The Ideocron of the Oracular Somnambulist

Welcome to the month two, week two of my personal Dungeon 23 project The Crucible of Oxyus. Join me this week as we stumble upon a river of magma, a secret library, and a garden of fungal delights! enjoy...

Week Two: Rivers of Magma

2/5: The Fungal Garden

A 10’ wide hallway leads here from room 1/29, stopping at a large double-arched doorway. The room is a half-circle roughly 50’ in diameter with no obvious tool marks. The floor is covered with florescent yellow lichen, illuminating the room as though it were a full moon. Past the southern hallway, a bright orange glow emanates.

·       South: The southern end of the room opens on a 20’ wide hallway with 30’ tall ceilings supported by six columns.

·       Mushrooms: The room is filled with fungous of various kinds. 10’ tall toadstools (red capped with gold spots) are scattered around the room. Besides these, a set of raised beds are filled with odd mushrooms. Large blue Lion’s Mane, sticky pink slime balls, dark chartreuse chanterelles, blood red moss, and tiny purple toadstools fill the raised beds and overflow onto the floor and walls.

Mushroom:	Effect:
Florescent yellow Miner’s Beard	Casts light like a candle, retains its glow for 6 hours after being picked. Makes a delicious tea.
Red Giant’s Table	The outer layer can be peeled and cured like leather.
Blue Lion’s Mane	If eaten, consumer suffers a -2 penalty to INT and gains the ability to see Invisible creatures and objects for one hour.
Pink Healer’s Salve	Apply to wounds to heal 2 hp, only works once a day.
Green Weldin	A fantastic underground food source, tastes of chestnuts and garlic.
Crusader’s Moss	Brewed as tea and consumed to grant a +2 bonus to your next Petrify/Paralysis save
Purple Leddy	Once dried, smoke crushed mushrooms for 1d4 hours of psychedelic hallucinations. Used by ascetics and hermit-priests.

 

2/6: The Lake of Magma

A 30’ wide platform looks out over a large cavern filled with hot magma. The air is hot and moist, stinking of sulfur. In the southeastern corner, a small stair leads down to a narrow dock. On the dock, a small stone boat with enough room for five is moored. The magma chamber is pierced by a large central pillar of natural stone. There are three rooms visible across the chamber, each with its own dock.

·       The Boat: Made of dark basalt and etched all over with arcane runes. The magical incantations allow the boat to float on the magma with ease. There is a 20’ long metal oar that is resting in a crook in the boat’s side used for steering the boat through the magma. An iron chain keeps the vessel from floating away.

·       The Magma: The magma brightly lights up the central chamber and casts its dim warm glow into the other three rooms that are open to the magma chamber. The northeast corner of the chamber is pierced by a lava tube that flows through the mountain past the docks in room 2/14. Anyone spending more than a minute in the boat or on the dock must succeed at a Death Save or suffer a -2 penalty to all AC and Attack Rolls due to heat exhaustion. This will last 1d3 hours or until the PC has done nothing but rest and drink water for three turns.

·       The Magma Pillar: The central pillar of stone that reaches floor to ceiling in the magma chamber has a secret chamber inside it. An illusion of an unbroken rock face hides the door from casual observance. Those who can fit inside find a small chamber with demonic runes etched in the floor. The heat from the magma doesn’t pierce the walls, leaving those who sleep in here all night with an immunity to the negative effects of the hot magma chamber for the next 24 hours.

2/7: The Forge

This room is 30’ long by 20’ wide with a stone dock connecting it to the magma lake on its eastern side. This chamber contains a large furnace, an anvil, a work table with chair, and a rack of tools. There are the bones of two Goblins in the corner of the room.

·       The Forge: The forge is designed to work off the heat of the magma. It is fully operational.

2/8: The Laboratory

This room’s north side opens onto the magma chamber. The room itself appears to be 25’ wide by 50’ long. There are two tables in this room covered in arcane equipment including small burners, test tubes, flasks, calipers, scales, and various old jars of foul-smelling powders. There is an empty five-foot diameter brass brazier and a three-foot tall carnelian statue of a phoenix (200 gp) in the corner as well.   

·       West: A large carved stone portal leads to a narrow bridge that crosses the magma to a landing with a metal door on it. There is a Goblin skull resting against the metal door. This door is locked.

·       The Illusory Wall: The southern wall is illusory. The room goes back another 10’. This deception hides an odd device built into the southeastern corner. It consists of a 10’ diameter circle of metal and wood on the floor connected by leather tubing to a metal rectangle attached to the wall. This rectangle has two large levers and three small switches on its surface. When the levers and switches have been arranged correctly, the device will teleport up to six people standing on the circle of metal and wood at a time to the other teleportation device in the Archive, room 2/11. Whenever someone uses this device, a massive thunderclap is produced.

2/9: The Audience Chamber

This 30’ long square room is open to the magma chamber on its eastern side. The room is dominated by a large throne on a raised dais that takes up half the chamber.

·       North: A throne of bluish granite with dark green, burnt orange, and light teal stones flecked inside it. The throne floats 8” off the floor. This is the Moribund Throne of the Magician, the legendary seat of the wizard Oxyus of Fenebrahn. It was from this throne that he commanded his legions before they were overrun. The voice of someone who sits on the throne will be amplified throughout the entire level. (This immediately triggers a three-in-six roll to see if a random encounter is triggered.)

·       West: Through a stone archway carved to look like curling moss, a 5’ wide hallway can be seen. This hallway leads to a T-junction after 25’. The right-hand hall leads to room 2/10. The left-hand hall leads to the door to the bridge to room 2/8. Ten feet after the left-hand bend in the hall, a pressure plate has been hidden among the other floor tiles. Those who unsuspectingly step on it will trigger three spears to shoot out at them from concealed holes in the wall (3d6 damage or succeed at a Death Save and receive half.)

2/10: The Chantry

The room is 35’ long by 20’ wide. The walls, ceiling, and floors are all covered with glazed red, orange, and yellow tiles. There are ten stone benches in this room, arranged in two rows. In front of them a carved altar the size of a barrel. There are 2d6 Zombies milling about here, feasting on the corpses of three adventurers. The Zombies seem to be dead Melted Cultists, though none of them wear their goat’s-eye pendants. The adventurers’ equipment is too badly damaged to recover.

·       North: A heavy brass and iron door on the northern wall connects to a long 5’ wide hallway that eventually leads to the secret door in room 1/30.

·       South: There is an archway here that leads to the hallway to rooms 2/9 and 2/8.

·       The Altar: This barrel-sized altar of Tigers-Eye Jade has been carved into a scene of Zaltus Embri, the Phoenix God of Magic being strangled and defeated by the Serpent of Darkness, Aboses. (525 gp).

 

2/11: The Archive

·       This room is immense-- 50’ wide by 100’ long with 35’ tall ceilings. The archive is located somewhere on the material plane, but it is unclear exactly where. The room is divided by three levels with stairways down to each level. There are bookshelves located on all three levels of the archive covering a myriad of topics both mundane and magical.  The archive is always room-temperature. There are several tables and chairs throughout the archive.

 

·       The Teleporter: A metal and wood platform with a rectangular control surface similar to the one in room 2/8. This device works the same way, teleporting six people standing on its pad at a time standing to the other teleportation device in room 2/8. Whenever someone uses this device, a massive thunderclap is produced. This device is the only visible way in or out of the archive.

·       The Library: The bookshelves are filled with too many books to list here. General information on the topics of history, the gods, continental geography, weather, common flora and fauna of the region, mathematics, Elven lore and history, dwarven history, geology, and music can be easily acquired after 1d6 turns of searching. Specific information on these topics or general information on magical subjects takes 2d4 hours to find. Specific magical information will take 4d6 hours to find. The information seeker cannot take any other significant action while searching the archive. This time may be broken up though. There is a one-in-six chance that each search attempt will also uncover a random arcane or divine scroll hidden in a book. (50% chance of either.)

·       The Secret Door: On the bottom platform in the northwest corner  is a red lacquered bookshelf. Pulling the large green-spined book on the bottom shelf titled A Manual of Statistical Inquiry will trigger a secret teleportation circle to activate, teleporting the person who pulled on the book to room 2/14 and leaving a plume of thick pink smoke that smells like berries behind.