In a recent post, I drew a side-view map of the Ruby Talon Deeps dungeon, with essentially no other description. At the time it was just about enjoying drawing and getting something out of my head so that I could get to my paying work. Today I’m revisiting it to take a break between larger pieces of work on my plate. I’m definitely not covering all of the locations on the map; also I’m not currently trying to make this a ready-to-play dungeon, just exploring the ideas a bit more.

Map | Locations 1

Tasrim’s Statue

On the highest hill in the county stands a forty-foot-tall statue of Tasrim, made of bronze and stone. The true deeds of Tasrim are a mystery now, and the face and figure are weathered beyond recognition. Only the inscription even preserves the name. One of the few clear glyphs remaining on the statue is the sign of the Eye of Desolation, an cracked orb surrounded in lightning.

A character that touches the Eye of Desolation with a bare hand or weapon, then touches Tasrim’s Statue with the same hand or weapon, gains the Blessing of Tasrim supernatural gift.

Blessing of Tasrim. You have braved the Eye of Desolation and returned to tell the tale. As a bonus action, you can see invisible creatures and creatures in the Ethereal Plane until the start of your next turn. You can use this gift a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. As a result of this gift, the pupil of one of your eyes looks like a crack running from the top of your eye to the bottom.

The Old Stave Church

This holy house gives shelter to the faithful of any god, even those devoted to the gods of evil as long as they do no harm and don’t attempt to impose their faith on others.

Jeysa of the North Woods, a cleric of the sun god, maintains the building and its grounds; she offers healing, relief from diseases, poisons, and curses, and raise dead spells in exchange for a donation to the church’s maintenance equal to the standard spellcasting costs. She helps people first and asks for donations or manual labor in the church afterward. Adventurers without money might be asked to complete any of the following quests to settle debts to her.

• Kill the thing at the heart of the Spider-Nest.
• Ask the Market of Nyrus about the history of the Old Stave Church.
• Bring her one mask from the Hall of Masques.
• Learn the meaning of a prophecy from the Dream-Tower of the Stone Giants: “She returns to the tree at the tolling of the ninth bell. Let highsun, midnight, and twilight form the arch of her welcome.”
• Write or learn a new story about Tasrim.
• Take a rubbing from the Immortal’s Reliquary.

Jeysa initially knows little about the Ruby Talon Deeps, calling it Eshe’s Mine, but over time she reads more of the tomes of lore stored in the church’s attic, and she offers steadily more information.

Inside the church there is a door behind the stairs. Jeysa gives dark warnings to any who would open it, but doesn’t prevent them from doing so. Three rickety flights of stairs (several of which collapse, forcing one creature to make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or fall) lead down to the Rune-Marked Door.

The Upper Rune-Marked Door

This door is magically sealed on this side, until it is opened from the other side (the Lower Rune-Marked Door near the Eye of Desolation). It is possible to hurl so much magical power at this door that it fails, but if you do that, you might never be able to close it again. That would go very badly for Jeysa and the Old Stave Church, over time, so it becomes a race against time to recover the Ruby Talon and take it far away from here before the things that dwell beneath discover that the way is open. Spells suitable for piercing the door’s magical seal include dispel magic cast with a spell slot of 5^th level or higher, passwall, and arcane gate.

If opened from the Lower Rune-Marked Door instead, the one who solves its puzzle and opens it can seal it again with a touch. The puzzle to open the Lower Rune-Marked Door is found within the Eye of Desolation.

Waystation 172

Found on the side of the lonely road through the hills, Waystation 172 is a resting place for royal rangers and soldiers. On the second day of each week, a postal carrier comes up the road, on a long circuit through the hinterlands. The fee to carry a letter anywhere else in the realm is 5 cp, or 5 sp for a package of any significant weight.

If the PCs have a patron, one of their patron’s agents comes through here on the fifth day of every other week.

Entryway to the Ruby Talon Deeps

The lintel over the mine entrance reads “Eshe’s Mine, All Others Keep Out.” The support beams have various crude words scratched into them. A left-side beam also has a conversation cut into it: “elevator out,” “please do not repair,” “why,” “the webtouched obviously,” “don’t think they need elevators,” and “suit yourself.”

Encounters in the Entryway include webtouched kobolds, skeletons and zombies made from former miners, and webtouched ravens. (“Webtouched” isn’t written yet, I hope that’s obvious–this whole post is the rough draft where I toss out ideas that sound cool so that maybe I’ll come back to them later.)

A side-passage in this area (attached to the elevator shaft) has a wall-breach where a family of kobolds broke through by accident. This how the kobolds came in contact with the Spider-Nest and were afflicted. Their lair has a few minor treasures that the Midnight Wyrm assigned them to guard, generations ago.

Elevator Shaft

The elevator has been non-functional for more than six years. Repairing it requires a series of ability checks using mason’s tools, smith’s tools, thieves’ tools, or tinker’s tools (DC 15, using Int or Wis, then Str or Dex) at both the top and the bottom of the elevator shaft. Making these checks creates a lot of noise if they’re not silenced somehow, which draws attention from webtouched kobolds and giant spiders. Further damage to the machinery is a likely consequence of combat in this area, as is a long drop with a sudden stop.

If the group has no one with proficiency in the appropriate tools, they can hire a tinker named Sevenses from the nearest town for 50 gp. The tinker automatically succeeds all of his ability checks as long as he doesn’t take damage, and he expects to be guarded while he works.

The elevator shaft is 120 feet long, and climbing its surface requires DC 12 Strength (Athletics) checks.

Spider-Nest

This large cavern has numerous side-chambers to explore. Encounters here involve giant spiders, webtouched kobolds, webtouched four-armed skeletons, and chitines. Much of the webbing here is sturdy enough to support Small and Medium bipedal creatures, and destroying the necrotic infection at the heart of the Spider-Nest involves a precarious climb and battle.

Chitines and giant spiders have the additional ability to send tremors through the webbing that can knock climbers prone at a range of up to 30 feet, as a bonus action.

I’m not designing the full encounter here right now, but let’s assume there’s a d100 table of necrotic effects and you make progress through the table by killing chitines or webtouched creatures, channeling divinity, and dealing radiant damage to the center of the infection once it is revealed (at the 50% mark).

Beyond the center of the Spider-Nest is a passage to the surface, which is blocked by boulders at the far end. Clearing these boulders requires a DC 20 Strength (Athletics) check; on a failure, the passage is still cleared but each person in the group makes a DC 13 Strength saving throw. A creature that fails this save takes 4d6 bludgeoning damage from collapsing stones and is buried in dirt and stone, requiring further DC 15 Strength (Athletics) checks to free them. On a success, the creature takes half damage and is not buried.

Design Notes

As I’ve said along the way, this isn’t table-ready text. This is the first draft where I tell myself the story and brainstorm a bunch of cool shit. Drawing the map was that too, but writing it out forces me to dig down into one more layer of specificity, rather than just leaning on “cool name goes here.” I feel like I could expand this into a functional text with a few more hours of work, and… that’s starting to feel like a fun project for next year. Most of all I want to work those mental muscles, because I have a big adventure-writing project for Tribality coming up.

The Webtouched trait is probably something like “you gain a climbing speed of 40 feet on webbed surfaces, 1/day when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack you can force them to make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or become restrained for 1 minute, and you’re under the control of the infection within Spider-Nest.” I might review the creature stat blocks and decide that Webtouched also grants extra maximum hit points, I dunno.

Let me know what you think of this! It all gets more complicated from here, as I’ll need to make decisions about the fundamental story of the weirder stuff deeper down.

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