Tales from the Border Baronies

The Iron Keep Part 7- finishing the above ground bit

The Final Surface Level stuff

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7 Statue Plaza (special no treasure)

Six massive 15 foot tall marble statues of Steel Legionaires standing at attention line a plaza. At the northern end of it is an even bigger statue stands on a decorated plinth.

The plaza itself is of peculiar make. Most of it is white marble, except a 30 by 30 slab of polished grey granite in the centre.

The statue on the plinth is an idealized statue of King Atrius. It has a laurel crown on its head and a beard covering most of a cuirass and his legendary sword Theristis in his one hand and his Lion Shield in the other. On the plinth his personal guard are depicted in life-size relief, interspersed with warrior priests holding forth books containing the Rules of Law written by Atrius himself. On the face of the plinth which faces the Plaza careful inspection will show that one of the personal guards is missing a shield-shaped broach on his chest. If a Steel Legion officer's broach is placed here the 6 statues animate and lift the granite slab, unveiling a broad set of stairs leading down. After 10 minutes they will place it back down. The stairs lead down to [TO BE DETERMINED].

11 Landslide (empty no treasure)

It seems like the cliff supporting a section of the wall has partially collapsed and taken the wall with it. there's rubble all down the steep slope.

3 Cistern Entrance (monster no treasure)

An alcove in the wall has a set of steep stone stairs going down The area around the alcove has more greenery around it than most of the rest of the keep, including a large patch of blackberry brambles. There was once an iron door in front of it, but that has been taken off the hinges and now lies discarded in a bush nearby. There a several large, clawed footprints leading both into and out of the alcove, and there's a sickening smell coming from beneath on cold and moist air.

3 Troglodytes are harvesting berries from the bushes. If they have surprise on the party they will attempt to ambush them on the stairs. Otherwise they'll try to fight them off if they think they can beat them, or beat a hasty retreat down to the cisterns below to warn the others.

10 the Smokestack (monster, treasure)

A brick smokestack, 15 foot diameter at the base rises to above the level of the walls to roughly 25 feet. It tapers slightly and looks to be about 8-10 foot wide at the top. It looks like an odd addition to the complex that looks quite out of place. As the party approaches it a deep but urgent humming can be heard from up at the chimney end.

There is a nest of giant wasps up in the chimney with 9 giant wasps in it. If the party comes within 50 feet or does anything to create vibrations through the smokestack they'll get agitated and attack. Otherwise, for every 10 minutes they stay within 200 feet there's a 2 in 6 chance it still happens. The Chimney goes down a long while until it reaches the furnaces. If the PTO at the dam is turned back on these will start back up and smoke out the wasps, which will attempt to find a new nest elsewhere. In the nest are remains of several adventurers the wasps have killed as prey for their young. The total treasure on these is

5 Sally Gate (empty no treasure)

Though nigh impossible to see, and harder to open still from the outside, from the inside the sally gate isn't hard to spot. It's a stone double door, roughly 8 foot tall, and 10 wide. A cobbled path leads down to it, and in spite of not having been opened in perhaps centuries, it still does so easily by way of a lever on the right of it. Unless jammed however, it will fall shut, leaving the person outside looking at the expertly hidden door.

Wandering monster table - Iron Keep (surface)

1:6 per 2 turns: Roll 2d4 and consult the table below

  1. d8 Troglodytes
  2. d2 Giant wasps
  3. d6 Hobgoblins; 50%: 1 of the king's bodyguards. 30% d2 white apes
  4. 1 Dark creeper
  5. d10 Giant rats
  6. d4 Adventurers from Keep F0.13.
  7. Roll twice, combine.

Thoughts on 'finishing'

Though I might say 'finishing', this is very much a 'this will do for now'. I haven't crossreferenced all mobs on the wandering monster table to where they came from, and in general just picking stuff from what's already in the grounds feels lazy and not like the best way to do it. In general I'm not sure how well this mixing of two scales might work here, though you could argue that above ground in the sunlight crawling movement rates ought not apply. There's also undoubtably a whole host of bad sentences, grammatical errors and other stuff that needs loads of improving on. I've also still not done any kinds of checks on the amount of treasure I've been handing out. I feel like I'm off an order of magnitude, but I'm not sure which way, which is disconcerting all on its own. However, this is a 'speedrun making a megadungeon', not 'make a product ready for publishing, damn it. I gotta set some limits for myself.

In fact, I'm pleasantly surprised I've only missed an eight of my weekly deadlines so far (today's day late entry notwithstanding). I have generally noted that I tend to do stuff by sprinting. Stuff will lie and stew in my brain for a long time, and then one day I decide that I know what and how I want things, and write them down all at once. Part of the reason I wanted to do this challenge was so that I could force myself not to do that, and consistently try to deliver smaller parts. It's in the same vein as the writing advice Stephen King gives: just set apart one hour per day for writing, and actually write. I've done half of this so far. I've written consistently; I've just not really set a set time apart for it for now. But baby steps, I guess.

For now though, I have a fair few entrances down. Since I have a few days off later this week I might try to spend a bit of time doing a slightly more in-depth look at what the place will look like below the surface, evne if just for my own sanity so I know where I'm going. Add a few levels, sublevels, connect and theme them. That way at least I know I stand some kind of shit to making this work and do so in a way which actually might improve my skills, or at least show my new ways of doing this sort of thing.

However, I'm not sure yet if I'll managed to do even that. I'm running a lot of stuff the coming week or so, and I still need to do a solo session to prep for one of those. I hope to do a post on that in the near future to.

So until then, count your torches and keep mapping!

#Dungeon23