Dungeon23: Greystone - Day 14

The Church forgives.

I missed my first day of the project yesterday. It was a long day at work followed by a frustratingly time-consuming problem in our house. By that time that was all fixed, I just didn't have the energy to work on Greystone.

But, the point of this project is not to be perfect. It's to try. As I've mentioned before, perfect is the enemy of done.  And the point of this project is to produce something.  So, I'm forgiving myself. And the dungeon will forgive me as well.

I caught up today and am proud to say that week two is complete! 14 rooms done, 351 to go. :)

I'll do a little week in review later (possibly tomorrow), but for now here's what I did today.

Today, we finally learned what's going on with that skylight above the altar. As it turns out, it's part of the solution to accessing a hidden treasure. The skylight can be opened. Doing so will drop a quantity of dirt and debris down on the tribuna.  This reveals a vertical shaft climbing up from the church ceiling 60 feet. This ends in boarded over hole up on surface level on the mountain that this whole city is built within. Out on the surface, this hole is very difficult to find. It's been covered over by centuries of dirt and overgrowth. In fact, it would be nearly impossible to find from the outside.

That's only part of the puzzle however.  Investigating the altar will reveal two important details.  First, there's a brass keyhole built into the altar. This should be enough to make it clear that the altar can somehow be opened.  The key is in the possession of the Bishop, who will never give it up willingly. The other feature of the altar is the carving.  There are images of the sun carved all over it 

"Our lord lights the way to eternal rewards"

So, to open the altar, two things are needed: the brass key and direct sunlight. The key turns the lock easily, but the altar itself will only open when touched by the rays of the sun.  So, someone will have to open up the shaft, (easier, but more dangerous from inside the shaft).  Then, when the sun is directly over the altar, they would turn the brass key.  The altar opens, revealing a small fortune in coins, gems and magical chainmail.

Similar to the robes also available in this church, this item has a magical property based on an existing spell. I find magic items that are simply +1 to it, or +1 AC to be pretty boring. I want magic items to have something more than that. One of my favorite techniques for this is to take a spell or other special effect and just put some version of that on the item.  So, you've got some robes that allow a Cure Light Wounds casting. And this chainmail that has a situational effect similar to casting Light on a foes eyes.

Everything I've described, however, is actually in room 1-10. But I put much of the description of it into room 1-14.  That's because the mechanism to open the skylight is there. But really, it's because I just didn't have room in the 1-10 key area.  So that's something I want to think about as I proceed.  If a room feels like it's going to have a lot going on, I might need to tighten up descriptions, or write smaller, or make more use of the "Notes" field I have.

Assuming I finish this, I've been imagining that I'd re-write the whole thing cleaning this kind of thing up.  These booklets are really just my notes. Certainly if I was going to share or publish the thing, it'd need copious editing, etc.  But that's WAAAY outside the scope of this project as it stands. Right now the goal is simply to finish.

So with all that said, there's not a dormitorium where the church's (now undead) acolytes lived. I also added a little bit more detail to the rectory. I thought it would be fun to put another unwieldy treasure in there, so the bishop also has a large copper tub.  It's heavy as heck and not ALL that valuable.  But any group going for a "full clear" will have to figure out how to get it out.

The acolytes didn't have a ton of valuables, but the did like a bit of a tipple. There's an ancient clay bottle filled with "wodca", the strong potato liquor favored by the dwarves of Greystone. In the interest of further Jacquaying of the dungeon, I've added another path through the church.  The living quarters and be accessed from the Narthex if explorers think to clear away the collapsed stairs.  This corridor also connects to a corridor that leads north off the map.  I'm trying to put copious routes within each sector, but also between sectors.  So, the church itself can be reached by the front steps, a corridor to the north, stairs that lead from the sanctuary down to level 2 or through the skylight.  That's pretty good!

OK, this post has gone really long.  But, I'm just so excited about the project it's hard not to just go on and on about it!  Week 2 In Review tomorrow.  And room 1-15!