Today's room is the bone pit. Grim, but not grotesque, it is full of dwarven bones, tossed in here after the elves and goblins invaded long ago. The room was bricked-off, leaving only a single, locked door as a way in, but a recent hole in the southern wall allows access.
On the broken stairs dances a dwarf skeleton. Out of its hollow skull rings a tune that animates the bones below it into skeletons that spill out into the rest of the dungeon. It will continue to animate more until it is stopped!
Today's extra bit is the possibility of placing a rune in here as treasure. Rune casting's a magic system I kitbash together for my Beyond the Wall game when one of my players was disappointed that the dwarven runecaster playbook he found for that game didn't really have much to do with, ya' know, drawing magical runes. The gist of it is you can spend a Turn (approx. 10 minutes) and draw, paint, or lightly etch a magical rune onto an item, place, or (sometimes) creature. Each rune has three effects - a set effect when placed on a weapon, a set effect when placed on armor, and a variable effect for everything else.
The last one is meant to encourage the player to look at the theme of the rune and go "What can I do with this?" So an "earth" rune cast on a patch of dirt might kick-up a dust storm when stepped on. Or smooth out a patch of rough ground. Or make the crops grow better as long as the rune is left undisturbed. So far it's worked well in our game - the time commitment to scribe a rune plus a chance that you could miscast it balances out their versatility. I like it enough that I plan on making it the "wizard" magic for this game!
