Lore
Three seasons ago, the giant-god Alhast —The Star-Coaxer, Duke of the Third Realm, Inkblood the Fountain, He Whose Nectar Is Inspiration— collapsed to his knees and died. Around his body emerged a labyrinth, wider than cities and taller than giants and made of a nigh-impenetrable substance called petrified ink. The entrances lock, unlock, and shift with the seasons, but etched above each of them is the phrase:I am the mind of Alhast. I am always perfect. I am never the same.
Temples and governments alike want to know two things:
- Why did Alhast die?
- What do we do now?
Your task first and foremost is to find answers. Of course, you will first find treasures, secrets, and monsters; these may make a fine consolation.
Method
My goal for D23 is to make a nonlinear, relatively game-agnostic megadungeon and its surrounding world.Six days a week, I will make a room of the dungeon. This will be kept on a spreadsheet, and will leave lots of ambiguity as to translation onto the grid (i.e. I will say "large hallway" rather than "4x10 room"). Connections between rooms will be handled with a tags-based system-- that is, each room will have a number of "tags", and each door will describe what "tags" it could open to. In other words, whenever the players open a door that goes to "a throne room", the GM will use the spreadsheet to randomly choose a door to a "throne room", then connect those rooms.
This opens the doors for lots of fun-- everyone loves it when players go through rooms in an unexpected order! Plus, this allows for events to easily "remap" the rooms-- that is, erase the existing connections. I'm imagining you could quest into the megadungeon for the Treasure du Jour-- but when you take it, half the rooms remap and it's unclear how to get out!
Every Saturday, rather than making a room of the dungeon, I will write briefly about some aspect of the world outside the labyrinth. For example, I might write about a temple of Alhast, a town nearby, or a famous adventurer. One of the truths of this setting is that the whole region is in the wake of Alhast's death, from theologians to fishers, and my hope is that the labyrinth takes on more and better meaning by living in relation to a world trudging on beside it.
I made a master portal so it'll be easy to follow along!
