as one approaches 9.27. Unless you are an entropic (and particularly if you are lawful or some other type of outsider), the motes make it more and more difficult to move as they cluster more densely.
• An armanite has been stuck here for centuries, unable to move.

9.27 Entropic Integration

• An entropic monstrosity occupies this space on the orders of Rimkegaa the Ravenous (7.1), intent on preventing a passage, particularly from the doors inward.
• The doors are silvery energy portals. All lead to the Roil (10.2, 10.3, 10.16).

9.28 Demonic Filter

Glowing purple motes float in the air, getting thicker as one approaches 9.29. Unless you are a demon (and particularly if you are lawful or some other type of outsider), the motes make it more and more difficult to move as they cluster more densely.

9.29 Demonic Integration

• Three star spawn hulks watch the doors here, alerting the Researchers to intruders from the Roil. They wear armbands which allow them to ignore the purple motes.
• The doors are silvery energy portals. All lead to the Roil (10.2, 10.9, 10.10).

9.30 Protean Filter

• Glowing green motes float in the air, getting thicker as one approaches 10.1. Unless you are a protean (and particularly if you are lawful or some other type of outsider), the motes make it more and more difficult to move as they cluster more densely.
• Several blobs of chaos matter drift in here, remnants of creatures who got stuck and transmuted.

10.1 Protean Integration

• Two oshageros proteans have been bound here to destroy any visitors who are not proteans.
• The doors are silvery energy portals. All lead to the Roil (10.9, 10.16, 10.17).

The Roil

(October). A web of rooms drifts in the astral plane, ultimately connecting the demiplane used by the invasion to the plane of Pandemonium. These rooms, called The Roil, were built after the invasion had secured the heart of the Axiom (5.18). The invaders used the heart to keep a bridge to Pandemonium open to the astral permanently, as well as connecting to the Roil and all the way back to the ruins of the Kioolicit civilization.

The rooms of the Roil are a tesseract without labels. Further, six black doors are scattered throughout the Roil, each of which will randomly take you to another. As the Roil was constructed by and for large creatures, it functions on a larger scale. Each square on the maps are 2m on an edge.

Recently, a cthulid ship crashed into one of the rooms of the Roil. Already heavily damaged, the craft became inoperable. The passengers, face-tentacled psionic beings, are all that remains of a colony on the losing end of a conflict. They managed to escape with the colony’s elder brain, now ensconced in the Roil, as its remaining minions attempt to take control of the space.

Castle Saffron

The “castle” used by the entropics during the invasion has been long abandoned. Recently, infiltrators from Pandemonium have taken up residence.

10.2 Guardhouse

• Clearly the site of a recent battle, three howlers and two cthulids lie dead and bleeding.
• One howler remains, mentally dominated by a surviving cthulid who went to get reinforcements.

10.3 Saffron Bridge

• Approaching from 9.27, a lowered drawbridge surrounded by orange mist connects to a castle turret, gate and doors closed.
• Inside the turret, a pack of howlers lounges around.
• On a glowing crystal pedestal in the center of the room, presented like a trophy and capped in a hemisphere of clear quartz, is a shard of the Axiom.

10.4 Dumping Room

• Several thousand years of detritus and garbage cover the floor.
• A swarm of cranium rats dominates a lone howler, used to eavesdrop on events in 10.6 for their cthulid masters.

10.5 Howler Nursery

• A dozen amniotic sacks hang from the ceiling, gestating howlers within.
• Chords from each sack feed on three recently killed cthulids dumped in the center of the room.
• Five howlers guard the room.

10.6 The Alpha

A huge alpha howler holds court in this gigantic chamber, surrounded by dozens of howlers. It has a bull-like nose ring of regeneration.

10.7 Homage to Strife

• A pack of howlers feeds on a the corpses of half dozen derro who had been taken over by intellect devourers.
• Intricate designs on the walls shift unpleasantly, a homage to a god of strife (7.19). Lawful creatures studying the patterns are subject to a hypnotic pattern.

10.8 Homage to Insanity

• A pack of howlers, driven to madness.
• Any sound-based effect used in this room, including the howl of howlers, may inflict insanity.
• Polished stone walls, containing patterns that shift, often forming laughing faces, homage to a god of insanity (7.21). Lawful creatures studying the patterns may be compelled to uncontrolled laughter.

Castle Amaranth

The “castle” used by demons during the invasion was repurposed into a gilded prison for a single creature a century ago. Ambitious even for a lamia, Mathisia was invested with power by her demon lord lover, but she betrayed even him. Unwilling to destroy her, he imprisoned her in this section.

10.9 Guardhouse

• A jackalwere warlock commands a number of jackalwere guards

10.10 Amaranth Bridge

• Approaching from 9.29, a lowered drawbridge surrounded by orange mist connects to a castle turret, gate and doors closed.
• Inside the turret, a bone jackal waits, both to repel intruders and prevent escape.
• On a glowing crystal pedestal in the center of the room, presented like a trophy and capped in a hemisphere of clear quartz, is a shard of the Axiom.

10.11 Jackalwere Den

• Baracks and quarters for the jackalwere in this section.
• Commanded by a jackalwere priest, beholden to Mathisia.
• Remains of humanoids, eaten for food, are present.

10.12 Mathisia’s Suite

• The luxurious prison of Mathisia—a huge, infernally-invested, lamia sorceress—partitioned into various sections by large, portable, screens. She would love to get out of here, but is bound here by powerful geasing magic, cast by an archdemon.
• Three lamia serve Mathisia’s needs, also bound by magic.
• At least four jackalwere guards stand post at the door at all times.
• The corner holds a huge pool, which Mathisia uses for bathing and scrying on the rest of this section.
• A small number of humanoid slaves may be present.

10.13 Humanoid Spigot

• Once per day, all trash, waste and corpses placed on the large central platform are whisked away. In their place will appear 1d4 chained humanoids, intended to feed the prisoner and her servants.
• Occasionally, a jackalwere will arrive, to replace losses.
• From zero to four jackalwere may be here at any given time, depositing trash on the platform, or waiting the daily activation.

10.14 Homage to Discord

• A bronze statue of a goddess of discord (7.20) is mounted to the ceiling, upside down, looking down on the room in resplendent malice. The marble walls are covered in relief carvings of many species, appearing to argue with and accuse their counterpart carvings across the room.
• Several colors of blood and other signs of recent conflict mar the floor, but the room is otherwise empty.
• Creatures who stay too long in this room tend to turn on each other.

10.15 Homage to Strife

• Intricate carvings depicting a battle between hundreds of different species slowly move around the walls, ever changing, a homage to a god of strife (7.19). Any lawful creatures studying the patterns are subject to a mental influence steering them to aggression.
• A lone cthulid holds a lamia under mental control, while implanting an intellect devourer into an unconscious jackalwere guard. Another lamia, two dead cthulids and a few dead jackalweres are strewn bloodily around the room.

Castle Viridescent

While the rooms of the other “castles” float in astral space, the rooms of this section have all been captured by a morkoth and attached to its island, though this is nearly impossible to detect from within. The rooms themselves are 50m high, built for proteans (who can all fly), with the doors near the ceiling. Some have been mostly flooded by Aoknu, the morkoth in question.

10.16 Guardhouse

In setting up the invasion, the proteans manipulated three ki-rin into a conundrum where the only escape was to agree to a magically binding contract of 23 centuries of servitude. They were tasked to destroy any non-proteans entering into this room, then utterly forgotten after the invasion.

10.17 Viridescent Bridge

• A protean is supposed to be on guard here, but abandoned its post long ago.
• On a glowing crystal pedestal in the center of the room, presented like a trophy and capped in a hemisphere of clear quartz, is a shard of the Axiom.
• Two cthulids study the shard.

10.18 Workshop

• A large chaotic apparatus of inscrutable purpose floats in the room, a new acquisition of Aoknu.
• Three oni wearing a cloaks of levitation study it, bound to service to Aoknu by a magical armband.

10.19 Aoknu’s Retreat

• Massive room, filled with water to about 1m below the doors (which are near the ceiling).
• Aoknu a huge, ancient and formidable morkoth invested with chaotic power, uses this room when it wants to relax, which is often. It will certainly dimension door here when it detects anyone entering any of the rooms in this section, hoping to feed. It is protected by a scarab of protection and an ioun stone that provides regenerative powers.
• A dozen kuo-toa of various kinds attend Aoknu at all times, convinced it is a god.

10.20 Flooded Chamber

• Filled with water to about 1m below the doors (which are near the ceiling).
• Aoknu has installed a false door frame to hold an item from its collection, an activated mirror of life trapping, but hasn’t checked it for a few decades. It holds 1d6 prisoners, from various eras, including one of the recently arrived cthulids.

10.21 Homage to Insanity

• A bronze statue to a god of insanity (7.21) shifts its shape into depicting a different species every few minutes, but always depicted as joyfully playing with a protean voidworm in whatever passes for its hands.
• Aoknu has turned this room in an overly stuffed museum of items related to this particular god, including a large table holding a model of an elaborate labyrinth, which may suck visitors into its maze.

10.22 Homage to Discord

• The walls are covered floor to ceiling in half-meter high alcoves holding statues of a variety of humanoid species, all with their backs turned outward.
• Turning or moving any statue causes them all to animate and fly into the room to fight each other, and any caught in the middle.
• Statues that are destroyed or taken out of the room disintegrate and reform in their alcove within an hour.

Castle Prism

While the cthulid survivors of the crash could plane shift away, they are all that remains of the losing side of a conflict, and have nowhere in particular to go. Instead, they attempt to gain control of the Roil, build their forces, and regroup.

10.23 War Room

• Makeshift barricades divide the room, turning the north 4m of the room into a kill zone.
• Six cthulids, one of them a wizard, and a number of **thralls** of various kinds, plan and execute the exploration/conquering of the rest of the Roil.
• A red glow emanates from the floor.

10.24 Cthulid Wranglers

• Makeshift barricades divide the room, turning the north 4m of the room into a kill zone.
• Two cthulids and a dominated runed behir stand watch.
• A blue glow emanates from the floor.

10.25 Sortie Launch

• Makeshift barricades divide the room, turning the north 4m of the room into a kill zone.
• Three cthulids and a dozen intellect devourers (two occupying the bodies of jackalweres) prepare for a sortie into the Roil.
• A yellow glow emanates from the floor.

10.26 Infirmary

• Five wounded cthulids lay on makeshift cots, tended by an indifferent cthulid with a staff of healing.
• They have not detected the secret door to an antichamber with of the the black doors.
• An orange glow emanates from the floor.

10.27 Cthulid Crash Site

• A large escape pod from a cthulid astral ship recently crashed through a wall. Many of of its panels and parts have been stripped.
• In the raw astral space beyond the opening left by the pod drift dozens of bodies of various creatures, brains consumed.
• A pair of cthulids mentally controls a team of three jackalweres and a lamia, assembling inscrutable devices from scraps from the pod.
• A purple glow emanates from the floor.

10.28 Brain Room

• An elder cthulid brain floats in a slightly damaged and makeshift vat of viscous brine.
• Two cthulids dominate a howler, bringing it to feed the brain.
• Two fire giants infested with intellect devourers guard the brain.
• A green glow emanates from the floor.

10.29 Gestation Chamber

• Used as “nursery”. Makeshift sarcophagi with grimlocks (?), infected with cthulid slugs.
• A wall of force blocks access to 10.30.
• A shard of the Axiom rests within the center of a stepped platform of transparent quartz, distributing streams of colored energy from 10.30.

The Postulate

(November). This section is a corruption of the Axiom, subverting its orderly heart to keep open a permanent passage to the chaos of Pandemonium. This was the entire point of the invasion, though once the chaotic gods that backed it proved such a passage could be built, it wasn’t long before their attention to it faded. What remains is a scattered collection of rooms, with endlessly shifting connections.

All black doors in The Postulate are black slabs of granite. Occasionally a streams of color will burst from these doors, darting into other black doors, at random. When a door is touched, it becomes a polychromatic portal for about a minute (greatly increasing the streams of color), leading to a semi-random room in The Postulate. When activating a polychromatic portal, roll d8, adding one for each shard of the Axiom removed from the "Howl" locations within the Postulate:

• 1–6: Door leads to one of the other rooms in the same seven-room section, counting the result of the roll from the first room, but skipping the room being exited.
• 7: Door leads to room 11.{d12}.
• 8–10: Door leads to room 11.{d30}.
• 11–12: Door leads to room 11.{d20+10}.
• 13+: Door leads to room 11.{d10+20}.

Once a black door is used and deactivates, it becomes inoperable for 1d8 hours.

Some of the rooms in The Postulate are within closed biomes with exits leading beyond what is shown on the map. Such spaces are small, closed toroids such that going off the “end” in one direction brings you to the opposite side (similar to the video game Asteroids). As in the prior month, squares on the map are 2m.

Throughout The Postulate, a whispering wind blows, more strongly in some rooms than others. The wind seems to babble, whispering secrets in indecipherable languages if you pay close attention.

After the chaos gods stopped paying attention to The Postulate, five trumpet archons were sent to deal with capture of the Axiom’s heart. They failed miserably, corrupted by chaos and bent to serve the chaotic forces that launched the invasion. Like the Axiom itself, their lawful nature has been bent and suborned to provide stability to The Postulate, and their horns now connected to the howling winds of Pandemonium. These archons have now become anarchs and lost the ability to plane shift with spells now leaning more to chaos, madness, destruction, and luck.

Orphamiel’s Folly

When activating a polychromatic portal in this section, roll a d4 instead of d6, and skip rooms 10.30 and 10.31.

10.30 Mockery of Bifrost

• A noticeable wind, seemingly whispering secrets in dead languages, gusts from 10.31 to 10.29. It seems to carry random, fluctuating pulses of color, consolidating them.
• The walls are carved with increasingly bold mockery of lawful gods from every pantheon.
• When activating a polychromatic portal, always skip this room.

10.31 The Prismatic Gate

• Carvings show lawful gods in chains, holding a bridge between a paradise and roiling vortex, wind rushing from the latter to spoil paradise.
• Through the center is a magical barrier, changing color every few sections, a prismatic wall acting with only one color at a time.
• When activating a polychromatic portal, always skip this room.

11.1 Stained Glass Temple

• This space is enclosed in massive shards of stained glass haphazardly fused into a conical structure.
• The trumpet anarch Orphamiel has forgotten it was ever an archon and serves The Postulate fully. It will teleport into any of the rooms to protect them, if called, but doesn’t trust the other anarchs, so will usually stay out of their sections.
• Archways lead to a closed biome somewhat like a forest, but made with stained glass. The wind makes chiming noises through the branches.

11.2 Cauldron

• A smooth basalt dome, without a floor, floating in a closed biome: a hellscape of flowing magma.
• The strong wind swirling within the dome radiates extreme heat, with unpredictable gusts.
• The black doors are set into the base of the dome, floating 50m over lava.

11.3 Stillness

• A raised dais in an otherwise featureless closed biome, absolutely still, dark and silent. All creatures entering the dais are subject to slow and silence. Anyone stepping off the dais is subject to modify memory.
• Columns around the dais are connected on top by arches. Between some of them are black doors.

11.4 The Phylactery Tower

• The middle floor of a three floor onyx tower, mostly sealed from the wind. It is an unhallowed temple to a fungus god. An undead fungal servant has been bound to guard it.
• Up the stairs, the centerpiece of the floor is raised platform, heavily trapped, displaying the phylactery of some powerful lich. Though convincing to eye and magic, it is a fake. The real phylactery rests in a box protected from divination, hidden under stones in the floor.
• Down the stairs, locked and sealed doors lead to a closed biome, a seemingly endless moor, roamed by shadows of various kinds.

11.5 Abandoned Outpost

• A strange, defensive, building made of crystal walls, oversized, for large creatures.
• Surrounded by a moat filled with a boiling purple sludge. Drawbridge has been destroyed.
• Outside the building is a large closed biome, a breezy grassland, where a population of dire rabbits and velociraptors hunt each other.

Semalion’s Edict

11.6 The Windy Stair

• A seemingly infinite spiral stair surrounding an empty space, with heavy winds rushing from the dark bottom to the bright top. Each loop around contains a landing with a black door.
• The trumpet anarch Semalion remains lawful, but its sense of what “law” is has been co-opted into rules about maintaining and protecting The Postulate. It will teleport into any of the rooms to protect them, but doesn’t trust the other anarchs, so will usually stay out of their sections.

11.7 The Tunnel

A seemingly infinite cave tunnel, a stiff breeze moving down it. Roll d6 to determine what is in each 50m section (even if backtracking), subtracting one if moving in the direction of the wind, adding one moving against:

• 0–1: The temperature of the wind decreases.
• 2–3: Some sort of concealed trap.
• 4–5: Some sort of obvious trap.
• 6: Some sort of barrier.
• 7: A black door

11.8 Yellow Howl

• A violent wind howls out of small hole at the center of a raised dais, rushing into a shard of the Axiom, glowing yellow.
• Streams of yellow rush from the shard to the black doors embedded in the surrounding floor.
• Surrounding the dais is a closed biome of craggy, yellowish rock. A phoenix has been imprisoned here for centuries, cursed to prevent it from using the doors.

11.9 The Hall of Transfiguration

• Filled with barrier walls at odd angles, and occasional pits.
• Every minute, a true polymorph spell affects all in the room, changing targets randomly.

11.10 Three Hut Hill

This closed biome, once a pine forest, has been corrupted by the presence of a coven of three powerful night hags. Each has a hut at the base of a hill, the top of which holds a set of crooked monoliths, some containing black doors.

11.11 Green Howl

• A violent wind howls out of the hollow trunk of a huge, dead tree, rushing into a shard of the Axiom, glowing green.
• Streams of green rush from the shard into black doors embedded into the bark of surrounding trees.
• The trees are part of a closed biome of extremely tall trees. Within the woods, a retriever is finally tracking down a glabrezu who has crossed a devotee of Lolth.

11.12 The Ice

• A closed biome of ice, sharp hail, and relentless, heavy wind.
• Five iron golems wander the ice, each with a black door embedded into its back.

Anaphiel’s Tumult

11.13 Glitching Gardens

• A closed biome containing miles of well manicured, bright, garden trails.
• A gigantic gazebo holds a pair of black doors.
• The trumpet anarch Anaphiel lives in denial that it has been corrupted. It maintains its orderly garden as if all is well, but occasionally “glitches” into full chaos anarch, with a corresponding change to the garden. Subconsciously, it tries to avoid situations that encourage glitching, so tends not to leave his garden, and secretly fears the other anarchs.

11.14 Blue Howl

• A violent wind howls out of a whirlpool, rushing into a shard of the Axiom, glowing blue.
• Streams of blue rush from the shard into black doors floating 20m above the water.
• The whirlpool churns in a closed biome of open ocean. The dragon turtle who roams the depths avoids the whirlpool, but is attracted to the use of magic.

11.15 The River Docks

• A closed biome of a very wide, fast-moving river, wind cutting across it, appearing much like the River Styx.
• This “room” actually connects to the River Styx 10% of the time.
• Small river houses, with docks (and sometimes even boats) can be found periodically on the bank, each containing a black door.
• Several styx dragons lurk in the river.

11.16 Chamber of Self Reflection

• Filled with a maze of highly polished, reflective walls, creating “infinite reflections” of visitors.
• Room alternates between magical light and darkness, with the chance of changing increasing by 10% each round.
• On transitions to light, each “level” of the infinite reflections steps into the next one, the immediate reflections stepping into the room. These phantasms don’t speak, but move towards their originals (generally 1d3 copies each time).
• On transitions into darkness, each copy becomes a phantasmal killer, immediately targeting their originator.

11.17 Purple Howl

• A violent wind howls out of a small cave opening overlooking a mountain valley, rushing into a shard of the Axiom, glowing purple.
• Streams of purple rush from the shard into black doors set into the surrounding cliffs.
• The valley is one of many in the closed biome of temperate mountains, in which trolls have been feeding on each other so much that only a dozen dire trolls remain.

11.18 The Muck

• This closed biome is a mud flat, covered with thick mud and muck from one to three meters deep. Moving through this muck is difficult.
• A number of black doors are scattered through the space, but all lay flat, buried under the mud. Guarding each is a mud behir.

11.19 The Kennel

• A stone ring at the top of a hill holds several black doors. Surrounding this, the closed biome is a hilly, often foggy, deciduous forest, with a day/night cycle.
• At night, the place is crawling with yeth hounds, all loyal to the hag coven (11.10). They shelter in dens during the day.
• At any given time, there is a 5% chance the hags have thrown 1d3 victims in here to feed the hounds.

Perpetiel’s Surrender

11.20 The Ruins

• A small closed biome filled with the ruined foundation of stone buildings. The most intact of these holds two black doors.
• The trumpet anarch Perpetiel skulks through the ruins. It knows it has been corrupted, and has completely given up trying. While it can teleport to any of the rooms in this section, it would take something extraordinary for it to try.

11.21 Red Howl

• A violent wind howls out of a dormant geyser, rushing into a shard of the Axiom, glowing red.
• Streams of red rush from the shard into black doors floating on magma flows running through a closed biome of volcanic rock.
• Three magma landsharks roam blasted landscape.

11.22 The Islands

• This closed biome contains three tropical islands, each with a black door in a squat stone building.
• The day cycle appears to have two suns, and the night cycle shows very strange stars. It is always breezy, but there is a 25% of hurricane conditions.
• Various pterosaurs patrol the skies.

11.23 Darkweavers

• A closed biome of connected caverns, completely dark.
• Six darkweavers lair in separate caves, each near a black door.
• Creatures using plane shift to enter The Postulate often end up here, unless they really know what they are doing.

11.24 Peak Suffering

• A lone black door is built near the peak of a mountain, on a ritual site.
• A heavily wounded ki-rin is bound uncomfortably in the ritual site, chains holding open wounds, and a collar around its horn which prevents it casting spells (4.20).
• The closed biome surrounding the peak is filled with crags, ravines, and caves.
• A cave complex about a mile away from the peek is the lair of a baernaloth, who experiments on a small menagerie of celestials and fiends, kept barely alive and suffering.

11.25 Orange Howl

• A violent wind howls out of a sand pit, rushing into a shard of the Axiom, glowing orange.
• Streams of orange rush from the shard into black doors surrounding an oasis at the center of closed biome of arid hills.
• Several balhannoth make lairs here.

11.26 Cavern of Stairs

• A massive cavern, with heavy winds, filled with numerous stone stairways, many ruined, but some leading to a chamber atop the cavern.
• The chamber contains several black doors, but black doors leading into this room arrive at the bottom of the cavern.
• A neothelid floats in the cavern, having fed on all other life in the cavern.

Mahanaim’s Paradise

11.27 Contemplation Cave

• The trumpet anarch Mahanaim has become convinced that caves in this section are parts of Heaven, which it defends vigorously, yet makes excuses to never abandon.
• It perceives the closed biome overlooked by the opening of this cave as a verdant pastoral grassland, but it is a blasted, salt-encrusted, waste, filled with acidic pools.

11.28 Spore Cave

Near hurricane force winds howl through these damp, warm, dark caves. The winds carry mist and fungal spores of many species, all adapted to the wind and chaos. Contact with the spores tends to bring powerful hallucinations, even madness. The black doors are heavily concealed by fungus.

11.29 Chaos Geode

A huge geode like structure, but the “crystals” randomly mutate and churn through all sorts of forms, animal, vegetable, mineral, fungal, energy. Some feed on others. Some on visitors. Wind rushes in a vortex. Gravity attracts to the walls.

11.30 The Seclusium of Nalgruz

• When Nalgruz, a very old howling dragon, needs solitude to plot and scheme (as he does now), he comes here, via a unique plane shift ability. He sleeps a third of the time.
• The center of the room contains a 4m diameter teleportation circle, carved into the stone by claws (crudely inspired by the circle in 12.2), with a particularly complicated sigil sequence known only to Nalgruz.
• Huge metal doors, locked and dangerous, separate this cave from 12.1.

12.1 A Heart Subverted

• In the (not quite) center, the Axiom’s heart floats, caged in a randomly shifting apparatus, pulling the wind from 12.3 into itself, and releasing streams of colored energy into holes in the ceiling (feeding into the “Howl” rooms). The heart keeps the bridge open permanently, its order anchoring Pandemonium to this world. If the heart is removed from this apparatus, that feed stops, all of the black doors stop working, and the heart has a good chance of exploding. Surrounding it with shards of the Axiom reduce this chance significantly.
• Staring at the heart for the last two millennia is a lhaksharut, corrupted and rendered immobile by a logic loop: it wants to destroy the heart to eliminate the bridge, but cannot destroy the heart because it is a potent artifact of law.

12.2 The Circle

A breathtakingly intricate teleportation circle has been inlayed into floor in adamantine, mithryl, orichalcum, and even more exotic metals. Few remain who remember the sigil sequence for this circle, as it is very complicated, and injures non-chaotic creatures who try to memorize it. Once, powerful chaotic beings made use of it due to the ease of moving between layers of Pandemonium offered by location 12.3.

12.3 Portals to Pandemonium

• A wide walkway spirals downward and inward from 12.2, an opening to 12.1 high up the cliffside.
• Wind screams from four massive openings in the walls of the spiral into 12.1. Each of these bizarrely decorated openings leads to one of the planes of Pandemonium (12.4, 12.11, 12.18, 12.25).
• A gate archon floats in silent vigil over these entrances into Pandemonium, watchful (but not interfering) with any creature’s coming or going.

Pandemonium

(December). The scale changes again for the maps in this month, with each week representing a region within one of the layers of Pandemonium; one square is now 100m on a side.

The broad outline of the plane of Pandemonium and its layers comes fully from the traditions of "the world’s most popular roleplaying game", but actual material is few and far between, and inconsistent between versions. The version here doesn’t favor a particular iteration, but gestures roughly at all of them:

• Manual of the Planes (AD&D)
• Manual of the Planes (Third Edition)
• Manual of the Planes (Fourth Edition)
• Planes of Chaos (Planescape)
• Pandemonium (Forgotten Realms wiki)
• Codex of the Infinite Planes: Windswept Depths of Pandemonium

Folly of a Strife God

The first link to Pandemonium leads to a remote complex on its first layer, Pandesmos. Two thousand years ago, a god of strife (see 7.19, 10.7, 10.15) built a complex dedicated to his own greatness here. Among other pursuits, he conceived of and helped plan the invasion to destroy the Axiom and use its heart to permanently connect Pandemonium to the prime plane. As a chaotic god, once this aim was achieved, his attention wandered and, on a whim, he abandoned this place.

Gravity on all of Pandesmos attracts to the nearest surface, so ruins cover all the inner surfaces of the caves in this section, with “up” being the center of cave’s volume. As with everywhere on this layer, the wind howls relentlessly.

12.4 The Giant’s Stairway

• The gate (from 12.3) connects to a wide stairway that runs around the inner surface of a large cave. The construction is such that it always seems you are walking “up” the stairs no matter which direction you travel.
• Avenues lead away from the stairs to stone homes built for giants, in various stages of collapse.
• A number of giant skeletons wander the space.

12.5 The Immolated

• A half dozen stone towers stand scattered among a smoldering slum of ruined wooden hovels, once ramshackle slave dormitories.
• The ruins teem with shadows and ash wraiths, which all give the impression of burning endlessly.

12.6 The Village

• Once a village for the acolytes of the strife god, many of the buildings have been rebuilt, with large windmills rapidly spinning in the harsh wind.
• A population of derro have been enslaved to create a race of chaotic constructs in factories powered by the windmills, and raise and educate them.
• Menavia, an arcane nimblewright, commands the derro, compelled by Zhatazro, a sentient robe of the arch magi.
• This place remains consecrated ground of the god of strife, antithetical to law.

12.7 The Godhead

• Floating in the center of the village is ruined palace, once the seat of the god of strife.
• When abandoned by the god of strife, the palace was occupied by his high priest, the lich Vrethaz. The god still holds Vrethaz’s phylactery, starving it, cause Vrethaz to degenerate into a demilich.
• This place remains hallowed ground of the god of strife, antithetical to law.

12.8 The Pleasuredome

• This cave is an arena for battle, with spires from a central pit connected by a maze of catwalks and extending to the “ceiling”, which becomes another floor for battle. Zero gravity exists in the center.
• One half of the inner surface of the gave is built to hold thousands of spectators.
• Stone around the entrances and exits serve to channel the wind into the battle space, awa from the spectators.
• Many skull rippers remain in the battle space to harass combatants.

12.9 The Lost

Every surface covered obelisks, with broad paths between them. Each obelisk commemorates a civilization destroyed by strife. Several unspeakable horrors roam this cave, all that remains of the souls of these cultures.

12.10 Styx

This cave opens on the bank of the River Styx. A ruined stone dock juts into the river, with one ruined stone boat smashed against it. On the opposite bank, family of styx dragons (two mature adults, five juveniles) nest, feeding on large quippers..

Legacy of a Mad God

The second link to Pandemonium leads to a remote complex on its second layer, Cocytus. Two thousand years ago, a god of insanity (see 7.21, 10.8, 10.21) tuned the tunnels here to enhance the already potent mind altering power of the winds of Pandemonium. Few who wander into this place leave unaltered.

Gravity on all of Cocytus also attracts to the nearest surface. This whole area is a web of bizarrely linked caves, with seven larger caves acting as landmarks. Some elements of the invasion were lured into this section, and they have wandered in madness since. Any creature encountered here will be alone, driven completely insane by the wind.

In the unlabeled, smaller caves in this section, a random creature may be found lost in its own personal madness (roll d12):

• 1-7: nothing but the wind
• 8: entropic (d6: 1 red, 2 blue, 3 green, 4 grey, 5 death, 6 monstrosity)
• 9: demon (d8: 1 vrock, 2 hezrou, 3 shoosuva, 4 glabrezu, 5 alkilith, 6 nalfeshnee, 7 nabassu, 8 marilith)
• 10: protean (d6: 1 naunet, 2 illureshi, 3 imentesh, 4 ibshaunet, 5 oshageros, 6 hegessik)
• 11: celestial (d8: 1 deva, 2 shield archon, 3 zelekhut, 4 aghasura, 5 exscinder, 6 kolyarut, 7 nikaramsa, 8 planetar)
• 12: bebelith (telpathically connected to 1d4-1 others nearby)

12.11 Mouth of Madness

• Wind blasts out into 12.3 even stronger than the other gates, through an opening like a many-toothed maw.
• Moving against the wind is extremely difficult, made harder by uneven ground.
• Near, but not blocking, the opening is a permanent prismatic sphere-like effect, making this room very bright. Those falling in the room have a good chance of being driven by the wind through the sphere and out the opening.
• Every minute 2d3 symbols of insanity appear on random surfaces in the room (and prior symbols vanish).

12.12 The Plane Trap

• A series of manic gylphs on all surfaces of this room tend to attract creatures who plane shift into Cocytus without a specific teleportation circle in mind, or try to plane shift out of this section (for example, via the violet layer of the sphere in 12.11).
• Planar creatures who would normally reform after they “die” will, similarly, be pulled here instead if they “die” in or near this section.
• Mortal creatures who die in or near this section are resurrected in this room, contaminated with part of a random planar creature.

12.13 The Awe

• The volume of this large room is under the effects of reverse gravity (meaning gravity pulls towards the center of the room’s volume, not the walls).
• The surfaces of the room are featureless. Instead, a magnificent and deranged palace floats in the center, like a planet.
• A temporary residence of a god of insanity, it is now abandoned, populated by laughing shades.

12.14 Bebilith Spawning Ground

• An natural cave filled with webbing and huge silken egg sacks, glowing like hot coals.
• 1d4 bebilith are here tending the webs and sacks, though the stay as far from each other as possible.
• The webbing of bebilith who spawn here is completely unaffected by Pandemonium’s winds.

12.15 The Spiral

Within this chamber is the granddaddy of Things Not Meant to Be Seen, capable even of unraveling the sanity of gods. Fortunately, the god of insanity who brought it here locked it behind one of the most formidable vaults ever built. Within the outer vault is a side chamber containing a portal to 12.30.

12.16 The Crib

• Filled with chaotic and weird apparatus, truly mad science.
• A gargantuan atropal floats in the center, a long abandoned, aborted creation of a god of insanity.
• This atropal channels the winds of this place through slots in its head, making a particularly potent wail.

12.17 False Harmony

Somewhere in Cocytus is Harmonica, a cavern sought by those who would master planar travel. Many clues point toward this cavern as the site of Harmonica, but they are lies, planted by the god of insanity. Instead, he bound a gibbering orb here, weakened by its bonds, but hungry.

Discord’s Obligation

The third link to Pandemonium leads to a remote complex on its third layer, Phlegethon. Two thousand years ago, a goddess of discord (see 7.20, 10.14, 10.22) expended minimal effort to develop this area as part of the invasion plan. Once connected, she left it to her minions to fight over. They all lost.

A century ago, Dalisi, the Chord of Frowning Breads, a kalaraq quori sought to escape its home plane by consuming a powerfully chaotic soul. It succeeded, after a fashion, but is now trapped here, and has been twisted to boot. It has spent the time since twisting other quori and bringing them here, where they have been possessing the locals.

During and after the invasion, the god of insanity, inspired by the chimera synthesis chamber (5.9), began merging creatures with ever more elegance. Before tiring of the practice, he presented the goddess of discord with fifty creatures built the same way, stealthy, brutal, and able to breed true. She bound these discordians—an amalgam of skulk, meazel, quaggoth, and kuo-toa—to this section to serve her, abandoning them when she left. They had built a harsh semblance of a society, before Dalisi arrived.

This section is also home to Mibrakos. As a copper dragon on the cusp of adulthood, Mibrakos overreached, and became imprisoned and forgotten in a cave on the plane of shadow. Over five hundred years, the energy of shadow transformed him, but he remained captive still, until the goddess of discord offered to spring him, if he swore to serve her. For three centuries, he did her bidding, before rebelling, arguing that, as discord, she should want contracts to be broken. Now, the ancient shadow dragon does as he likes.

As with all of Phlegethon (and unlike the rest of Pandemonium), gravity pulls downward, and dripping caverns produce stalactites, stalagmites, endless noise, and pools of water. All wrapped in a space that actively hates heat and light.

12.18 The Decision

The wind howls out into 12.3, carrying a fine mist with it. Many tunnels lead deeper in—most leading to roughly the same destination—but a compulsion goads all who enter to stubbornly insist that everyone must take a particular tunnel, each favoring a different one. Those affected will come to blows to get their way. The goddess of discord may no longer live here, but her influence lingers.

12.19 The Lake

Dripping from hundreds of miles around flows into this chamber, forming a deep lake, with an island citadel in the center. The goddess of discord bound five wastriliths to guard the waters around the citadel. They endlessly bicker and jockey to be “supreme” among them, but reform here eventually if “killed”.

12.20 The Citadel

Briefly the home of the goddess of discord, and much longer the seat of discordian “civilization”, this bronze citadel now houses Dalisi, the Chord of Frowning Breads, about twenty twisted quori and a large staff of discordians, who often act as hosts. Dalisi holds a potent black diamond.

12.21 The Exile of Primus Dakug

A large community of discordians crowds in these caves, loyal to their leige, Primus Dakug, who was driven out of the citadel by Dalisi. Naturally, she was possessed by a twisted hashalaq shortly after exile, who maintains an illusion of leading “her people” in “resistance”. Living this lie in a realm of discord has been slowly making her opposition to Dalisi more and more real. Many in this population are possessed by twisted tsucora.

12.22 The Falls

• Waters from 12.19 cascade hundreds of meters down tiers of rock.
• The falls cascade over the body of a monstrous slime splayed over the rock from top to bottom, with enough left to fish and feed at both ends.
• At the bottom, waters move fairly quickly further down river, but giant crayfish can be found here feeding on whatever washes down.

12.23 Black Diamond Mine

This community of discordians digs for black diamonds in the shafts of this mine. While pretending fealty to Dalisi, they resist the quori, including Primus Dakug, since they assume she is possessed. They are led by Overseer Marok, a hulking presence who, naturally, is also possessed by a twisted hashalaq. Many in this population are possessed by twisted tsucora. Discord brews between and within all these factions.

12.24 The Lair of Mibrakos

• The ancient shadow dragon Mibrakos lairs here. If present, he is usually sleeping, and keeps almost nothing of material value here.
• A small hole in a cave column is a portal to the plane of shadow, leading to the cave that once incarcarted Mibrarkos; he must transform to to use it, but often does.
• Mounted into the ceiling is a large, barely perceptible ring, keyed to a gem embedded in Mibrakos’ head, which can shift the bearer to a similar ring in the ceiling of 12.28.
• Drips from this cave collect into a pool at the low point, and flow through a narrow gap to the bottom of the falls.

The Vaults

The fourth link to Pandemonium leads to a scattered collection of “bubbles” within the plane’s lowest layer, Agathion. These huge, isolated caverns are scattered all over the plane, but connected by various portals.

As with the first two layers of Pandemonium, gravity in Agathion attracts toward the nearest wall, and very little light shines anywhere.

12.25 Portal room

• The opening from 12.3 leads straight down, wind howling out. By the time you reach the bottom, gravity has reversed and you come out of a pit.
• Inner surface of cave honeycombed with large pits. Some are filled with glowing liquid or acid. Some are nests to strange eggs or graves or ruins.
• Where pit edges connect, there are often bronze pipes from which wind from other layers of Pandemonium rushes.
• Four towers rise at various points, each containing a portal (to 12.27, 12.29, 12.30, 12.31). Another such tower has fallen and lies in ruins.

12.26 The Vortex

• Tunnels have been disintegrated to here from (and with very strong winds feeding into) 12.25.
• A portal floats in the center of the volume, channeling a massive amount of wind from somewhere in Cocytus. This circulates around the cave in a vast whirlwind, with tremendous force and speed.
• Some buildings once existed here, but have been mostly scoured down by the wind. Among the largest is a portal, now dead, that once led to 12.25.

12.27 The Apocalypse Dragon

Hundreds of massive chains lead from points all over the inner surface of the bubble to an unbreakable spherical cage containing Malvitrax, a great wyrm driven mad by its unscrupulous ascension to godhood. Several pantheons combined forces to contain it here, sleeping, until such time comes to unleash it. A lone, cyclopean complex contains several portals, including one to 12.25. The environment here is a near vacuum.

12.28 The Hoard of Mibrakos

This isolated cavern (only accessible from 12.24) holds stale, still air, and a truly massive dragon hoard. Deprived of gathering a hoard for eight hundred years, Mibrakos has since overcompensated (and is quite touchy about it). In the far corner is a golden pyramid-like sculpture containing the skulls of the people who trapped him, and every one of their descendants.

12.29 The Trio

This bubble is a vacuum, filled with a three-dimensional labyrinth crafted from sheets of metal mesh which resists magic. The maze has three “centers”, each of which holds one of a powerful trio of connected artifacts. Three invisible force golems patrol the maze. At the start of the maze is a portal leading to 12.25.

12.30 The Deep

Aboleth propaganda holds that aboleths came before the gods. This is a lie; they were created by the first benevolent sea goddess to foster and shepherd all ocean life, everywhere. But some were ambitious, and forged a pact with Dagon to capture the goddess, entomb her, and erase all mention of her from existence. Her colossal form sleeps here, in this lightless bubble filled with sea water. Two small caves on either side hold stale air and portals (one to 12.15, one to 12.25).

12.31 The Hole

• The portal from 12.25 only works in one direction, into this airless bubble.
• Floating at the center, encased in an ugly, but unbreakable, canker of transparent rock, is a perfect tetrahemihexahedron, all that remains of a god of order. As an artifact, this object prevents anyone from leaving.
• Numerous celestials and other extra-planar creatures were thrown in here after the invasion and left to rot.
• The Heart of the Axiom may be sufficient to undo the artifact trapping them, luring the tetrahemihexahedron into itself.

Appendices

Appendix A: The Arch Keys

The early Kiooliciti experiments with portals led to the five "polyhedral" portals. The location of these are summarized here, in addition to the location of the keys that allow their use:

• Tetrahedral (yellow): 3.26, tesseract entrance. Keys: 2.2, 4.7, 4.8
• Cubic (orange): 1.28, smashed. Keys (shattered): 2.14, 4.26
• Octahedral (purple): 3.11, near geode. Keys: 1.13, 2.14, 4.7
• Dodecahedral (green): 4.16. Keys: 2.11, 4.4, 4.14
• Icosahedral (blue): 5.17. Keys: 5.3, 5.10, 5.27

Appendix B: Reassembling the Axiom

Finding the Shards

Since reassembling the Axiom forms an overriding goal of this megadungeon, here is a list all the locations that mention containing shards of the shattered artifact (and a rough difficult of collecting them):

• 3.6 main collection (easy)
• 4.3 three shards (difficult)
• 4.10 (easy)
• 4.17 two shards (medium)
• 4.24 five shards (easy)
• 10.29 (very difficult)
• 11.8 (difficult)
• 11.10 (difficult)
• 11.14 (difficult)
• 11.17 (difficult)
• 11.21 (difficult)
• 11.25 (difficult)
• 12.1 heart (very difficult)

==== The Creation of the Axiom

Murals in section U depict the creation of the Axiom:

1. A costly battle between order and chaos, won only because a primal inevitable sacrificed itself. The heart of this being is shown falling deep into the earth.
2. Mining a particular type of near-perfect crystal.
3. A ritual, where acolytes walk the mined crystal through a chamber at the center of a labyrinth (see 5.31), chanting. As they reach the center they join to make a large octahedron. The octahedron solidifies to perfection on the walk out.
4. A group uses the octahedron to track down and recover the primal inevitable’s heart.
5. Hundreds of people perform a complex dance in a double spiral (1.4). The octahedron is walked to the center from one side, the heart from the other. They join in the middle, the heart sinking into the octahedron.
6. A ritual inside a geode (5.18) centered around a captured, oversized nabasu. The ritual drives all chaotic energy in the geode into the demon, causing the demon to evolve into a vrolikai, and the geode to shift to be perfectly symmetrical. The vrolikai is teleported from the geode, then hunted and killed.
7. Two rituals conducted at once. One places the octahedron/heart in the geode cathedral (3.6), one focuses the power of the lower geode (5.18) upwards to the cathedral. Both create a resonant vibration, creating an extremely pleasing and pure two note harmony.

Reassembly

The PCs can, with some difficulty, remake the Axiom. Doing so involves roughly the same steps as its initial creation:

1. The primal inevitable’s heart remains intact, so needs to be found.
2. The shards of the Axiom, if they are all found, can be used for this step. The original mining techniques could be used as well, or in addition.
3. The PCs must find and access the labyrinth. Some sort of divination or other research will be needed to uncover the exact chant. With it, and perhaps recruiting some acolytes, the PCs should be able to joint the shards back together into an octahedron.
4. It's likely that, if they uncovered all the shards, the PCs also probably recovered the heart.
5. Recruiting hundreds to join the octahedron with the heart may challenge some PCs.
6. Several aspects of this step are problematic. First, the PCs need to learn the actual ritual, which may require divination or research. Second, they'll need to capture a large nabasu. Third (and least obvious), the geode in question (5.18) is already symmetrical, so the PCs need to find a way to pollute the geode with chaos first, then purify it again. Fourthly, the PCs will need to hunt and kill the resulting vrolikai.
7. Again, both rituals need to be uncovered, with divination, lots of research, or both, as well as people with requisite skill and ability to perform them.

Appendix C: Tesseract Connections

When the Kiooliciti built their tesseract, they labelled the edges of its graph not the nodes. (After all, it is the edges that are the hard things to create and monitor.) Each edge (a connection between rooms of the tesseract) has been given an alchemical symbol. Most are two way (↔), some are one way (→), and some are broken (—). The edges are:

• 🜁 air 3.26 → random destination.
• 🜂 fire 1.21 — 3.26
• 🜃 earth 3.26 ↔ 4.15
• 🜄 water 3.26 ↔ 5.1
• 🜉 aqua vitæ 4.15 ↔ 6.2
• 🜌 vinegar 4.15 ↔ 5.1
• 🜍 sulphur 4.29 ↔ 5.11
• 🜏 black sulfur 5.7 ↔ 5.17
• 🜑 mercury sublimate 5.10 ↔ 5.17
• 🜔 salt 5.6 ↔ 5.7
• 🜕 nitre 5.11 ↔ 5.21
• 🜖 vitriol 5.3 ↔ 5.7
• 🜨 verdigris 5.21 ↔ 5.30
• 🜶 alkali 5.17 ↔ 5.31
• 🜳 regulus 5.4 ↔ 5.5
• 🜬 sublimate of antimony 5.4 ↔ 5.8
• 🜢 sublimate of copper 5.5 ↔ 5.8

• 🝁 quicklime 5.15 ↔ 6.3
• 🝅 alum 5.15 ↔ 6.3
• 🜩 tin 5.2 ↔ 5.8
• 🜚 gold 5.16 ↔ 5.19
• 🜛 silver 5.20 ↔ 6.1
• 🜠 copper 5.29 ↔ 6.2
• 🜪 lead 5.2 ↔ 5.14
• 🜜 iron 5.8 ↔ 5.31
• 🜫 antimony 5.20 ↔ 6.1
• 🜾 bismuth 5.16 ↔ 6.4
• 🜺 arsenic 5.8 ↔ 5.13
• 🜼 realgar 5.30 ↔ 6.4
• 🜸 marcasite 5.20 ↔ 6.4
• 🜿 tartar 5.10 ↔ 5.16
• 🝃 borax 5.31 ↔ 6.1
• 🜘 rock salt 5.2 ↔ 5.11
• 🝉 gum 5.9 ↔ 5.13

• 🝊 wax 5.2 ↔ 5.20
• 🝕 urine 5.2 ↔ 5.29
• 🝞 sublimation 5.2 ↔ 5.22
• 🝟 precipitate 5.10 ↔ 5.24
• 🝠 distill 5.15 ↔ 5.23
• 🝢 dissolve 5.8 ↔ 5.25
• 🝣 purify 5.2 ↔ 5.27
• 🝤 putrefaction 5.17 ↔ 5.26
• 🝩 crucible 5.9 ↔ 5.28
• 🝪 alembic 5.25 ↔ 7.3
• 🝭 retort 5.23 ↔ 7.31
• 🝑 trident 5.24 ↔ 6.5
• 🝎 caput mortuum 5.20 ↔ 5.27
• ⍚ “evaporate” 5.26 ↔ 6.1
• ⍝ “encase” 5.27 ↔ 5.31
• ⍢ “grind” 5.27 ↔ 6.2
• ⌱ “extract” 5.28 ↔ 6.3

Appendix E: Alternate Entrances

The text assumes entry through the main doors on the surface, but there are many other entrances into this megadungeon, from widely diverging locations. Entrances include:

• 1.1: breaking into the well gives access to 1.21, 1.28, 2.3, 2.18, 2.24, and 2.28.
• 1.3: clearing the rubble to access the main temple doors doors.
• 1.8: breaking through the wall of the bear cave leads to the top 1.11.
• 2.27: the underground river flowing into this location is fed from (at least) 5.7, but possibly from other cave complexes nearby.
• 5.3: open to the air, high on an arctic cliff
• 5.4: the top of a tall spire in a remote desert in the northern hemisphere.
• 5.5: the top of a tall spire in a remote desert in the southern hemisphere.
• 5.6: deep in the ocean.
• 5.7: a cravasse in the same mountain range as the temple.
• 5.11: the magma flowing into this cavern could be coming from anywhere.
• 5.16: a mesa in a vast wasteland.
• 5.19: purple worm tunnels.
• 5.30: a great floating rock.
• 10.27: The cthulid escape pod breached this room from astral space.
• 11.15: Rarely, the River Styx may lead into here.