Herein is described a sublevel of the Deep Halls, the site of our dungeon exploration in Dreaming Amon-Gorloth. Numbered encounter areas refer to the keyed map in “Keys to the Deep Halls.”

A century ago, after the war in which the Radiant Host eradicated the dreaming priests, the nomarch ordered the entrances to the Deep Halls blocked. Departing troops broke the lintel and provoked a cave in, which barricaded the entrance under rubble. To further discourage entry, the nomarch had engraved a warning message on the cliff face. The dreaming priests, on their inevitable return, made a way through the rubble. They left the message intact.

1. Entrance

A spur of the track leads to a level yard of packed dirt. Beyond it, a hill rises in an abrupt slope. A narrow passage opens in the hillside, dark, like an empty eye. On the ground, a long, carved stone, broken in three, edges the entry, which is shored up by a wooden beam on two posts. Outside to the left, in the face of a rock cliff, is carved an inscription:

DANGEROUS DUNGEON
DO NOT ENTER

Inspecting the broken rock at the entry, characters may note the following:

• It is a lintel carved from granite.
• The lintel bears a maker’s mark: the silhouette of a stepped pyramid.
• (Dwarves only) The lintel’s exposed breaks and the inscription on the cliff face are the same age, several decades old and much younger than the lintel itself.

Through the doorway, the corridor is 15' wide. The barrel-vaulted ceiling is 10' high. On either side, murals, painted in once-bright hues, depict hyena-headed humanoids dancing, naked, in two rows, above and below a wavy line. Below the line, the humanoids all face down the corridor southwest. Above the line, they face the opposite direction, northeast.

The murals are trimmed at top and bottom in a moon-disc motif. The bottom edge shows the moon’s waning phases, from full to new. The top edge shows the waxing phases, from new to full.

North Wall: A small stone, painted dark within a lower half-moon, opens the secret door when pressed.

Common Knowledge and Research

Information that is commonly known among the general populace, given under the heading Common Knowledge, should be given out as characters interact with the environment. Common knowledge often concerns the present culture.

Information about the previous culture may require research. I’m working on a simple system for use when PCs conduct research in the base town at the temple archive and the magic-user’s guild library. Information that may be learned through this method is noted in each room accompanied by the domain(s) to which it belongs: arcane, history, or religion.

Common Knowledge:

• Hyena-headed humanoid figures escort the soul of the dead to the underworld and back to the world of the living, where it is reborn.
• The soul’s journey is completed in a day.

Research:

In contemporary writings, the Amwan Culture refers to that of the peoples who lived during the time of Amon. (See “the Myth of Amon-Gorloth.”)

• In the Amwan Culture, the soul travels to the underworld and returns in one month (religion).
• The Amwan Culture divides a lunar cycle into 12 phases, with five phases between each full and new moon (arcane, religion).¹

2. Reliquary

A flame burns in a rough-hewn depression in a central floor stone. It casts light in a 15' radius to fill the room. Fashioned in the north and west walls are twelve niches, six in each wall, at chest height. In nine of them, a skull is set, upside down.

Torches, lanterns, and light and continual light spells do not shed light in this room.

Upon reinvesting the dungeon, the dreaming priests found the decaying remains of the Nine Companions who fought aside the Ardent Champion Menturoc in the redoubt’s storming. The priests removed the heads, boiled them to remove remaining flesh, and mounted them upside down in niches.

They carved the depression in the central stone, cast continual darkness on the stone, and bid a fire kobold [described later] to protect the skulls.

Continual light cast on the central stone dispells the continual darkness.

If any skull is disturbed, the fire kobold extinguishes itself, leaving the room in darkness. The kobold then causes mayhem in its invisible state.

Fire Kobold (1)

Common Knowledge:

• Decapitation prevents the soul’s return from the underworld.
• Turning its skull upside down prevents the soul’s rest.

3. Grand Entry Hall

The dimensions of this chamber are lost beyond torchlight. Footfalls echo off unseen walls. Just within range of illumination, a wide central column, engraved and painted, reaches into the darkness.

Out of sight, two more columns in a line beyond the first support the vaulted ceiling 90' up. Painted engravings on each column show lunar phases and a symbol on the near and far sides. They also show, wrapping around the column, various scenes with human and non-human figures.

West Door: Crude scratches shape the form of a scarab beetle on this door. Smell of offal.

South Door: Skillfully engraved into this door and embellished with inlaid silver is a glyph in the form of two diamonds, one inside the other. Close inspection of the door reveals a faint odor of lavender and ammonia.

Hartshorn Gas: When the south door is opened, gas spews from above. It smells of lavender and ammonia. Any characters in the doorway must save vs. Poison (+4 on the dice) or die. Dreaming characters within 20' must save vs. Spells or wake. [The states dreaming and waking are explained later.]

Wandering Monsters

¹ In our world, we generally describe eight lunar phases, with three phases between new and full moons. In naming the additional phases, I split each gibbous and crescent phase in two and add prefixes lesser and greater.